Today’s highlight

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.

1916

Bavarian Motor Works (BMW) had its beginnings in Munich, Germany, as an airplane engine manufacturer.

1926

The first successful trans-Atlantic radio-telephone conversations took place between New York and London.

1936

Adolf Hitler ordered his troops to march into the Rhineland, thereby breaking the Treaty of Versailles and the Locarno Pact.

1945

During World War II, U.S. forces crossed the Rhine at Remagen, Germany, using the damaged but still usable Ludendorff Bridge.

1955

The first TV production of the musical “Peter Pan” starring Mary Martin aired on NBC.

1965

A march by civil rights demonstrators was violently broken up at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, by state troopers and a sheriff’s posse in what came to be known as “Bloody Sunday.”

1967

The musical “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown,” based on the “Peanuts” comic strips by Charles M. Schulz with Gary Burghoff in the title role, opened in New York’s Greenwich Village, beginning an offBroadway run of 1,597 performances.

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.