TODAY IN HISTORY
Today is Tuesday, March 21.
TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT
On March 21, 1952, the Moondog Coronation Ball, considered the first rock and roll concert, took place at Cleveland Arena.
ON THIS DATE:
In 1556, Thomas Cranmer, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, was burned at the stake for heresy.
In 1685, composer Johann Sebastian Bach was born in Eisenach, Germany.
In 1804, the French civil code, or the “Code Napoleon” as it was later called, was adopted.
In 1925, Tennessee Gov. Austin Peay signed the Butler Act, which prohibited the teaching of the Theory of Evolution in public schools. (Tennessee repealed the law in 1967.)
In 1935, Persia officially changed its name to Iran.
In 1946, the recently created United Nations Security Council set up temporary headquarters at Hunter College in The Bronx, New York. In 1957, President Dwight D. Eisenhower and British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan began a four-day conference in Bermuda.
In 1963, the Alcatraz federal prison island in San Francisco Bay was emptied of its last inmates and closed at the order of Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy.
In 1972, the Supreme Court, in Dunn v. Blumstein, ruled that states may not require at least a year’s residency for voting eligibility.
In 1981, Michael Donald, a black teenager in Mobile, Alabama, was abducted, tortured and killed by members of the Ku Klux Klan. (A lawsuit brought by Donald’s mother, Beulah
Mae Donald, later resulted in a landmark judgment that bankrupted one Klan organization.) In 1997, President Bill Clinton and Russian President Boris Yeltsin wrapped up their summit in Helsinki, Finland, still deadlocked over NATO expansion, but able to agree on slashing nuclear weapons arsenals. In 2006, the social media website Twitter was established with the sending of the first “tweet” by cofounder Jack Dorsey, who wrote: “just setting up my twttr.”
Ten years ago: Former Vice President Al Gore made an emotional return to Congress as he pleaded with House and Senate committees to fight global warming; skeptical Republicans questioned the science behind his climatechange documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth.”
Five years ago: A previously divided U.N. Security Council sent a strong and united message to the Syrian government and opposition to immediately implement proposals by international envoy Kofi Annan to end Syria’s yearlong bloodshed. Meting out unprecedented punishment for a bounty system that targeted key opposing players, the NFL suspended New Orleans Saints head coach Sean Payton without pay for the coming season and indefinitely banned the team’s former defensive coordinator; in addition to other sanctions, Commissioner Roger Goodell fined the Saints $500,000 and took away their second-round draft picks for the current year and the next.