March 2

On This Day In History
	1956: Moroccan independence declared The North African country of Morocco, situated directly across the Strait of Gibraltar from Spain, proclaimed independence from France this day in 1956, with the sultan Muhammad V forming its first government.
Morocco
Biography Of The Day
	Mikhail Gorbachev Born this day in 1931, Mikhail Gorbachev, the general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1985–91) and president of the Soviet Union (1990–91), instituted reforms that led to the end of the Cold War.
Mikhail Gorbachev
More Events On This Day In History
	1962 American basketball player Wilt Chamberlain scored a record 100 points in a National Basketball Association (NBA) game.
	1930 English novelist D.H. Lawrence died in Vence, France (his ashes were moved in 1935 to Taos, New Mexico, where he once had lived).
	1917 The Jones Act took effect, designating Puerto Rico as a territory of the United States, “organized but unincorporated,” and conferring U.S. citizenship collectively on Puerto Ricans.
	1900 Composer Kurt Weill, who created a revolutionary kind of opera of sharp social satire in collaboration with the writer Bertolt Brecht, was born in Germany.
	1867 Over U.S. President Andrew Johnson's veto, Radical Republicans in Congress passed the Tenure of Office Act, forbidding the president to remove civil officers without senatorial consent.
	1865 Confederate forces under General Jubal A. Early suffered a decisive defeat that ended Southern resistance in the Shenandoah Valley, Virginia, during the American Civil War, and the Confederacy collapsed the following month.
1498	1498 Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama and his fleet reached the island of Mozambique on their first voyage to India.