TODAY in HISTORY
Today is Tuesday, March 20, the 79th day of 2018. There are 286 days left in the year.
1600 The Linköping Bloodbath takes place on Maundy Thursday in Linköping, Sweden. 1602 The Dutch East India Company is established. 1616 Sir Walter Raleigh is freed from the Tower of London after 13 years of imprisonment.
1760 The Great Boston Fire of 1760 destroys 349 buildings. 1852 Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin is published. 1854 The Republican Party of the United States is organized in Ripon, Wisconsin. 1861 An earthquake destroys Mendoza, Argentina.
1913 Sung Chiao- jen, a founder of the Chinese Nationalist Party, is wounded in an assassination attempt and dies 2 days later. 1915 Albert Einstein publishes his general theory of relativity. The Arts Club of Chicago hosts the opening of Pablo Picasso’s first United States showing, entitled Original Drawings by Pablo Picasso, becoming an early proponent of modern art in the United States. Reichsführer- SS Heinrich Himmler ordered the creation of Dachau concentration camp as Chief of Police of Munich and appointed Theodor Eicke as the camp commandant. With a Musicians Union ban lifted, the first telecasts of classical music in the United States, under Eugene Ormandy and Arturo Toscanini, are given on CBS and NBC.
Tunisia gains independence from France. The precursor of the European Space Agency, ESRO is established per an agreement signed on June 14, 1962.
Libby Riddles becomes the first woman to win the 1,135- mile Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. Canadian paraplegic athlete and humanitarian Rick Hansen begins his circumnavigation of the globe in a wheelchair in the name of spinal cord injury medical research.
The Food and Drug Administration approves the antiAIDS drug, AZT. Ferdinand Marcos’s widow, Imelda Marcos, goes on trial for bribery, embezzlement, and racketeering.
Legoland California, the first Legoland outside of Europe, opens in Carlsbad, California.
At least 52 people are killed and more than 250 injured in a wave of terror attacks across ten cities in Iraq.
Four suspected Taliban members attack the luxurious Kabul Serena Hotel, A Solar eclipse, equinox, and a Supermoon all occur on the same day.