From Historynet: Today in History March 2

1776          Americans begin shelling British troops in Boston.

1781          Maryland ratifies the Articles of Confederation. She is the last state to sign.

1797          The Directory of Great Britain authorizes vessels of war to board and seize neutral vessels, particularly if the ships are American.

1815          To put an end to robberies by the Barbary pirates, the United States declares war on Algiers.

1836          Texas declares independence from Mexico on 

Sam Houston's  43rd birthday.

1853          The Territory of Washington is organized.

1865          President Abraham Lincoln  rejects Confederate General Robert E. Lee's  plea for peace talks, demanding unconditional surrender.

1867          The first Reconstruction Act is passed by Congress.

1877          Rutherford B. Hayes  is declared president by one vote the day before the inauguration.

1889          Congress passes the Indian Appropriations Bill, proclaiming unassigned lands in the public domain; the first step toward the famous Oklahoma Land Rush.

1896          Bone Mizell , the famed cowboy of Florida, is sentenced to two years of hard labor in the state pen for cattle rustling. He would only serve a small portion of the sentence.

1901          Congress passes the Platt amendment, which limits Cuban autonomy as a condition for withdrawal of U.S. troops.

1908          An international conference on arms reduction opens in London.

1908          Gabriel Lippman  introduces the new three-dimensional color photography at the Academy of Sciences.

1917          Congress passes the Jones Act making Puerto Rico a territory of the United States and makes the inhabitants U.S. citizens.

1923          In Italy, Mussolini  admits that women have a right to vote, but declares that the time is not right.

1930          Novelist D.H. Lawrence  dies of tuberculosis in a sanitarium in Vence, France, at the age of 45.

1943          The center of Berlin is bombed by the RAF. Some 900 tons of bombs are dropped in a half hour.

1945          MacArthur  raises the U.S. flag on Corregidor in the Philippines.

1946          Ho Chi Minh  is elected president of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.

1951          The U.S. Navy launches the K-1, the first modern submarine designed to hunt enemy submarines.

1955          Claudette Colvin  refuses to give up her seat in Montgomery, Alabama, nine months before 

Rosa Parks'  famous arrest for the same offense.

1956          France grants independence to Morocco.

1965          More than 150 U.S. and South Vietnamese planes bomb two bases in North Vietnam in the first of the "Rolling Thunder" raids.

1968          The siege of Khe Sanh ends in Vietnam, the U.S. Marines stationed there are still in control of the mountain top.

1973          Federal forces surround Wounded Knee, South Dakota, which is occupied by members of the militant American Indian Movement who are holding at least 10 hostages.

1974          A grand jury in Washington, D.C. concludes that 

President Nixon  was indeed involved in the Watergate cover-up.

1978          Czech pilot Vladimir Remek  becomes the first non-Russian, non-American in space.

1981          The United States plans to send 20 more advisors and $25 million in military aid to El Salvador.