From Historynet: Today in History March 14

1629          A Royal charter is granted to the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

1743          First American town meeting is held at Boston's Faneuil Hall.

1757          British Admiral John Byng  is executed by a firing squad on board HMS Monarch for neglect of duty.

1794          Inventor Eli Whitney  receives a patent for his cotton gin.

1900          United States currency goes on the gold standard.

1903          The Senate ratifies the Hay-Herran Treaty, guaranteeing the United States the right to build a canal in Panama.

1912          An anarchist named Antonio Dalba  unsuccessfully attempts to kill 

Italy's King Victor Emmanuel III  in Rome.

1915          The British Navy sinks the German battleship Dresden off the Chilean coast.

1918          An all-Russian Congress of Soviets ratifies a peace treaty with the Central Powers.

1923          President Warren G. Harding  becomes the first U.S. President to file an income tax report.

1936           Adolf Hitler  tells a crowd of 300,000 that Germany's only judge is God and itself.

1939          The Nazis dissolve the republic of Czechoslovakia.

1943          The Germans reoccupy Kharkov in the Soviet Union.

1947          The United States signs a 99-year lease on naval bases in the Philippines.

1951          U.N. forces recapture Seoul for the second time during the Korean War.

1954          The Viet Minh launch an assault against the French Colonial Forces at Dien Bien Phu.

1964          A Dallas jury finds Jack Ruby  guilty of the murder of assassin Lee Harvey Oswald .

1967          John F. Kennedy's  body is moved from a temporary grave to a permanent one in Arlington Cemetery.

1978          An Israeli force of 22,000 invades south Lebanon, hitting the PLO bases.

1990          Mikhail S. Gorbachev  becomes president of the Soviet Congress.

1991          The "Birmingham Six," imprisoned for 16 years for their alleged part in an IRA pub bombing, are set free after a court agrees that the police fabricated evidence.