History of the Day for:
March 31
- 1880: Wabash, Ind., became the first town to have an electric street lighting system.
- 1889: The Eiffel Tower opened.
- 1918: Daylight Savings Time went into effect for the first time in the U.S.
- 1923: The first dance marathon was held in New York City. Alma Cummings set a world record of 27 hours on her feet, wearing out six partners.
- 1933: Congress authorized the Civilian Conservation Corps.
- 1942: World War II: Japanese forces invade Christmas Island, then a British possession.
- 1942: Holocaust in Ivano-Frankivsk (then called Stanislawow), western Ukraine. German Gestapo organize the first deportation of 5,000 Jews from Stanislawow ghetto to Belzec death camp. It is one of the largest transports to Belzec in the first phase of the camp.
- 1943: "Oklahoma" by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein opened on Broadway.
- 1945: The Tennessee Williams play "The Glass Menagerie" opened on Broadway.
- 1946: The first election is held in Greece after World War II.
- 1968: President Lyndon Johnson announced he would not run for another term and ordered the suspension of U.S. bombing of North Vietnam.
- 1976: The New Jersey Supreme Court ruled coma patient Karen Anne Quinlan could be disconnected from her respirator. She remained in a coma and did not die until 1985.
- 1988: Toni Morrison's novel "Beloved" was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.
- 1993: Actor Brandon Lee, 28, was accidentally shot and killed during the filming of a movie in Wilmington, N.C.
- 1995: Mexican-American singer Selena, 23, was shot to death in Corpus Christi, Texas, by the founder of her fan club.
- 1998: Netscape releases the code base of its browser under an open-source license agreement; the project is given the code name Mozilla and would eventually be spun off into the non-profit Mozilla Foundation.
- 2004: In Fallujah, Iraq, 4 American private military contractors working for Blackwater USA, are killed and their bodies mutilated after being ambushed.
- 2007: In Sydney, Australia, 2.2 million people take part in the first Earth Hour.
- 2008: Aloha Airlines, a bankrupt airline, permanently ends passenger service.