On This Day

Today in History, March 8th

On March 8, 1917, bread strikes in Petrograd began Russia's February Revolution. Plus the Senate's cloture rule and Marines at Da Nang.

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

Published March 8, 2026 · Last updated November 10, 2026

March 8 is best known as the day in 1917 when strikes and bread protests in Petrograd set off Russia’s February Revolution, which ended the rule of the czars within a week. The date also saw the U.S. Senate adopt its first cloture rule in 1917 and the first U.S. Marine combat units come ashore at Da Nang in 1965.

The big story: Russia’s February Revolution Begins (1917)

Why is a March revolution called “February”? Russia still ran on the Julian calendar, so in Petrograd the day was February 23 (Old Style). It was also International Women’s Day. Women workers, fed up with bread lines, cold and a war that was going badly, walked off the job, and men from nearby factories joined them. Roughly 90,000 people were on strike by evening. Over the next few days the walkouts spread across the capital. When soldiers of the Petrograd garrison were ordered to put the crowds down, whole regiments switched sides instead. With the army gone, the old order had nothing left to stand on. On March 15, Nicholas II gave up the throne, and his brother declined to take it. Three centuries of Romanov rule were over. Power passed to a Provisional Government that had to share the stage with the Petrograd Soviet, an uneasy arrangement the Bolsheviks would end that fall.

More events on March 8

Year	What happened
1817	New York brokers adopted a constitution creating the New York Stock & Exchange Board, the formal start of what became the New York Stock Exchange.
1910	Frenchwoman Raymonde de Laroche received license No. 36 from the Aéro-Club de France, becoming the world’s first licensed woman pilot.
1917	Pushed by President Woodrow Wilson, the U.S. Senate adopted its first cloture rule, letting a two-thirds vote cut off a filibuster.
1942	Japanese forces occupied Rangoon, the capital of British Burma, during World War II.
1950	Volkswagen began production of its Type 2 bus, the boxy van later adopted by the 1960s counterculture.
1965	About 3,500 U.S. Marines of the 9th Marine Expeditionary Brigade landed at Da Nang, South Vietnam, to guard the air base there.
1966	A bomb went off at 1:32 a.m. and wrecked Nelson’s Pillar, the monument to Admiral Horatio Nelson that had stood on Dublin’s O’Connell Street since 1809.
1971	Joe Frazier beat Muhammad Ali by unanimous decision at Madison Square Garden in the “Fight of the Century,” handing Ali his first professional loss.
1983	Speaking to the National Association of Evangelicals in Orlando, Florida, President Ronald Reagan called the Soviet Union an “evil empire.”
2004	Iraq’s Governing Council signed the Transitional Administrative Law, an interim charter that included a bill of rights.
2014	Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 vanished on its way from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 people aboard.

Born on March 8

1714: Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, composer and son of J.S. Bach, whose keyboard work shaped Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven.
1841: Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., U.S. Supreme Court justice known as “The Great Dissenter.”
1879: Otto Hahn, German chemist who won the 1944 Nobel Prize for the discovery of nuclear fission.
1922: Cyd Charisse, dancer and actress who starred in the movie musicals of the 1950s.