probe is launched from the United States. March March 2 In Toulouse, France the first Concorde test flight is conducted. Soviet and Chinese forces clash at a border outpost on the Ussuri River. March 3 Apollo program: NASA launches Apollo 9 (James McDivitt, Rusty Schweickart, David Scott) to test the lunar module. In a Los Angeles court, Sirhan Sirhan admits that he killed presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy. March 13 – Apollo program: Apollo 9 returns safely to Earth after testing the Lunar Module. March 16 – Viasa Flight 742 crashes into a neighborhood in Maracaibo, Venezuela, shortly after taking off for Miami; all 84 people on board the DC-9 jet are killed along with 71 people on the ground. March 17 Golda Meir becomes the first female prime minister of Israel. The Longhope life-boat is lost after answering a mayday call during severe storms in the Pentland Firth between Orkney and the northern tip of Scotland; the entire crew of 8 die. March 18 – An annular solar eclipse is visible in the Indian and Pacific Oceans, and is the 49th solar eclipse of Solar Saros 129. March 20 One hundred of the 105 passengers and crew on a United Arab Airlines flight, most of them Muslim pilgrims returning to Aswan from Mecca, are killed when the Ilyushin-18 turboprop crashes during a sandstorm. John Lennon and Yoko Ono are married at Gibraltar, and proceed to their honeymoon "Bed-In" for peace in Amsterdam. March 22 UCLA wins its third consecutive NCAA basketball championship by defeating Purdue University, 92 to 72. The landmark art exhibition When Attitudes become Form, curated by Harald Szeemann, opens at the Kunsthalle Bern in Bern, Switzerland. March 28 – Pope Paul VI increases the number of Roman Catholic cardinals by one-third, from 101 to 134. March 29 – The Eurovision Song Contest 1969 is held in Madrid, and results in four co-winners, with 18 votes each, from Spain, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and France. March 30 – The body of former United States General and President Dwight D. Eisenhower is brought by caisson to the United States Capitol to lie in state in the Capitol Rotunda; Eisenhower had died two days earlier, after a long illness, in the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Washington, D.C. March 31 – The Barroterán coal mine disaster kills 153 coal miners in Mexico. April April 4 – Dr. Denton