On This Day

Today in History, March 23rd

On March 23, 1775, Patrick Henry gave his "liberty or death" speech in Richmond. Plus the Enabling Act and the Affordable Care Act.

By Today in History Updated November 10, 2026 3 min read Sources checked

Published March 23, 2026 · Last updated November 10, 2026

March 23 is best known for 1775, when Patrick Henry urged Virginia to arm itself against Britain and, as later remembered, demanded “liberty or death.” The date also saw Germany’s Reichstag hand Hitler dictatorial power in 1933 and President Barack Obama sign the Affordable Care Act in 2010.

The big story: “Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death” (1775)

The Second Virginia Convention did not meet in the capital at Williamsburg. Delegates gathered at St. John’s Church in Richmond instead, out of reach of the royal governor, Lord Dunmore. On March 23, 1775, Patrick Henry stood to back his proposal that every Virginia county raise a volunteer company of cavalry or infantry. In other words, he wanted the colony ready to fight. His speech built to a famous close: whatever others chose, he would take liberty or death. There is a catch worth knowing. Nobody wrote the speech down at the time. The text most Americans learned was pieced together decades later by William Wirt, Henry’s first biographer, who began work on it in 1808 using the memories of people who had been there, Thomas Jefferson among them. Less than a month after the speech, the first shots of the Revolutionary War were fired at Lexington.

More events on March 23

Year	What happened
1806	Lewis and Clark’s Corps of Discovery left Fort Clatsop, its rainy winter camp near the Pacific, to start the long trip home. It reached St. Louis that September.
1839	The Boston Morning Post printed “O.K.” as a jokey abbreviation of “oll korrect,” a slang misspelling of “all correct.” Politicians soon made it popular.
1919	Benito Mussolini founded the Fasci di Combattimento, the nationalist group that grew into Italy’s Fascist Party.
1933	Germany’s Reichstag passed the Enabling Act, letting Hitler’s government make laws without parliament. Communist and many Social Democratic deputies had been kept from the vote.
1983	President Ronald Reagan proposed a space-based shield against nuclear missiles. Critics quickly dubbed the Strategic Defense Initiative “Star Wars.”
1994	Luis Donaldo Colosio, the ruling PRI’s favorite to become Mexico’s next president, was shot dead at a campaign rally in Tijuana.
1998	Titanic won 11 Academy Awards, including Best Picture, tying the record set by Ben-Hur.
2010	President Barack Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the broadest U.S. health care overhaul since Medicare.
2011	Elizabeth Taylor, two-time Oscar winner and AIDS fundraiser, died in Los Angeles at 79.

Born on March 23

1882: Emmy Noether, German mathematician whose theorem ties symmetry in physics to conservation laws.
1910: Akira Kurosawa, Japanese film director of Rashomon and Seven Samurai.
1929: Roger Bannister, English runner who ran the first mile in under four minutes.