TODAY IN HISTORY

TODAY IS WEDNESDAY, MARCH 21, 2018 On this day:

1788 - Almost the entire city of New Orleans, LA, was destroyed by fire. 856 buildings were destroyed.

1857 - An earthquake hit Tokyo killing about 107,000.

1895 - South Australia’s Suffrage Act gives women the vote when it is proclaimed after being passed by Queen Victoria. 1908 - A passenger was carried in a plane for the first time by Henri Farman of France. 1913 - Over 360 are killed and 20,000 homes destroyed in the Great Dayton Flood in Dayton, Ohio, US.

1918 - World War I: the Germans launched the Somme Offensive.

1928 - Charles Lindbergh is presented with the Medal of Honor for the first solo trans-Atlantic flight.

1934 - A fire destroyed Hakodate, Japan, killing about 1500.

1935 Shah of Iran Reza Shah Pahlavi formally asks the international community to call Persia by its native name, Iran. 1941 - World War II: The last Italian post in East Libya, North Africa, fell to the Allies. 1945 - World War II: Allied bombers began four days of raids over Germany.

1947 - Two men die in the first documented case of death by Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. 1960 - Apartheid: Sharpeville massacre, South Africa: Police open fire on a group of unarmed black South African demonstrators, killing 69 and wounding 180.

1963 - Alcatraz Island, the federal penitentiary in San Francisco Bay, California, closed. 1965 - Dr Martin Luther King, Jr. leads 3200 people on the start of the third and finally successful civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama.

1990 - Namibia becomes independent after 75 years of South African rule.

2002 - In Paris, an 1825 photographic print by French inventor Joseph Nicephore Niepce was sold for $443,220. The print, of a man leading a horse, was the earliest recorded image taken by photographic means.

2006 - The social media site Twitter is founded.

2009 - Four police officers are shot and killed and a fifth is wounded in two shootings in Oakland, California.