March 11 Through History

Explanation: The earthquake of March 11, 2011, magnitude 9.0, is the most powerful ever recorded in Japan and the 4th largest in the world. The tsunami that followed caused the deaths of nearly 20,000 people and triggered the Fukushima nuclear disaster, rated level 7, the highest on the international nuclear event scale.

Explanation: Leo X, born Giovanni de' Medici, was the son of Lorenzo the Magnificent. His pontificate is notably marked by the condemnation of Martin Luther in 1521, which helped trigger the Protestant Reformation. He was also famous for his artistic patronage, particularly toward Raphael.

Explanation: The March 11, 2004 bombings in Madrid, carried out by an Islamist cell linked to Al-Qaeda, constitute the deadliest terrorist attack in Spanish history. They took place three days before the general elections and had a direct impact on the result, leading to the defeat of the ruling Partido Popular.

Explanation: Mikhail Gorbachev succeeded Konstantin Chernenko, who died after only 13 months in power. Taking the helm of the USSR at 54, he would go on to launch the reforms of glasnost (transparency) and perestroika (restructuring), which contributed to the fall of communism in Eastern Europe and the dissolution of the USSR in 1991.

Explanation: Lithuania was the first of the Soviet republics to declare its independence, under the leadership of the Sąjūdis movement and Vytautas Landsbergis. The USSR responded with an economic blockade, but ultimately recognized Lithuanian independence in September 1991, after the failed coup against Gorbachev.

Explanation: Rigoletto, premiered at the Teatro La Fenice in Venice, is based on the play Le Roi s'amuse by Victor Hugo. Austrian censorship, which controlled northern Italy at the time, had initially banned the work due to the negative portrayal of a monarch. Verdi had to modify the libretto so the action takes place in a fictional Duchy of Mantua.

Explanation: The Greenwich meridian was adopted as the international reference meridian at the Washington conference in 1884. France, out of national pride, had resisted for 27 years before officially adopting this system on March 11, 1911. The French had then officially defined legal time as 'Paris meridian time delayed by 9 minutes and 21 seconds'.

Explanation: Urbain Le Verrier calculated in 1846 the position of Neptune purely from the gravitational perturbations observed in the orbit of Uranus, without ever pointing a telescope. The German astronomer Johann Galle confirmed the discovery by observing the planet exactly where Le Verrier had predicted, less than 1 degree off.

Explanation: The WHO's pandemic declaration came more than two months after Chinese authorities had informed the organization of the first cases in Wuhan. Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus had long hesitated to use the term officially, fearing it would trigger a global panic. At that point, the virus had already reached more than 114 countries.

Explanation: Edison had patented the phonograph in 1877. The Parisian demonstration of March 11, 1878 caused a sensation in the French scientific community. The device recorded sound using a needle tracing grooves on a cylinder covered in tinfoil, a revolutionary technology that would transform the music industry.