1813. Captain Berresford of the British ship Poictiers, 74 guns, demanded of the inhabitants of Lewistown, Delaware, 25 oxen and vegetables and hay, otherwise he threatened to destroy the town. The demand was refused.
1817. William Thompson, an industrious Scottish writer and compiler, died. He possessed ability, but his writings bear the marks of haste and want of care.
1838. Nathaniel Bowditch died at Boston, aged 65. His father and ancestors in several generations were by profession shipmasters. Notwithstanding the very limited advantages of his education, and his laborious employment through life for the support of his family, yet by his extraordinary genius and economy of time, he made great acquisitions in learning and science, gained most of the languages, and made himself the most eminent mathematician and astronomer that America has produced. He published the Practical Navigator, a standard book; but the great work on which his fame will rest, is the copious and profound commentary upon the Mechanique Celeste of La Place, of which he made the first entire translation, and published at his own expense in 4 vols. quarto; saying that he preferred spending a thousand dollars a year in that way to keeping a carriage.
1853. Anthony Dumond Stanley, an American mathematician, died, aged 42. Profoundly versed in the science, he had begun a series of works which would have placed his name high on the scroll of fame.
MARCH 17.
49 B. C. Pompey abandoned Italy, and took the sea with his legions, at Brundusium.
45 B. C. Battle of Munda, in Spain, between the armies of Cæsar and Pompey, which decided the fate of the Roman republic. These men did not consider the Roman empire sufficiently large for two of them.
180. Marcus Aurelius Antoninus,
surnamed the philosopher, died on an expedition against the Marcomanni. He was so extremely popular with his Roman subjects, that they placed him among the gods, and kept his statue in their houses.
464. St. Patrick, the tutelar saint of Ireland, died. He was carried away with many of his father's vassals by pirates, from whom he made his escape to Gaul and Italy. He received a commission from Pope Celestine to convert the Irish to Christianity, in which mission he was eminently successful.