On This Day

Today in History, March 9th

On March 9, 1862, the USS Monitor and CSS Virginia fought the first battle of ironclads. Plus the Amistad ruling and Barbie's debut.

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

Published March 9, 2026 · Last updated November 10, 2026

March 9 is best known for the 1862 clash at Hampton Roads, Virginia, where the USS Monitor and CSS Virginia fought the first battle between ironclad warships. The date also brought the Supreme Court’s Amistad ruling in 1841 and the debut of the Barbie doll in 1959.

The big story: The Monitor Meets the Virginia (1862)

The day before, the Union navy had a very bad afternoon. The Confederates had rebuilt the burned frigate Merrimack into an armored ram called the CSS Virginia, and on March 8 it steamed into Hampton Roads, sank two wooden Union warships and drove a third aground. Cannonballs just bounced off. That night a strange little ship arrived: the USS Monitor, a low iron raft with a single rotating gun turret, often described as a cheese box on a raft. On the morning of March 9 the two ironclads went at each other for about four hours, often at close range. Neither could do the other much harm, and in the early afternoon the Virginia pulled back toward Norfolk. Tactically it was a draw. But the Union fleet was safe, and every navy in the world got the message at once: wooden warships were finished, and the age of iron and steam had arrived.

More events on March 9

Year	What happened
1500	Pedro Álvares Cabral sailed from Lisbon with 13 ships bound for India. Swinging wide into the Atlantic, his fleet sighted Brazil that April.
1796	Napoleon Bonaparte married Joséphine de Beauharnais in a civil ceremony in Paris.
1831	France founded the French Foreign Legion, a unit for foreign volunteers in an army that otherwise barred them.
1841	The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Africans who had seized the slave ship Amistad were free. Former president John Quincy Adams argued their case.
1916	Pancho Villa’s raiders attacked Columbus, New Mexico. President Wilson answered by sending General John Pershing into Mexico after him.
1945	U.S. B-29 bombers began an overnight firebombing raid on Tokyo that burned nearly 16 square miles and killed at least 80,000 people.
1954	Edward R. Murrow’s CBS program See It Now aired its report on Senator Joseph McCarthy, built largely from McCarthy’s own words.
1959	Mattel showed the Barbie doll, created by co-founder Ruth Handler, for the first time at the American Toy Fair in New York.
2011	Space shuttle Discovery landed in Florida for the last time, ending its 39th and final mission.
2020	Italy’s prime minister announced that COVID-19 lockdown rules would cover the entire country. They took effect the next day.

Born on March 9

1814: Taras Shevchenko, Ukraine’s leading 19th-century poet (February 25, Old Style).
1930: Ornette Coleman, saxophonist and composer who pioneered free jazz.
1934: Yuri Gagarin, Soviet cosmonaut and the first human in space.
1943: Bobby Fischer, chess prodigy and 1972 world champion.