1664        Mar 22, Charles II gave large tracks of land from west of the Connecticut River to the east of Delaware Bay in North America to his brother James, the Duke of York and Albany. The entire Hudson Valley and New Amsterdam was given to James.

1790        Mar 22, Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) became the first US Secretary of State. As Secretary of State, he served on the first Board of Arts, the body that reviewed patent applications and granted patents. Jefferson was one of a triumvirate that served as both America’s first patent commissioner and first patent examiner.

1937        Mar 22, Ray Woods, a professional diver from St. Louis, leaped from the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge in an attempt to set a new world record for high dive. He suffered 6 broken vertebrae, but survived.

1977        Mar 22, President Carter proposed the abolition of the Electoral College. 

1978        Mar 22, Karl Wallenda, the 73-year-old patriarch of “The Flying Wallendas” high-wire act, fell to his death while attempting to walk a cable strung between two hotels in San Juan, Puerto Rico. 

2001        Mar 22, Pres. Bush met with Chinese Deputy Premier Qian Qichen and said the US would support Taiwan’s military needs.

2002        Mar 22, Thomas Kelly (72), the Grumman engineer who had overseen the building of the 1969 lunar module, died.

2004        Mar 22, Terry Nichols went on trial for his life in the Oklahoma City bombing. Nichols was already serving a life sentence for his conviction on federal charges. On May 26 he was found guilty of 161 state murder charges, but was again spared the death penalty when the jury couldn’t agree on his sentence.

2004        Mar 22, In Malaysia Abdullah Ahmad Badawi was sworn in as prime minister, a day after scoring a landslide election victory that handed the fundamentalist Islamic opposition its worst defeat in more than a decade. The national Front Coalition won 199 out of 219 seats in parliament.

2005        Mar 22, Nigeria’s Pres. Olusegun Obasanjo fired his education minister, Fabian Osuji, accusing him of bribing lawmakers including the Senate leader Adolphus Wabara and a string of other named senators of taking bribes totaling $398,550.

2006        Mar 22, In Mexico Omar Pimentel (38), the police chief of the border city of Nuevo Laredo, resigned. He said he was tired from the stress of working in a city dominated by drug cartels fighting a bloody turf war.

2007        Mar 22, Rafik Khalifa (40), the head of a bank at the centre of Algeria’s biggest corruption scandal, was sentenced in absentia to life in prison. Khalifa has been exiled in London since 2003, when hundreds of millions of dollars was discovered missing from the Khalifa Bank. Algeria has been seeking his extradition. The exiled former governor of the central bank, Abdelawahab Keramane, and five others were also sentenced in abstentia to 20 years in prison

2007        Mar 22, Zimbabwe’s Catholic Archbishop Pius Ncube urged his countrymen to stand up to the iron-fisted government of President Robert Mugabe. State-media reported that the Zimbabwean government has urged African nations to join hands to fight domination by powerful Western countries. A Harare court ruled that injured activists could seek treatment abroad.

2008        Mar 22, Michael Kassel (54), San Francisco blues musician (the Hellhounds) poet known as Vampyre Mike, died after a long illness. His books included “Graveyard Golf” and “Going for the Low Blow.”

2008        Mar 22, US Vice President Dick Cheney completing a two-day stay in Saudi Arabia, discussed ways to stabilize the energy market with Saudi King Abdullah.

2009        Mar 22, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who has for years funneled state oil income into sweeping social programs, vowed to cut nonessential state spending and order a review of top officials’ salaries as oil income plunges. Chavez also called President Barack Obama “ignorant,” saying he has a lot to learn about Latin America.

2010        Mar 22, In Venezuela former Zulia state Gov. Oswaldo Alvarez Paz, an outspoken opponent of President Hugo Chavez, said that police have taken him into custody while he awaits trial on conspiracy charges for saying Venezuela has become a haven for drug trafficking

2011        Mar 22, US President Barack Obama wrapped up a visit to Chile and departed for El Salvador, the third and final stop of his Latin America tour. In El Salvador Obama promised increasing trade and economic growth, fighting drug trafficking and creating work opportunities. In 2012 it was reported that Secret Service employees took prostitutes to their hotel rooms ahead of Obama’s visit to El Salvador.

2012        Mar 22, Afghan President Hamid Karzai said the West will subsidize Afghan security forces by more than $4 billion a year after US-led troops leave in 2014, implicitly accepting a cut in the planned size of his military. Western officials said no final agreements had been reached. In Kandahar a suicide car bomber blew himself up at a security checkpoint outside a police station, killing two children nearby.

2013        Mar 22, In Belgium Kim De Gelder (24) was convicted and sentenced to life in prison, despite concerns about his mental condition, for four murders, including the slashing deaths of two babies at a day care center in 2009.

2013        Mar 22, Lebanon’s PM Najib Mikati submitted his resignation.

2014        Mar 22, Pope Francis named the initial members of a commission to advise him on sex abuse policy, tapping lay and religious experts.