1850. Samuel T. Armstrong, a distinguished American bookseller, died in Boston.
1852. While the engineer Maillefert and his assistants were engaged in submarine blastings at Hellgate, New York harbor, by accident a charge exploded and instantly killed Capt. Southard and 2 others. Maillefert and others were raised several feet, and fell into the water; but were rescued with few injuries.
1854. Jonathan Harrington died, aged 85; a fifer for the minute men who assembled on Lexington Green on the morning of the 19th of April, 1775, and the last survivor of the gallant band who were engaged in that first conflict of the American revolution.
MARCH 27.
47 B. C. Ptolemy Dionysius, king of Egypt, drowned in the Nile. His name is rendered execrable to the latest posterity for the murder of Pompey, his benefactor.
1306. Robert Bruce crowned king of Scotland at Scone. Edward had carried off the national diadem, so that one was manufactured for the occasion, which was placed upon the head of the liberator by Isabella, countess of Buchan, a descendant of Macduff.
1350. Alphonso II of Castile died at Gibraltar. He is famous for his wars with the Moors, in which 200,000 of them were slain.
1546. John Diaz, a Spaniard, murdered at Neuberg, Germany. He embraced the doctrines of the reformers, and while on a visit to Calvin was met by his brother, who, being unable to reconvert him, hired an assassin to dash out his brains with an axe while in bed at night.
1563. A bill brought into the house of commons, permitting the Bible and church service to be translated into the Welsh or British tongue and used in the church of Wales. The New Testament in Welsh appeared in 1567, in quarto, 339 pages in black letter.
1614. An octroy passed the States General of the United Netherlands, for regulating voyages to America, under which Adrian Block, Hendrick Corstiaensen, and Cornelis Jacobsen Mey, distinguished themselves by their adventures.