They're usually carried by women in Westerns or by sneaky assassins.  

29 February 1504 - The 1504 lunar eclipse.

Not an unusual event in itself, but it was used to his advantage by Christopher Columbus whilst stranded in Jamaica.

On his fourth voyage to the West Indies his two ships with 230 men were stranded in Jamaica in June 1503 after storm damage. 24 men rowed to the colony on Hispaniola, but the Governor failed to send out a rescue party for many months by which time Columbus and his men faced starvation and hostile natives. 

Columbus however had an almanac in which a lunar eclipse was predicted for 29 February, he used this knowledge to warn the natives that if they didn't provide supplies to his men the gods would be angry and block out the moon. When his prediction came true the terrified natives loaded him with provisions, enough to see them through to rescue which came in June exactly a year after Columbus had arrived in Jamaica.   

Mark Twain used a version of the story in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.

1 March 1966 - The first landing of a spacecraft on another planet.

A crash rather than a landing. The Russians launched their Venera 3 probe in November 1965 intending it to land safely on Venus and send back data. However it's initial trajectory was off and a correction sent it into a collision course with the planet rather than a controlled landing. It smashed into the surface and was destroyed on 1 March having lost radio contact two weeks before. 

2 March 1939 - Howard Carter died.

British archaeologist financed by the Earl of Carnarvon to locate and excavate Tutankhamen's tomb.

Carter was first commissioned by Lord Carnarvon as early as 1907 beginning work in the Valley of the Kings in 1914. By 1922 little had been discovered when, in the last season Carnarvon was prepared to finance, the long lost tomb of Tutankhamen was discovered. Carter was the first too see "wonderful things" inside. 

3 March 1765 - William Stukeley died.

The father of modern archaeology. In a varied career, first as a physician then ordained into the Church of England, his main interest however was history and the early science of archaeology. He supervised fieldwork rather than excavations at Stonehenge and Avebury, England's two greatest prehistoric monuments and although his conclusions have since been shown to be incorrect he laid the foundations for modern archaeology. 

He published his findings on both sites in 1740 and 1743.

Luckily there are a lot of archaeology programmes on TV here, always something to be dug up across Europe. One of the best is hosted by the rather lovely Alice Roberts.

4 March 1890 - The Forth Bridge opened.

One of the marvels of Victorian engineering, at the time the largest bridge in the world.

Spanning the Firth of Forth and connecting Edinburgh with Fife and the north of Scotland the bridge dramatically reduced the travelling time and distance by train. 

It took eight years to build and is over 8000 feet in length.    

I can find Alice Roberts' videos on YouTube.  They are probably old episodes, but so is the stuff she digs up, so it's all good.

5 March 1936 - First flight of the Supermarine Spitfire.

Designed by Staffordshire born aeronautical engineer Reginald Mitchell at the Supermarine Aviation Works in Southampton to replace the RAFs aged and obsolete singe-seater fighter biplanes.

The Spitfire became the most famous fighter of the war in Europe with over 20,350 constructed, with variants, into the late 1940s.