From Historynet: Today in History March 12

1496          The Jews are expelled from Syria.

1507          Cesare Borgia  dies while fighting alongside his brother, the king of Navarre, in Spain.

1609          The Bermuda Islands become an English colony.

1664          New Jersey becomes a British colony.

1789          The United States Post Office is established.

1809          Great Britain signs a treaty with Persia forcing the French out of the country.

1863          President Jefferson Davis  delivers his State of the Confederacy address.

1879          The British Zulu War begins.

1884          Mississippi establishes the first U.S. state college for women.

1894          Coca-Cola is sold in bottles for the first time.

1903          The Czar of Russia  issues a decree providing for nominal freedom of religion throughout the land.

1909          British Parliament increases naval appropriations for Great Britain.

1911          Dr. Fletcher of the Rockefeller Institute discovers the cause of infantile paralysis.

1912          Juliet Low  founds the Girl Scouts in Savannah, Georgia.

1917          Russian troops mutiny as the "February Revolution" begins.

1930          Gandhi  begins his march to the sea to symbolizes his defiance of British rule in India.

1933          President Paul von Hindenburg  drops the flag of the German Republic and orders that the swastika and empire banner be flown side by side.

1933          President Roosevelt  makes the first of his Sunday evening fireside chats.

1938          German troops enter Austria without firing a shot, forming the anschluss (union) of Austria and Germany.

1939          Pius XII  is elected the new pope in Rome.

1944          Great Britain bars all travel to neutral Ireland, which is suspected of collaborating with Nazi Germany.

1945          Diarist Anne Frank  dies in a German concentration camp.

1959          The U.S. House of Representatives joins the Senate in approving the statehood of Hawaii.

1984          Lebanese President Gemayel  opens the second meeting in five years calling for the end to nine-years of war.

1985          The United States and the Soviet Union begin arms control talks in Geneva.

1994          The Church of England ordains women priests.