Dashed left edge = started before March 2023 ·
Dashed right edge = ongoing beyond March 2023
Events in March 2023 16
1933 – 2023Wayne ShorterJazz Saxophonist & ComposerAmerican jazz saxophonist, composer and bandleader, widely regarded as one of the most important figures in the history of modern jazz. A 12-time Grammy Award winner, he was a foundational member of Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, Miles Davis's Second Great Quintet, and co-founder of the fusion band Weather Report. His compositions, including Footprints, Speak No Evil and Nefertiti, became enduring jazz standards.
1935 – 2023Chaim Topol (1935-2023)Died 8 March 2023, aged 87Israeli actor who played Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof on stage and screen for four decades.
1935 – 2023Kenzaburo Oe (1935-2023)Died 3 March 2023, aged 88Japanese novelist awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1994, whose work confronted the war, Hiroshima and disability.
1947 – 2023Dick Fosbury (1947-2023)Died 12 March 2023, aged 76American high jumper who won gold in 1968 with a backwards technique that every serious jumper has used since.
1951 – 2023Gary Rossington (1951-2023)Died 5 March 2023, aged 71American guitarist and the last surviving original member of Lynyrd Skynyrd.
1952 – 2023Ryuichi Sakamoto (1952-2023)Died 28 March 2023, aged 71Japanese composer and member of Yellow Magic Orchestra who won an Oscar for The Last Emperor and shaped electronic music worldwide.
2023Iditarod 2023Winner: Ryan Redington — 8 days 22hRyan Redington, grandson of race founder Joe Redington Sr. and Inupiaq, won the 2023 Iditarod — a deeply symbolic victory for the founding family.
2023Meeting with Xi Jinping at 100At the age of 100, travelled to Beijing and met with Chinese President Xi Jinping, demonstrating his continued influence in US-China relations half a century after his original opening.
2023Wayne Shorter dies in Los AngelesDied in Los Angeles at the age of 89. His final Grammy, for Best Improvised Jazz Solo for Endangered Species, had been awarded just weeks earlier.
2023Silicon Valley Bank collapsesThe second-largest bank failure in US historySilicon Valley Bank was closed by regulators on 10 March 2023 after a run triggered by losses on its bond portfolio, the second-largest bank failure in United States history and the start of a wider banking scare.
2023Everything Everywhere All at Once wins seven OscarsBest picture and three acting awardsEverything Everywhere All at Once won seven Academy Awards on 12 March 2023 including best picture, best director, best actress for Michelle Yeoh and supporting awards for Ke Huy Quan and Jamie Lee Curtis.
2023GPT-4 releasedMost advanced AI model yetOpenAI released GPT-4 on March 14, 2023, a large multimodal model able to process both text and images. It passed the bar exam in the top 10% of human test-takers.
2023Su-27 downs a US MQ-9 ReaperBlack SeaA Russian Su-27 dumps fuel on and strikes a US MQ-9 Reaper drone over the Black Sea, forcing it down.
2023International Criminal Court issues an arrest warrant for Vladimir PutinCharges over the deportation of Ukrainian childrenThe International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin on 17 March 2023 over the unlawful deportation of children from occupied Ukraine.
2023UBS & Credit Suisse MergerFinancial StabilityThe emergency takeover of Credit Suisse by UBS to prevent a global banking crisis.
2023Donald Trump becomes the first former US president criminally chargedThirty-four felony counts in New YorkDonald Trump was indicted in New York on 30 March 2023 over hush-money payments, the first criminal charge against a former United States president. Three further indictments followed during the year.