Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/March 14
This is a list of selected March 14 anniversaries that appear in the "On this day" section of the Main Page. To suggest a new item, in most cases, you can be bold and edit this page. Please read the selected anniversaries guidelines before making your edit. However, if your addition might be controversial or on a day that is or will soon be on the Main Page, please post your suggestion on the talk page instead.
Please note that the events listed on the Main Page are chosen based more on relative article quality and to maintain a mix of topics, not based solely on how important or significant their subjects are. Only four to five events are posted at a time and thus not everything that is "most important and significant" can be listed. In addition, an event is generally not posted this year if it is also the subject of the scheduled featured article, featured list or picture of the day.
To report an error when this appears on the Main Page, see Main Page errors. Please remember that this list defers to the supporting articles, so it is best to achieve consensus and make any necessary changes there first.
March 14: Laetare Sunday (Western Christianity, 2010); Mothering Sunday in the United Kingdom and Ireland; New Year's Day in the Sikh Nanakshahi calendar; White Day in Japan; Pi Day
- 1794 – American inventor Eli Whitney patented the cotton gin (pictured), the first ever machine that quickly and easily separated cotton fibers from their seedpods.
- 1915 – World War I: British forces cornered and sank the SMS Dresden, the last remnant of the German East Asia Squadron, near the Chilean island of Más a Tierra.
- 1937 – Pope Pius XI officially issued the encyclical Mit brennender Sorge, condemning antisemitism, criticizing Nazism, listing breaches of an agreement signed with the Roman Catholic Church.
- 1945 – The British Royal Air Force first used the Grand Slam, a 22,000 lb (9.98 t) earth quake bomb, on a strategic railroad viaduct in Bielefeld, Germany.
- 1991 – The "Birmingham Six", wrongly convicted of the 1974 Birmingham pub bombings in Birmingham, England, were released after sixteen years in prison.
- 1994 – Version 1.0.0 of the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel, was released, becoming one of the most prominent examples of open source software.