History of the Day for:
March 26
- 1804: The Louisiana Purchase was divided into the Territory of Orleans and the District of Louisiana.
- 1827: Composer Ludwig van Beethoven died in Vienna.
- 1875: Poet Robert Frost was born in San Francisco.
- 1885: The Eastman Dry Plate and Film Co. of Rochester, N.Y., manufactured the first commercial motion picture film.
- 1892: Poet Walt Whitman died in Camden, N.J.
- 1911: Playwright Tennessee Williams was born in Columbus, Miss.
- 1942: World War II: In Poland, Auschwitz receives its first female prisoners.
- 1945: World War II: In Iwo Jima, US forces declare Iwo Jima secure.
- 1953: Jonas Salk announces his polio vaccine.
- 1958: The United States Army launches Explorer 3.
- 1964: The musical play "Funny Girl" opened on Broadway.
- 1971: East Pakistan proclaimed its independence, renaming itself Bangladesh.
- 1975: "Tommy," the film based on the rock opera by the group The Who premiered in London.
- 1979: Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat signed the Camp David peace treaty, ending 30 years of war.
- 1982: Groundbreaking ceremonies took place in Washington, D.C., for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
- 1992: A judge in Indianapolis sentenced former heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson to six years in prison for raping a Miss Black America contestant.
- 1997: The bodies of 39 members of the suicidal Heaven's Gate cult were found inside a mansion in Rancho Santa Fe, Calif.
- 1998: Oued Bouaicha massacre in Algeria: 52 people killed with axes and knives, 32 of them babies under the age of 2.
- 1999: The "Melissa worm" infects Microsoft word processing and e-mail systems around the world.
- 1999: A jury in Michigan finds Dr. Jack Kevorkian guilty of second-degree murder for administering a lethal injection to a terminally ill man.
- 2005: The Taiwanese government calls on 1 million Taiwanese to demonstrate in Taipei, in opposition to the Anti-Secession Law of the People's Republic of China. Around 200,000 to 300,000 attend the walk.
- 2006: In Scotland, the prohibition of smoking in all substantially enclosed public places comes into force.
- 2006: The military junta ruling Burma officially names Naypyidaw, a new city in Mandalay Division, as the new capital. Yangon had formerly been the nation's capital.