March 8

In literary history

• 1759The French Royal Council revoked the publication licence for Diderot's Encyclopédie, declaring its twenty-eight volumes a threat to morality and the state. The ban was poorly enforced; the remaining volumes were printed in secret by 1765, and the Enlightenment continued regardless.
• 1978Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy made its first broadcast on BBC Radio 4. Earth is demolished in the opening minutes to make way for a hyperspace bypass, and the universe, the programme proposed, had no particular interest in your objections.

Writers born on March 8

• Kenneth Grahame (1859),
• Jeffrey Eugenides (1960)

The Daily Canon for March 8

A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf (1929).