TODAY in HISTORY
Today is Friday, March 25, the 84th day of 2017. There are 281 days left in the year.
708 Pope Constantine succeeds Pope Sisinnius 88th pope. 1000 Fatimid caliph al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah assassinates the eunuch chief minister Barjawan and assumes control of the government. 1306 Robert the Bruce becomes King of Scots (Scotland). 1555 The city of Valencia is founded in present-day Venezuela. 1576 Jerome Savage takes out a sub-lease to start the Newington Butts Theatre outside London. 1584 Sir Walter Raleigh is granted a patent to colonize Virginia.
1655 Saturn's largest moon, Titan, is discovered by Christiaan Huygens. 1802 The Treaty of Amiens is signed as a "Definitive Treaty of Peace" between France and the UK. 1807 The Slave Trade Act becomes law, abolishing slave trade in British Empire. 1807 The Swansea and Mumbles Railway, then known as the Oystermouth Railway, becomes the first passenger-carrying railway in the world.
1811 Percy Bysshe Shelley is expelled from the University of Oxford for publishing The Necessity of Atheism. 1911 In New York City, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire kills 146 garment workers. 1918 The Belarusian People's Republic is established. 1931 The Scottsboro Boys are arrested in Alabama and charged with rape. 1941 The Kingdom of Yugoslavia joins the Axis powers with the signing of the Tripartite Pact. 1947 An explosion in a coal mine in Centralia, Illinois, US, kills 111. 1948 The first successful tornado forecast predicts that a tornado will strike Tinker Air Force Base, Oklahoma, US. 1949 More than 92,000 kulaks are suddenly deported from the Baltic states to Siberia.
1957 US Customs seizes copies of Allen Ginsberg's poem Howl on obscenity grounds. 1957 The European Economic Community is established with West Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg as the first members. 1965 Civil rights activists led by Martin Luther King Jr. successfully complete their 4-day 50-mile march from Selma to the capitol in Montgomery, Alabama, US. 1969 During their honeymoon, John Lennon and Yoko Ono hold their first Bed-In for Peace at the Amsterdam Hilton Hotel (till March 31). 1995 WikiWikiWeb, the world's first wiki, and part of the Portland Pattern Repository, is made public by Ward Cunningham.