This Day in History: Alexander Graham Bell receives a patent to invent the telephone

The following are some of the major events to have occurred on March 7:

1876 – Alexander Graham Bell receives a patent to invent the telephone.

1936 – Germany violated the Treaty of Versailles and the Locarno Pact by re-occupying the Rhineland demilitarised zone.

1945 – The U.S. 9th Armoured Division captured the key bridge over the Rhine at Remagen in Germany.

1989 – Iran broke off diplomatic relations with Britain over Salman Rushdie’s novel “The Satanic Verses”.

1998 – A military appeal court sentenced former SS captain Erich Priebke to life imprisonment for his role in Italy’s worst World War Two atrocity, the massacre at the Ardeatine Caves.

2004 – The Rev. Canon V. Gene Robinson became the ninth bishop of New Hampshire, four months after his installation as the first openly gay bishop in the U.S. Episcopal Church.

2005 – Homemaking maven Martha Stewart returns to work at Martha Stewart Omnimedia HQ after a five-month federal jail sentence.

2006 – Gordon Parks, the pioneering black photographer and filmmaker who explored the African-American experience in his work, including landmark movies “The Learning Tree” and “Shaft,” died aged 93.

2007 – Northern Ireland Assembly elections.

2010 – Iraqis vote in historic parliamentary elections.

2016 – Maria Sharapova announces she failed Australian Open drug test.

(Reuters)