TODAY IN HISTORY
Today is Sunday, March 6.
TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT
On March 7, 1876, Alexander Graham Bell received a U.S. patent for his telephone.
ON THIS DATE
In 1793, during the French Revolutionary Wars, France declared war on Spain.
In 1850, in a 3-hour speech to the U.S. Senate, Daniel Webster of Massachusetts endorsed the Compromise of 1850 as a means of preserving the Union.
In 1916, Bavarian Motor Works (BMW) had its beginnings in Munich, Germany, as an airplane engine manufacturer.
In 1926, the first successful trans-Atlantic radiotelephone 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 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.”
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’d 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.)
Ten years ago: The Bush administration drew a hard line on Iran, warning of “meaningful consequences” if the Islamic government did not back away from an international confrontation over its disputed nuclear program. Nobel Peace laureate OscarArias was declared Costa Rica’s president-elect. Photographer and movie director Gordon Parks died in NewYork at age 93.
Five years ago: Reversing course, President Barack Obama approved the resumption of military trials at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, ending a two-year ban. Charlie Sheen was fired from the sitcom “Two and a Half Men” by Warner Bros. Television following repeated misbehavior and weeks of the actor’s angry, often manic media campaign against his studio bosses.
One year ago: President Barack Obama joined tens of thousands of people in Selma, Alabama, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the “Bloody Sunday” march of 1965, saying that America’s racial history “still casts its long shadow upon us.”
TODAY’S THOUGHT
“In a democracy, dissent is an act of faith. Like medicine, the test of its value is not in its taste, but in its effects.” — J. William Fulbright, U.S. senator (1905-95)