On This Day

Today in History, March 6th

On March 6, 1836, the Alamo fell to Santa Anna after a 13-day siege. Plus the Dred Scott decision and Ghana's independence.

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

Published March 6, 2026 · Last updated November 10, 2026

March 6 is best known for the fall of the Alamo in 1836, when Mexican troops overran the Texan defenders after a 13-day siege. The date also saw the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision in 1857 and Ghana’s independence in 1957.

The big story: The Alamo Falls (1836)

The Alamo was an old Spanish mission in San Antonio, never built to be a fortress, and about 200 Texans were holding it when General Antonio López de Santa Anna arrived with well over 1,000 Mexican soldiers on February 23, 1836. The defenders were a mixed crew of farmers, frontiersmen and even doctors, under joint command of William Travis and James Bowie. Former Tennessee congressman Davy Crockett was there too. For nearly two weeks the two sides traded fire. Then, before dawn on March 6, Mexican troops stormed the walls and broke through on the north side. The fighting lasted roughly 90 minutes, some of it hand to hand. Nearly every defender died, including Travis, Bowie and Crockett, though accounts disagree on how Crockett met his end. A handful of survivors, mostly women and children, were spared. Several hundred Mexican soldiers were killed as well. “Remember the Alamo!” became the battle cry of Sam Houston’s army, which won Texas its independence at San Jacinto on April 21.

More events on March 6

Year	What happened
1820	President James Monroe signed the Missouri Compromise, admitting Missouri as a slave state while banning slavery in the rest of the Louisiana Purchase north of 36°30′.
1834	Toronto was incorporated as a city.
1853	Giuseppe Verdi’s opera La traviata premiered at La Fenice in Venice.
1857	In Dred Scott v. Sandford, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney ruled that Scott was not free, that Black Americans could not be citizens, and that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional.
1899	The German company Bayer registered the name Aspirin for its new pain reliever.
1902	Madrid Foot Ball Club, later known as Real Madrid, was founded.
1951	The espionage trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, accused of passing atomic secrets to the Soviet Union, began in New York.
1957	Ghana became independent from Britain under Prime Minister Kwame Nkrumah, one of the first sub-Saharan African colonies to win its freedom.
1964	Boxing champion Cassius Clay took the name Muhammad Ali, given to him by Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad.
1987	The British car ferry Herald of Free Enterprise capsized off Zeebrugge, Belgium, killing 188 people. It had left port with its bow doors open.
2001	Under a court order, the file-sharing service Napster began blocking copyrighted songs, the start of its decline.
2016	Former first lady Nancy Reagan died in Los Angeles.

Born on March 6

1475: Michelangelo, Renaissance sculptor, painter and architect of the Sistine Chapel ceiling and the statue of David.
1927: Gabriel García Márquez, Colombian Nobel laureate who wrote One Hundred Years of Solitude.
1937: Valentina Tereshkova, Soviet cosmonaut and the first woman in space.