Albert Kesselring (1885–1960) was a Luftwaffe Generalfeldmarschall during World War II. In a military career that spanned both World Wars, Kesselring became one of Nazi Germany's most skillful commanders, being one of 27 soldiers awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves, Swords and Diamonds. Kesselring joined the German Army as an officer cadet in 1904, and served in the artillery branch. During World War I, he served on both the Western and Eastern fronts and was posted to the General Staff, despite not having attended the War Academy. During World War II he commanded air forces in the invasions of Poland and France, the Battle of Britain, and Operation Barbarossa. As Commander-in-Chief South, he was overall German commander in the Mediterranean theatre, which included the operations in North Africa. Kesselring conducted a stubborn defensive campaign against the Allied forces in Italy until he was injured in an accident in October 1944. He won the respect of his Allied opponents for his military accomplishments, but his record was marred by massacres committed by troops under his command in Italy. After the war, Kesselring was tried for war crimes and sentenced to death. The sentence was subsequently commuted to life imprisonment. (more...)

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• A series of bomb attacks kills at least 72 people in Lahore, Pakistan.
• The Opening Ceremony (pictured) of the 2010 Winter Paralympics is held in Vancouver, Canada.
• Mykola Azarov is appointed Prime Minister of Ukraine, following the resignation of Yulia Tymoshenko.
• Carlos Slim becomes the first non-American to top Forbes’ list of billionaires since 1994.
• Muhammad Sayyid Tantawy, Grand Imam of al-Azhar Mosque in Cairo, dies at the age of 81 during a visit to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
• An earthquake kills 41 people and injures at least 74 others in Elâzığ Province, Turkey.
• The Hurt Locker wins six Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director for Kathryn Bigelow, the first woman to win that award.
• Inter-religious attacks result in hundreds of deaths near Jos, Nigeria.
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March 14: Laetare Sunday and Mothering Sunday (Western Christianity, 2010); New Year's Day in the Sikh Nanakshahi calendar; White Day in Japan; Pi Day

• 1794 – American inventor Eli Whitney patented the cotton gin (pictured), the first ever machine that quickly and easily separated cotton fibers from their seedpods.
• 1915 – World War I: British forces cornered and sank the SMS Dresden, the last remnant of the German East Asia Squadron, near the Chilean island of Más a Tierra.
• 1937 – Pope Pius XI officially issued the encyclical Mit brennender Sorge, condemning antisemitism, criticizing Nazism, listing breaches of an agreement signed with the Roman Catholic Church.
• 1945 – The British Royal Air Force first used the Grand Slam, a 22,000 lb (9.98 t) earth quake bomb, on a strategic railroad viaduct in Bielefeld, Germany.
• 1991 – The "Birmingham Six", wrongly convicted of the 1974 Birmingham pub bombings in Birmingham, England, were released after sixteen years in prison.
• 1994 – Version 1.0.0 of the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel, was released, becoming one of the most prominent examples of open source software.

More anniversaries: March 13 – March 14 – March 15