Today in History

March 23

1801 - Russia’s Czar Paul I is assassinated and is succeeded by Alexander I.

1808 - Napoleon’s brother Joseph takes the throne of Spain.

1857 - The world’s first passenger elevator, manufactured by Elisha Otis, goes into service in New York City.

1868 - The University of California is established in Berkeley.

1919 - Benito Mussolini founds the Fascist Party in Italy.

1933 - Germany’s Reichstag grants Adolf Hitler dictatorial powers until April 1937.

1943 - Germany counter-attacks on US lines in Tunisia.

1956 - Pakistan becomes an independent republic within the British Commonwealth.

1976 - The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights comes into effect.

1987 - An IRA car bomb explodes at a British Army base in Rheindahlen, West Germany.

1994 - Mexican presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio is assassinated at an election rally in Tijuana.

1995 - Renato Ruggiero is named the first head of the World Trade Organisation.

1996 - Lee Teng-hui is elected president of the Republic of China. 2001 - The Mir space station returns to Earth, ending its 15-year, 3.5 billion-kilometre odyssey.

2003 - Slovenia votes to support its 2004 induction into the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation.

2005 - Twenty inmates are killed when they attempt to break out of a prison in eastern Cambodia. 2006 - Najah Al Attar is appointed Second Vice-President of Syria, the first woman to hold the post. 2008 - UAE announces plans to set up a nuclear agency.

2009 - A FedEx cargo plane smashes into a runway while attempting to land at Tokyo’s main international airport, killing two. 2010 - US President Barack Obama signs into law a drastic overhaul of the US health-care system.

2011 - Hollywood actress Elizabeth Taylor dies at 79.

2013 - Australian Warren Rodwell is freed after 15 months as a captive of militants in Philippines.

2015 - Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan sign accord over Nile waters. 2003 - In the war-shattered cities of Chechnya and in a neighbouring republic where tens of thousands of refugees are camped, Chechens voted in a constitutional referendum that the Kremlin hopes will foster stability in the republic. Some 540,000 people are eligible to vote, including 38,000 Russian servicemen permanently stationed in Chechnya, said Chechen administration spokesman Edi Isayev. Two polling booths have also been set up in the neighbouring republic of Ingushetia, where tens of thousands of Chechen refugees live, too fearful to return home after nearly a decade of fighting between separatists and Russian forces. The Kremlin and the Moscow appointed Chechen administration have been campaigning tirelessly for the vote.