History of the Day for:
March 22
- 1630: The first legislation that prohibited gambling was enacted in Boston.
- 1638: Religious dissident Anne Hutchinson was expelled from the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
- 1765: The Stamp Act was enacted in Britain as the first direct British tax to raise money from the American colonies.
- 1820: U.S. naval hero Stephen Decatur was killed in a duel with Commodore James Barron near Washington D.C.
- 1841: Cornstarch was patented by Orlando Jones.
- 1882: The Edmunds Act was adopted by the U.S. to suppress polygamy in the territories.
- 1894: Hockey's first Stanley Cup championship game was played, and the Montreal Amateur Athletic Association defeated the Ottawa Capitals, 3-1.
- 1895: Auguste and Louis Lumiere showed their first movie to an audience in Paris. This is regarded as the first public display of a movie projected on a screen.
- 1933: During Prohibition, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed a measure to make wine and beer containing up to 3.2 percent alcohol legal.
- 1939: World War II: Germany takes Memel from Lithuania.
- 1941: Washington's Grand Coulee Dam begins to generate electricity.
- 1942: World War II: In the Mediterranean Sea, Britain's Royal Navy confronts Italy's Regia Marina in the Second Battle of Sirte.
- 1943: World War II: the entire population of Khatyn in Belarus is burnt alive by German occupation forces.
- 1945: The Arab League is founded when a charter is adopted in Cairo, Egypt.
- 1969: UCLA defeated Purdue, 92-72, to win the first of three consecutive NCAA basketball championships.
- 1972: Congress sent the proposed Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution to the states for ratification.
- 1977: Comedienne Lily Tomlin made her debut on Broadway in "Lily Tomlin on Stage."
- 1978: Karl Wallenda, the 73-year-old patriarch of "The Flying Wallendas," fell to his death while attempting to walk a cable strung between two hotels in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
- 1986: Debi Thomas became the first black woman to win the world figure skating championship.
- 1982: NASA's Space Shuttle Columbia, is launched from the Kennedy Space Centre on its third mission, STS-3.
- 1984: Teachers at the McMartin preschool in Manhattan Beach, California are charged with satanic ritual abuse of the children in the school. The charges are later dropped as completely unfounded.
- 1989: Clint Malarchuk of the Buffalo Sabres suffers a near-fatal injury when another player accidentally slits his throat.
- 1993: The Intel Corporation ships the first Pentium chips (80586), featuring a 60 MHz clock speed, 100+ MIPS, and a 64 bit data path.
- 1995: Cosmonaut Valeriy Polyakov returns after setting a record for 438 days in space.
- 1997: The Comet Hale-Bopp has its closest approach to earth.
- 1997: Tara Lipinski, at age 14 years and ten months, became the youngest women's world figure skating champion.
- 2004: Ahmed Yassin, co-founder and leader of the Palestinian Sunni Islamist terrorist group Hamas, and bodyguards are killed in the Gaza Strip when hit by Israeli Air Force AH-64 Apache fired Hellfire missiles.
- 2006: ETA, armed Basque separatist group, declares permanent ceasefire.
- 2006: BC Ferries' M/V Queen of the North runs aground on Gil Island British Columbia and sinks; 101 on board, 2 presumed deaths.
- 2006: Three Christian Peacemaker Teams Hostages are freed by British forces in Baghdad after 118 days captivity and the death of their colleague, American Tom Fox.
- 2009: Mount Redoubt, a volcano in Alaska began erupting after a prolonged period of unrest.