31 March Events

March 31 is the 90th day of the year (91st in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 275 days remaining until the end of the year. This date is slightly more likely to fall on a Tuesday, Thursday or Saturday (58 in 400 years each) than on Sunday or Monday (57), and slightly less likely to occur on a Wednesday or Friday (56).
Events

307 – After divorcing his wife Minervina, Constantine marries Fausta, daughter of the retired Roman Emperor Maximian.
627 – Battle of the Trench: Muhammad undergoes a 14-day siege at Medina (Saudi Arabia) by Meccan forces under Abu Sufyan.
1146 – Bernard of Clairvaux preaches his famous sermon in a field at Vézelay, urging the necessity of a Second Crusade. Louis VII is present, and joins the Crusade.
1492 – Queen Isabella of Castille issues the Alhambra Decree, ordering her 150,000 Jewish and Muslim subjects to convert to Christianity or face expulsion.
1561 – The city of San Cristóbal, Táchira is founded.
1717 – A sermon on "The Nature of the Kingdom of Christ" by Benjamin Hoadly, the Bishop of Bangor, provokes the Bangorian Controversy.
1774 – American Revolutionary War: The Kingdom of Great Britain orders the port of Boston, Massachusetts closed pursuant to the Boston Port Act.
1822 – The massacre of the population of the Greek island of Chios by soldiers of the Ottoman Empire following an attempted rebellion, depicted by the French artist Eugène Delacroix.
1854 – Commodore Matthew Perry signs the Convention of Kanagawa with the Tokugawa Shogunate, opening the ports of Shimoda and Hakodate to American trade.
1885 – The United Kingdom establishes the Bechuanaland Protectorate.
1889 – The Eiffel Tower is officially opened.
1899 – Malolos, capital of the First Philippine Republic, is captured by American forces.
1906 – The Intercollegiate Athletic Association of the United States (later the National Collegiate Athletic Association) is established to set rules for college sports in the United States.
1909 – Serbia accepts Austrian control over Bosnia and Herzegovina.
1913 – The Vienna Concert Society rioted during a performance of modernist music by Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg, Alexander von Zemlinsky, and Anton von Webern, causing a premature end to the concert due to violence; this concert became known as the Skandalkonzert.
1917 – The United States takes possession of the Danish West Indies after paying $25 million to Denmark, and renames the territory the United States Virgin Islands.
1918 – Massacre of ethnic Azerbaijanis is committed by allied armed groups of Armenian Revolutionary Federation and Bolsheviks. Nearly 12,000 Azerbaijani Muslims are killed.
1918 – Daylight saving time goes into effect in the United States for the first time.
1921 – The Royal Australian Air Force is formed.
1930 – The Motion Picture Production Code is instituted, imposing strict guidelines on the treatment of sex, crime, religion and violence in film, in the U.S., for the next thirty-eight years.
1931 – An earthquake destroys Managua, Nicaragua, killing 2,000.
1931 – TWA Flight 599 crashes near Bazaar, Kansas, killing eight, including University of Notre Dame head football coach Knute Rockne.
1933 – The Civilian Conservation Corps is established with the mission of relieving rampant unemployment in the United States.
1942 – World War II: Japanese forces invade Christmas Island, then a British possession.
1945 – World War II: A defecting German pilot delivers a Messerschmitt Me 262A-1, the world's first operational jet-powered fighter aircraft, to the Americans, the first to fall into Allied hands.
1949 – The Dominion of Newfoundland joins the Canadian Confederation and becomes the 10th Province of Canada.
1951 – Remington Rand delivers the first UNIVAC I computer to the United States Census Bureau.
1957 – Elections to the Territorial Assembly of the French colony Upper Volta are held. After the elections PDU and MDV form a government.
1958 – In the Canadian federal election, the Progressive Conservatives, led by John Diefenbaker, win the largest percentage of seats in Canadian history, with 208 seats of 265.
1959 – The 14th Dalai Lama, crosses the border into India and is granted political asylum.
1964 – A coup d'état in Brazil establishes a military government, under the aegis of general Castelo Branco.
1966 – The Soviet Union launches Luna 10 which later becomes the first space probe to enter orbit around the Moon.
1970 – Explorer 1 re-enters the Earth's atmosphere after 12 years in orbit.
1979 – The last British soldier leaves the Maltese islands; Malta declares its Freedom Day (Jum il-Helsien).
1980 – The Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad operates its final train after being ordered to liquidate its assets because of bankruptcy and debts owed to creditors.
1985 – The first WrestleMania, the biggest wrestling event from the WWE (then the WWF), takes place in Madison Square Garden in New York City.
1990 – Approximately 200,000 protesters take to the streets of London to protest against the newly introduced Poll Tax.
1991 – Georgian independence referendum, 1991: Nearly 99 percent of the voters support the country's independence from the Soviet Union.
1992 – The USS Missouri, the last active United States Navy battleship, is decommissioned in Long Beach, California.
1998 – Netscape releases Mozilla source code under an open source license.
2004 – Iraq War in Anbar Province: In Fallujah, Iraq, four American private military contractors working for Blackwater USA, are killed after being ambushed.
2016 – Occupy movement known as Nuit debout begins in France, spreading within days to Belgium, Germany, and Spain.
Holidays and observances

Cesar Chavez Day (United States)
Christian feast day
Abdas of Susa
Acathius of Melitene (Eastern Orthodox Church)
Anesius and companions
Benjamin
Balbina
John Donne (Anglican Communion, Lutheran)
March 31 (Eastern Orthodox liturgics)
Day of Genocide of Azerbaijanis (Azerbaijan)
Freedom Day (Malta)
International Transgender Day of Visibility
King Nangklao Memorial Day (Thailand)
Thomas Mundy Peterson Day (New Jersey, United States)
Transfer Day (US Virgin Islands)
World Backup Day

Source: Wikipedia