The Brockville Rifles

March 15

1311:

Battle of Halmyros: The Catalan Company defeats Walter V of Brienne to take control of the Duchy of Athens, a Crusader state in Greece.

1781:

American Revolutionary War: Battle of Guilford Courthouse - Near present-day Greensboro, North Carolina, 1,900 British troops under General Charles Cornwallis defeat an American force numbering 4,400.

1916:

President Woodrow Wilson sends 12,000 United States troops over the U.S.-Mexico border to pursue Pancho Villa.

1917:

Tsar Nicholas II of Russia was forced to abdicate in the February Revolution, ending three centuries of Romanov rule.

1939:

World War II: Nazi troops occupy the remaining part of Bohemia and Moravia; Czechoslovakia ceases to exist.

1943:

World War II: Third Battle of Kharkov - the Germans retook the city of Kharkov from the Soviet armies in bitter street fighting.

1944:

World War II: Battle of Monte Cassino - Allied aircraft bomb the Nazi-held monastery and stage an assault.

1988:

The Halabja poison gas attack of the Iran-Iraq War begins.

1991:

Germany formally regains complete independence after the four post-World War II occupying powers (France, the United Kingdom, the United States and the Soviet Union) relinquish all remaining rights.

44BC:

Julius Caesar murdered by Brutus in Rome