TODAY IN HISTORY
TODAY IS THURSDAY, MARCH 23, the 82nd day of 2023. There are 283 days left in the year.
TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT IN HISTORY:
On this date in 1919, Benito Mussolini founded his Fascist political movement in Milan, Italy. In 1775, Patrick Henry delivered an address to the Virginia Provincial Convention in which he is said to have declared, “Give me liberty, or give me death!” In 1806, explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, having reached the Pacific coast, began their journey back east. In 1933, the German Reichstag adopted the Enabling Act, which effectively granted Adolf Hitler dictatorial powers. In 1942, the first Japanese Americans evacuated by the U.S. Army during World War II arrived at the internment camp in Manzanar, California. In 1965, America’s first two-person space mission took place as Gemini 3 blasted off with astronauts Virgil I. “Gus” Grissom and John W. Young aboard for a nearly 5-hour flight. In 1994, Aeroflot Flight 593, an Airbus A310, crashed in Siberia with the loss of all 75 people on board; it turned out that a pilot’s teenage son who was allowed to sit at the controls had accidentally disengaged the autopilot, causing loss of control. In 2003, during the Iraq War, a U.S. Army maintenance convoy was ambushed in Nasiriyah; 11 soldiers were killed, including Pfc. Lori Ann Piestewa; six were captured, including Pfc. Jessica Lynch, who was rescued April 1, 2003. In 2010, claiming a historic triumph, President Barack Obama signed the Affordable Care Act, a $938 billion health care overhaul. In 2020, President Donald Trump said he wanted to reopen the country for business in weeks, not months; he asserted that continued closures could result in more deaths than the coronavirus itself. TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS: International Motorsports Hall-of-Famer Craig Breedlove is 86. Former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is 71. Singer Chaka Khan is 70. Actor Amanda Plummer is 66. Actor Catherine Keener is 64. Actor Hope Davis is 59. Actor Randall Park is 49. Actors Michelle Monaghan and Keri Russell are 47. NBA point guard Kyrie Irving is 31.