March 20
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Featured Event
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Uncle Tom’s Cabin is published as a novel
On this day in 1852, Harriet Beecher Stowe published Uncle Tom’s Cabin as a novel; it had previously run as a serial. The novel played a crucial role in shifting those who were ambivalent about slavery (especially Northerners) into abolitionists—a shift in public opinion that helped to bring about the Civil War. When it was first published, Uncle Tom’s Cabin was rivaled in popularity only by the Bible. It has been criticized, however, for its racist portrayal of Black people, with “Uncle Tom” becoming synonymous with subservience. [Read today’s edition of Today in History > >]
Featured Biography
Featured Biography
Image courtesy of portrait artist Irma Councill and The Canadian Medical Hall of Fame
Canadian scientist Maud Lenora Menten, born this day in 1879, conducted key work on enzyme kinetics, helping develop the Michaelis-Menten hypothesis to explain the velocity and mechanism of enzyme-catalyzed reactions.
Famous Birthdays
More on March 20
Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
2020
American country music singer Kenny Rogers, whose numerous hits included Lady and The Gambler, died at age 81. [Sort fact from fiction in our quiz about music.]
Diego Goldberg—Sygma
2015
Australian politician Malcolm Fraser, who served as the country’s prime minister from 1975 to 1983, died at age 84. [Test your knowledge of Australia’s government and political system.]
Breitling SA
1999
As they floated past longitude 9°27′ W above Mauretania, Bertrand Piccard and Brian Jones became the first aviators to circumnavigate the globe nonstop by balloon; they landed the following day in Egypt. [Test your knowledge of aviation in our quiz.]
Getty Images
1995
Members of AUM Shinrikyo (Japanese: “AUM Supreme Truth”), a new religious movement founded in Japan in 1987, released nerve gas into a Tokyo subway, killing 12 people and injuring thousands.
Image: Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
1987
AZT (azidothymidine; also called zidovudine) became the first drug to be approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of AIDS. [Learn about the history of the AIDS epidemic in the United States.]
Trinity Mirror/Mirrorpix/Alamy
1969
John Lennon, a leader of the seminal British rock group the Beatles, married Japanese artist and musician Yoko Ono in Gibraltar. [Sort fact from fiction in our quiz about the Beatles.]
© Sbukley/Dreamstime.com
1957
American filmmaker Spike Lee, who was known for his uncompromising and provocative approach to controversial subject matter, was born. [Take our film buff quiz.]
Canada Wide/Pictorial Parade
1948
Canadian American ice hockey player Bobby Orr—who, as a member of the Boston Bruins, became one of the game’s best defensemen—was born in Parry Sound, Ontario, Canada. [Find out if Bobby Orr made our list of the 10 best hockey players of all time.]
Americana/Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
1854
A meeting of Whigs, anti-Nebraska Democrats, and Free-Soilers in Ripon, Wisconsin, proposed the formation of what became the Republican Party in the United States. [Take our Republican or Democrat quiz.]
Hulton Archive/Getty Images
1828
Playwright Henrik Ibsen, who introduced to the European stage a new order of moral analysis that was placed against a severely realistic middle-class background, was born in Skien, Norway. [Take our quiz about the theatre.]
Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1961.9.15
1815
The Hundred Days—during which Napoleon, having ended his exile by escaping the island of Elba, would try to recapture his empire in France—began with Napoleon’s arrival in Paris. [How much do you know about Napoleon Bonaparte?]
Courtesy of the Schiller-Nationalmuseum, Marbach, Germany
1770
German lyric poet Friedrich Hölderlin was born in Lauffen am Neckar, Württemberg. [Test your knowledge of poetry.]
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1727
Sir Isaac Newton, whose Principia (1687) was one of the most important single works in the history of modern science and who was the culminating figure of the Scientific Revolution of the 17th century, died in London. [Sort fact from fiction in our physics quiz.]
© Claudio Giovanni Colombo/Dreamstime.com
43 bce
Roman poet Ovid, known especially for his Ars amatoria and Metamorphoses, was born in what is now Sulmona, Italy. [How much do you know about poets and poetry?]