On this day

March 12, 1947

Revisit the news, notable people, and historical moments connected to this date.

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Headlines from March 12, 1947

Notable Births

Peter Harry Carstensen

1947Peter Harry Carstensen, German educator and politician[†]

Peter Harry Carstensen is a German politician of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). From 2005 to 2012 he was Minister President of the state of Schleswig-Holstein, serving as President of the Bundesrat in 2005/06.

Jan-Erik Enestam

1947Jan-Erik Enestam, Finland-Swedish politician[†]

Jan-Erik Enestam is a Finnish politician from the Swedish People's Party. He served as Minister of Defence from 1999 to 2003 under Prime Minister Paavo Lipponen and Minister of the Environment under Prime Ministers Anneli Jäätteenmäki and Matti Vanhanen from 2003 to 2006.

David Rigert

1947David Rigert, Soviet Olympic weightlifter[†]

David Adamovich Rigert is a Russian retired weightlifter and weightlifting coach of Austrian ancestry. During his career, he competed for the Soviet Union and set 65 ratified world records, and won an Olympic gold medal in 1976 and six world titles.

Mitt Romney

1947Mitt Romney, American businessman and politician, 70th Governor of Massachusetts[†]

Willard Mitt Romney is an American businessman and retired politician who served as a United States senator from Utah from 2019 to 2025 and as the 70th governor of Massachusetts from 2003 to 2007. He was the Republican Party's nominee in the 2012 U.S. presidential election.

Historical Events

Cold War

1947Cold War: The Truman Doctrine is proclaimed to help stem the spread of Communism.[†]

The Cold War was a period of global geopolitical rivalry between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the capitalist Western Bloc and communist Eastern Bloc, which began in the aftermath of the Second World War and ended with the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. The term cold war is used because there was no direct fighting between the two superpowers, though each supported opposing sides in regional conflicts known as proxy wars. In addition to the struggle for ideological and economic influence and an arms race in both conventional and nuclear weapons, the Cold War was expressed through technological rivalries such as the Space Race, espionage, propaganda campaigns, embargoes, and sports diplomacy.