Thomas Paine

The Age of Reason is a work by English and American political activist Thomas Paine (pictured), arguing for the philosophical position of deism. Following in the tradition of eighteenth-century British deism, it challenges institutionalized religion and the legitimacy of the Bible. It was published in three parts in 1794, 1795, and 1807, and became a best-seller in the United States, where it caused a short-lived deistic revival. Fearing its revolutionary ideas, the British government prosecuted printers and book-sellers who tried to publish and distribute it. The Age of Reason highlights what Paine saw as corruption among Christian churches and criticizes their efforts to acquire political power. Paine advocates reason over revelation, leading him to reject miracles and to view the Bible as "an ordinary piece of literature rather than as a divinely inspired text". He promotes natural religion and argues for the existence of a creator-God. Most of Paine's arguments had long been available to educated people, but his engaging, irreverent and inexpensive pamphlets made deism appealing and accessible to a mass audience. ( Full article...)

Near-Earth asteroid 4179 Toutatis

• ... that the search for near-Earth asteroids large enough to cause a global catastrophe (example pictured) is almost complete, and efforts now focus on smaller asteroids?
• ... that Archibald Cary Smith designed the first American iron yacht?
• ... that the land snail genus Vatusila was named after a Fijian tribe known for killing and eating the missionary Thomas Baker in 1867?
• ... that philologist Caroline Brady wrote about the words used for weapons and warriors in the Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf?
• ... that Kennington tube station, opened in 1890, is a listed building and the only one from the world's first underground electric railway to retain its original appearance?
• ... that Victorian physician and discoverer of arsenic in beer, Ernest Reynolds, did not believe in over-reliance on medical technology?
• ... that the Thai Buddhist temple Wat Paknam Bhasicharoen organizes blood donations every three months?
• ... that Henry Liebman hates "Henry Liebman's Noodle Soup"?

Vladimir Putin

• Vladimir Putin (pictured) is re-elected President of Russia.
• Brazilian politician and human rights activist Marielle Franco is killed in a shooting in Rio de Janeiro.
• In response to the poisoning of Sergei Skripal with a nerve agent, the United Kingdom expels 23 Russian diplomats.
• British physicist and cosmologist Stephen Hawking dies at the age of 76.

March 23: Pakistan Day ( 1956)

Mir space station

• 1848 – Scottish settlers on the John Wickliffe, captained by William Cargill, arrived at what is now Port Chalmers in the Otago Region of New Zealand.
• 1888 – Led by William McGregor, ten football clubs met in London for the purpose of founding the English Football League, the oldest league competition in world football.
• 1908 – American diplomat Durham Stevens, an employee of Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, was assassinated in San Francisco by two Korean American immigrants unhappy with his recent support of the increasing Japanese presence in Korea.
• 1994 – Aeroflot Flight 593 crashed into a hillside in Kemerovo Oblast, Russia, after the pilot's 16-year-old son, while seated at the controls, had unknowingly disabled the autopilot, killing all 75 people on board.
• 2001 – The Russian Federal Space Agency deorbited the 15-year-old space station Mir (pictured), causing it to reenter the Earth's atmosphere and break up over the Pacific Ocean.

Pierre-Simon Laplace (b. 1749) · Said Nursî (d. 1960) · Kangana Ranaut (b. 1986)