March 4th Anniversaries

Santo Domingo.- The events of March 4, are marked by important historical events and international celebrations that left their mark on world history. Below, the main events of March 4:

• World Obesity Day
• International HPV Awareness Day
• World Engineering Day for Sustainable Development

Saints: Saints Casimir, Basil, and Eugene.

National: March 4th anniversaries

• 1493. Admiral Cristóbal Colón arrives in Lisbon and writes to the legal advisor of the Catholic Monarchs about the virtues of the Island of Santo Domingo.
• 1844. In La Vega, the sisters Ma. del Carmen, Ma. Francisca and Manuela Villa Del Orbe raise the Dominican flag for the first time in the Cibao, when the city pronounces itself in favor of independence.
• - The French consul in Santo Domingo, Juchereau Saint Denys, issues a proclamation in which he echoes “alarming rumors about a possible Haitian attack against the new regime.
• 1884. Dominican ex-president Buenaventura Báez dies in Puerto Rico.
• 1900. General Pedro Pepín (Perico), rises up against the government of Juan Isidro Jiménes, but upon not obtaining the support he expected, lays down his arms.
• 1961. Monsignor Panal delivers a sermon in front of dictator Rafael Trujillo, in which he denounces “the abominable atheist, anti-clerical, anti-social, anti-Trujillista and pure communist campaign, which, for a short time, spokespersons of the national radio and press have been carrying out, in the most sacrilegious and infamous way”.
• 1962. The first Dominican Agrarian League is established in the community of Juan López Abajo, in Moca, during a meeting led by unionists Rangel Parra, Ramón Vázquez, Prisco Morales and José Gómez Cerda.
• 1963. President Juan Bosch issues decree number nine, through which he provides austerity measures to readjust the country's economy, suppressing local and foreign positions and reducing salaries. He criticizes that money is wasted at the University of Santo Domingo and reduces its allocation.
• 1972. Accordionist and typical singer Tatico Henríquez and the young Elba Chaljub Mejia, with whom he had a son, Fary Henríquez, get married.
• 1977. President Joaquín Balaguer recommends to the Armed Forces and the PN to drop the lawsuit filed against the Perredeist leader José Fco. Peña Gómez, for his denunciation that the body of a police agent close to the UASD campus had been thrown from a military vehicle.
• 2005. The former president of the Dominican Revolutionary Party (PRD), Hatuey de Camps, resigns from that position, believing that the entity “was assaulted by mafiosi”, and announces the creation of the Social Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRSD).
• 2015. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs orders the temporary closure of its consular missions accredited in Haiti, arguing the constant aggressions that have occurred in recent days in those diplomatic delegations.
• - The Specialized Corps in Airport and Civil Aviation Security dishonorably cancels and for “treason” the private ERD, AlexRamírez Ubri, who would have escorted the confessed drug trafficker Quirino Ernesto Paulino Castillo on his return to the country.
• 2016. Frenchman Christophe Naudin arrives in the country, extradited by the Egyptian government, accused by the Dominican judicial authorities for his participation in the escape of two French pilots convicted of drug trafficking, as well as of association of wrongdoers and trafficking in migrants.
• 2019. In the process of evaluating judges who aspire to repeat in the Supreme Court of Justice, the Attorney General, Jean Alain Rodríguez and Judge Miriam Germán Brito, clash after the former reads an anonymous communication in which the latter is accused of meeting privately with Víctor Díaz Rúa, one of those charged in the Odebrecht bribes.
• - Singer and composer Anthony Ríos dies at the age of 68, after suffering from heart problems, for which he had been hospitalized on several occasions.
• 2020. The plenary session of the Central Electoral Board (JCE) authorizes the recording of the vote count in the polling stations for the municipal elections on Sunday, March 15, a measure adopted by the electoral body through resolution 20-20.
• 2021. The general directors of Public-Private Partnerships and the Airport Department announce, Sigmund Freund Mena and Víctor Pichardo, respectively, the beginning of the elaboration of the preliminary draft for the construction of the Pedernales International Airport, a work considered decisive for the economic and tourist development of the border region.

International: March 4th anniversaries

• 1519. Hernán Cortés's expedition arrives in front of the city of Tabasco, in present-day Mexico.
• 1678. Antonio Vivaldi, Italian Baroque composer, who influenced Johann Sebastian Bach, is born.
• 1789. In New York, the first United States Congress meets and declares the first Constitution of that nation.
• 1793. The third Negrete Parliament begins in Chile between the Mapuches and the Spanish colonial authorities.
• 1809. James Madison is elected fourth president of the United States, a position he holds until 1817.
• 1885. Guatemala decides to annex itself to El Salvador, Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Honduras, to constitute a federative republic.
• 1960. The French merchant ship “La Cou­bre” explodes in the port of Havana, carrying a shipment of Belgian weapons to the island, causing the death of 70 people and 200 injured, an action attributed by Fidel Castro to the US.
• 1973. Eight guerrillas from the Black September group end their occupation of the Saudi Arabian embassy in Sudan, where they killed three diplomats.
• 1977. An earthquake affects Bucharest and other cities in Romania, causing a thousand deaths.
• 1983. The priest and laureate Nicaraguan poet, Ernesto Cardenal, kneels on the runway of the Managua airport, to receive the blessing he asked of John Paul II, who instead gives him a severe reprimand that went around the world.
• 2000. Bosnian Croat nationalists promise to create their own state in Bosnia, which threatens the possibility of establishing lasting peace in the Balkan country.
• 2008. John McCain becomes the Republican Party's presidential candidate after surpassing the minimum 1191 delegates to run for the White House.
• 2012. The President of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, confirms that the tumor removed in Cuba was “a recurrence” of the cancer that affects him, for which he will receive radiotherapy treatment.
• 2016. The Brazilian Federal Police arrests former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva as part of the operation investigating the corruption network in the state oil company Petrobras.
• 2018. The former Russian spy Skripal and his daughter Yulia, 33, visiting from Moscow, are found unconscious sitting on a public bench near a shopping center in Salisbury by a doctor and a nurse who were passing by, being taken to a hospital where the medical staff determined that the couple had been poisoned with a nerve agent.
• 2019. Russian President Vladimir Putin suspends his country's participation in a nuclear arms treaty from which the United States had already decided to withdraw, arguing that Washington, and not Moscow, was violating the 1987 pact.
• - The Episcopal Conference of Nicaragua announces in a statement its withdrawal from the negotiations between the government and the opposition, for considering that it is not “ineludible” in the process.
• 2020. President Jovenel Moise swears in Joseph Jouthe as the new Haitian prime minister, without ratification in his position by Parliament, as stipulated by the Constitution, arguing that the body has been dissolved since last January.
• 2021. In Mexico, as if it were part of a macabre carnival caravan, the Jalisco Nueva Generación Cartel appeared in a video touring the streets of Aguililla, state of Michoacán, boasting its firepower with two trucks modified from the wheels to the roof with iron plates as if they were homemade tanks.

Births: March 4th Anniversaries

• 1678: Antonio Vivaldi, Italian composer and violinist, famous for The Four Seasons.
• 1786: Agustina de Aragón, Spanish defender during the War of Independence.
• 1889: Pearl White, American actress of silent films.
• 1904: Luis Carrero Blanco, Spanish military man and politician.
• 1907: María Branyas Morera, Spanish supercentenarian (d. 2024).
• 1913: John Garfield, American actor.
• 1932: Ryszard Kapuściński, Polish journalist and writer.
• 1944: Bobby Womack, American singer and musician.
• 1948: James Ellroy, American writer of noir novels.
• 1952: Umberto Tozzi, Italian singer.
• 1953: Emilio Estefan, Cuban musician and producer.
• 1954: Catherine O'Hara, Canadian actress.
• 1962: Miriam Díaz Aroca, Spanish actress.
• 1970: Álex Crivillé, Spanish motorcycle racer.
• 1972: Jos Verstappen, Dutch Formula 1 driver.
• 1974: Ariel Ortega, Argentine footballer.
• 1983: Drew Houston, American entrepreneur, co-founder of Dropbox.
• 1986: Park Min-Young, South Korean actress.
• 1999: Brooklyn Beckham, British model. 

Deaths: March 4th anniversaries

• 1193: Saladin, Egyptian sultan and founder of the Ayyubid dynasty.
• 1811: Mariano Moreno, Argentine journalist and patriot, member of the Primera Junta.
• 1852: Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol, Ukrainian writer in the Russian language.
• 1858: Matthew Calbraith Perry, American naval officer who opened Japan to trade.
• 1993: Miguel de Molina, Spanish flamenco artist.
• 1994: John Candy, Canadian comedic actor.
• 2004: Fernando Lázaro Carreter, philologist and director of the Royal Spanish Academy.
• 2011: Simon van der Meer, Dutch physicist, Nobel Prize in Physics in 1984.
• 2019: Anthony Ríos, Dominican singer and songwriter.
• 2024: José Augusto César León Asensio, Dominican businessman, former president of the León Jimenes Group.