March 2

Napoleon Bonaparte is appointed commander of the French Army of Italy, launching the campaign that made his early reputation.

The 26-year-old Napoleon Bonaparte was given command of French forces facing Austrian and Piedmontese armies in northern Italy. His subsequent lightning campaign of victories, achieved through speed and audacity, established his reputation as a military genius and set him on the path from revolutionary general to emperor.

The U.S. Congress passes legislation banning the importation of enslaved people, effective the following year.

Congress prohibited the further importation of enslaved people into the United States, a measure timed to the earliest date allowed under the Constitution's compromise provisions. The law did nothing to end domestic slavery or the internal slave trade, which continued to expand for decades until the Civil War.

Texan delegates adopt the Texas Declaration of Independence, establishing the Republic of Texas.

Meeting at Washington-on-the-Brazos, delegates from Texan settlements declared independence from Mexico, citing grievances over governance and rights. The declaration came amid the ongoing revolution that included the siege of the Alamo, and led to the short-lived Republic of Texas before its eventual annexation by the United States in 1845.

Alexander II becomes Tsar of Russia, later overseeing the emancipation of the serfs.

Alexander II ascended to the Russian throne following the death of his father, Nicholas I, during the Crimean War. Known as the "Tsar Liberator," he later issued the 1861 emancipation edict freeing Russia's serfs, one of the most significant reforms in Russian history, though he was assassinated in 1881.

U.S. Steel Corporation is founded, becoming the first company in history valued at over a billion dollars.

Financier J.P. Morgan orchestrated the merger of Andrew Carnegie's steel operations with several competitors to create U.S. Steel, capitalized at $1.4 billion. The consolidation made it the world's largest corporation at the time and a symbol of the industrial trusts that dominated the American economy during the Gilded Age.

The film "King Kong" premieres at Radio City Music Hall in New York, becoming an instant sensation and a landmark of early special-effects filmmaking.

Directed by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, "King Kong" combined pioneering stop-motion animation with a compelling monster-adventure story, drawing huge crowds during the Great Depression. Its groundbreaking special effects influenced generations of filmmakers and cemented the giant ape as one of cinema's most enduring icons.

Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli is elected pope, taking the name Pius XII.

Following the death of Pope Pius XI, the College of Cardinals elected Eugenio Pacelli, the Vatican's Secretary of State, who took the name Pius XII. His papacy would span World War II and its aftermath, a period whose controversial silence on the Holocaust continues to be debated by historians.

Wilt Chamberlain scores 100 points in a single NBA game, a record that still stands.

Playing for the Philadelphia Warriors against the New York Knicks, Wilt Chamberlain scored 100 points in a single game, a feat unmatched in NBA history despite the league's evolution. The game was not televised, and much of what is known comes from radio broadcasts and box scores.

The Anglo-French Concorde supersonic airliner completes its first test flight in Toulouse, France.

The Anglo-French Concorde, developed jointly by Britain and France, completed its maiden flight from Toulouse, marking a milestone in commercial aviation. The supersonic jet would eventually carry passengers across the Atlantic in under three and a half hours before rising costs and a fatal 2000 crash led to its retirement in 2003.

Physicists at Fermilab announce the discovery of the top quark, completing the Standard Model's roster of known quarks.

Researchers at Fermilab's Tevatron collider announced experimental confirmation of the top quark, the heaviest of the six quarks predicted by the Standard Model of particle physics. Its discovery, requiring immense collision energies to produce the short-lived particle, completed decades of theoretical and experimental work mapping the fundamental building blocks of matter.