TODAY IN HISTORY
TODAY IS WEDNESDAY, MARCH 7, the 66th day of 2018. There are 299 days left in the year.
TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT IN HISTORY: On this date in 1965, a march by civil rights demonstrators was violently broken up at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., by state troopers and a sheriff’s posse in what came to be known as “Bloody Sunday.” In 1530, Pope Clement VII threatened to excommunicate England’s King Henry VIII if he went through with plans to marry Anne Boleyn, who became Henry’s second wife after Catherine of Aragon. (The pope made good on his excommunication threat in 1533.) In 1793, during the French Revolutionary Wars, France declared war on Spain. In 1850, in a three-hour speech to the U.S. Senate, Daniel Webster of Massachusetts endorsed the Compromise of 1850 as a means of preserving the Union. In 1918, Japanese corporation Panasonic had its beginnings as Konosuke Matsushita founded Matsushita Electric Housewares Manufacturing Works in Osaka. The musical comedy “Oh, Look!” featuring the song “I’m Always Chasing Rainbows” opened on Broadway. In 1926, the first successful transAtlantic radio-telephone conversations took place between New York and London. In 1936, Adolf Hitler ordered his troops to march into the Rhineland, thereby breaking the Treaty of Versailles and the Locarno Pact. In 1945, during World War II, U.S. forces crossed the Rhine at Remagen, Germany, using the damaged but still usable Ludendorff Bridge. In 1955, the first TV production of the musical “Peter Pan” starring Mary Martin aired on NBC. In 1967, the musical “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown,” based on the “Peanuts” comic strips by Charles M. Schulz, opened in New York’s Greenwich Village, beginning an off-Broadway run of 1,597 performances. In 1975, the U.S. Senate revised its filibuster rule, allowing 60 senators to limit debate in most cases, instead of the previously required two-thirds of senators present.
In 1981, anti-government guerrillas in Colombia executed kidnapped American Bible translator Chester Bitterman, whom they accused of being a CIA agent.
In 1994, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled that a parody that pokes fun at an original work can be considered “fair use.” (The ruling concerned a parody of the Roy Orbison song “Oh, Pretty Woman” by the rap group 2 Live Crew.)
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS: TV personality Willard Scott is 84. International Motorsports Hall-of-Famer Janet Guthrie is 80. Actor Daniel J. Travanti is 78. Entertainment executive Michael Eisner is 76. Rock musician Chris White (The Zombies) is 75. Rock singer Peter Wolf and rock musician Matthew Fisher (Procol Harum) are 72. Pro Football Hall-of-Famer Franco Harris is 68. Pro and College Football Hall-of-Famer Lynn Swann and rhythm-and-blues singer-musician Ernie Isley (The Isley Brothers) are 66. Rock musician Kenny Aronoff (BoDeans, John Mellencamp) is 65. Actor Bryan Cranston is 62. Actress Donna Murphy, actor Nick Searcy and golfer Tom Lehman are 59. International Tennis Hall-of-Famer Ivan Lendl is 58. Actress Mary Beth Evans is 57. Singeractress Taylor Dayne is 56. Actor Bill Brochtrup and author E.L. James are 55. Author Bret Easton Ellis, opera singer Denyce Graves and comedian Wanda Sykes are 54. Actor Jonathan Del Arco is 52. Rock musician Randy Guss (Toad the Wet Sprocket) is 51. Actress Rachel Weisz is 48. Actor Peter Sarsgaard is 47. Actor Jay Duplass and classical singer Sebastien Izambard (Il Divo) are 45. Rock singer Hugo Ferreira (Tantric), actress Jenna Fischer and actor Tobias Menzies are 44. Actresses Sarayu Rao and Audrey Marie Anderson, and actor TJ Thyne are 43. Bluegrass singermusician Frank Solivan is 41. Actress Laura Prepon is 38. Actress Bel Powley is 26. Actress Giselle Eisenberg (TV: “Life in Pieces”) is 11.