March 9, 1451 – Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci is born in Florence, Italy. He explored South America and the Amazon River. Believing Vespucci discovered a new continent, a German mapmaker makes the first notation of the land as “America”.
March 11, 1952 – English author, screenwriter, and humorist Douglas Adams is born in Cambridge. His work “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” was originally broadcast as a radio comedy over the BBC in 1978 and was later adapted into novels, comic books, a television show, video game, stage shows, and a 2005 feature film.
March 14, 1879 – Albert Einstein is born in Ulm, Germany. His theory of relativity led to new ways of thinking about time, space, matter, and energy. He won the Nobel Prize for physics in 1921.
March 15, 1767 – The seventh U.S. President, Andrew Jackson, is born in a log cabin in Waxhaw, South Carolina. He was a hero from the War of 1812 and in politics he helped form the new Democratic Party.