TODAY in HISTORY

Today is Saturday, March 12, the 71st day of 2017. There are 294 days left in the year.

1868 Henry O’Farrell attempts to assassinate Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh. 1868 Basutoland, today called Lesotho, is annexed by the United Kingdom.

1881 Andrew Watson makes his Scotland debut as the world’s first black football player captain. 1894 Coca-Cola is bottled and sold for the first time in Vicksburg, Mississippi, by local soda fountain operator Joseph Biedenharn. 1913 Canberra Day: The future capital of Australia is officially named Canberra. Melbourne remains temporary capital until 1927 while the new capital is still under construction. 1918 Moscow becomes the capital of Russia again after Saint Petersburg held this status for 215 years. 1922 Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan form the Transcaucasian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic. 1928 In California, the St. Francis Dam fails; the resulting floods kill over 600 people.

1930 Mahatma Gandhi leads a 200-mile march, known as the Salt March, to the sea in defiance of British opposition, to protest the British monopoly on salt. 1933 Great Depression: Franklin D. Roosevelt addresses the nation for the first time as President of the US. This is also the first of his “fireside chats”. 1934 Konstantin Päts and General Johan Laidoner stage a coup in Estonia, and ban all political parties. 1938 Anschluss: German troops occupy and absorb Austria. 1947 The Truman Doctrine is proclaimed to help stem the spread of Communism. 1950 The Llandow air disaster occurs near Sigingstone, Wales, in which 80 people die when their aircraft crashes, making it the world’s deadliest air disaster at the time. 1967 Suharto takes power from Sukarno when the MPRS inaugurates him as acting President of Indonesia. 1968 Mauritius achieves independence from the United Kingdom.

1971 The March 12 memorandum is sent to the Suleyman Demirel government of Turkey and the government resigns. 1993 Several bombs explode in Mumbai, India, killing about 300 and injuring hundreds more. 1993 Janet Reno is sworn in as the United States' first female attorney general. 1994 The Church of England ordains its first female priests. 2003 Zoran Ðindic, Prime Minister of Serbia, is assassinated in Belgrade. 2004 President of South Korea Roh Moo-hyun is impeached by its National Assembly: The first such impeachment in the nation’s history.