March 5 1590: Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe discovers a comet in the Pisces constellation 1750: A Shakespearean play Richard III is staged for the first time in America 1904: Inventor Nikola Tesla describes the process of the ball lightning formation 1921: Nazar Mohammad, who scored Pakistan’s first century in Test cricket, is born 1953: Joseph Stalin, leader of the Soviet Union, dies 1979: America’s Voyager 1 spacecraft has its closest approach to Jupiter, 172,000 miles from Earth 2004: Pakistan wins the Under-19 World Cup after beating West Indies by 25 runs in Dhaka

March 6 1475: Michelangelo, Italian artist and sculptor, is born 1869: Dmitri Mendeleev presents the first periodic table 1930: The first individually packaged frozen foods go on sale in Springfield, Massachusetts 1941: Oscar winning American actor Robert De Niro is born 1949: Former Pakistan Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz is born 1964: American heavyweight boxing champion Cassius Clay changes his name to Muhammad Ali 1971: Indian batting maestro Sunil Gavaskar makes Test debut against the West Indies 1984: Pakistan fast bowler Sohail Khan is born 1999: Pakistan’s fast bowler Wasim Akram takes his first Test hat-trick against Sri Lanka

March 7 1814: Emperor Napoleon I of France wins the Battle of Craonne 1820: British astronomers and mathematicians establish Royal Astronomical Society to promote celestial research 1876: Alexander Graham Bell is granted a patent for the invention of telephone, beating Antonio Meucci by four hours 1897: Dr John Kellogg serves the world’s first cornflakes to mental patients in Battle Creek, Michigan 1933: The board game Monopoly is trademarked by American businessman Charles Darrow 1952: Sir Vivian Richards, the great West Indies batsman, is born 1987: Sunil Gavaskar becomes the first batsman to score 10,000 Test runs 1999: Twin tonnes for Pakistan’s Wajahatullah Wasti in the Asian Test Championship against Sri Lanka

March 8 1817: The New York Stock Exchange is founded 1904: Australia’s Hugh Trumble takes a hat-trick in his final Test match 1946: Test cricketer Mohammad Nazir (known as Nazir Junior) is born 1957: Egypt re-opens the Suez Canal after the Suez Crisis 1959: Fast bowler Fazal Mahmood takes 6-34 as Pakistan dismisses the West Indies for 76 1979: Philips demonstrates the Compact Disc publicly for the first time 1992: South African fielder Jonty Rhodes runs out Inzamam-ul-Haq in one of the most picturesque moment in modern cricket

March 9 1934: Yuri Gagarin, Soviet cosmonaut and the first man in space, is born 1959: The Barbie doll makes its debut at the American International Toy Fair in New York 1996: Darsheel Safary (of Taare Zameen Par fame) is born 1996: Legendary batsman Javed Miandad plays final international match for Pakistan 2000: Muttiah Muralitharan takes 10 wickets as Sri Lanka defeats Pakistan in Peshawar Test

March 10 1814: Napoleon Bonaparte of France is defeated at the Battle of Laon in France 1938: For the first time, names of Academy Award winners are kept secret 1940: Chuck Norris, American actor, is born 1977: Astronomers discover rings around Uranus 1982: Pakistan’s Saleem Malik becomes youngest centurion on Test debut at 18 years and 328 days 2001: Pakistan Navy successfully tested surface to surface missile SM-39, and air to surface missile AM-39 from Agasta-90 submarine and Atlantic plane respectively 2002: Sri Lanka were crowned Asian Test champions after an eight-wicket win over Pakistan in Lahore 2010: Pakistan Cricket Board bans Younis Khan, Mohammad Yousuf for an indefinite period, hands out one-year bans to Shoaib Malik and Rana Naved-ul-Hasan, and fines Shahid Afridi, Umar Akmal and Kamran Akmal

March 11 1702: England’s first national daily newspaper The Daily Courant is published for the first time 1818: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the world’s first science fiction novel, is published as The Modern Prometheus 1982: Pakistan’s Hasan Raza, the youngest Test cricketer at 14 years 227 days, is born 1983: Pakistan successfully conducts a cold test of a nuclear weapon 1992: Eventual winners Pakistan defeat Australia in league match to keep themselves in the hunt for the World Cup 1997: Former band member of The Beatles Sir Paul McCartney was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for his ‘services to music’ — OA