TODAY IN HISTORY

Today is Tuesday, March 17. This is St. Patrick’s Day.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

On March 17, 1988, Avianca Flight 410, a Boeing 727, crashed after takeoff into a mountain in Colombia, killing all 143 people on board.

ON THIS DATE

In 1762, New York held its first St. Patrick’s Day parade. In 1776, the Revolutionary War Siege of Boston ended as British forces evacuated the city.

In 1912, the Camp Fire Girls organization was incorporated in Washington, D.C., two years to the day after it was founded in Thetford, Vermont. (The group is now known as Camp Fire.)

In 1936, Pittsburgh’s Great St. Patrick’s Day Flood began as the Monongahela and Allegheny rivers and their tributaries, swollen by rain and melted snow, started exceeding flood stage; the high water was blamed for more than 60 deaths.

In 1959, the Dalai Lama fled Tibet for India in the wake of a failed uprising by Tibetans against Chinese rule.

In 1970, the United States cast its first veto in the U.N. Security Council, killing a resolution that would have condemned Britain for failing to use force to overthrow the white-ruled government of Rhodesia.

In 1973, U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. Robert L. Stirm, a freed prisoner of the Vietnam War, was joyously greeted by his family at Travis Air Force Base in California in a scene captured in a Pulitzer Prizewinning AP photograph.

In 1992, 29 people were killed in the truck bombing of the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires, Argentina. In Illinois, Sen. Alan Dixon was defeated in his primary reelection bid by Carol Moseley-Braun, who went on to become the first black woman in the U.S.

Senate.

In 2005, baseball players told Congress that steroids were a problem in the sport; stars Rafael Palmeiro and Sammy Sosa testified they hadn’t used them while Mark McGwire refused to say whether he had. (McGwire owned up to steroid use in January 2010.)

In 2009, U.S. journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee were detained by North Korea while reporting on North Korean refugees living across the border in China. (Both were convicted of entering North Korea illegally and were sentenced to 12 years of hard labor; both were freed in August 2009 after former President Bill Clinton met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il.) The Seattle Post-Intelligencer published its final print edition.

Ten years ago: Idaho Gov. C.L.“Butch”Otter became the first state chief executive to sign a measure requiring his attorney general to sue Congress if it passed health reforms requiring residents to buy insurance (a mostly symbolic action on Idaho’s part, since federal laws supersede those of the states).

Five years ago: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party won a resounding victory in parliamentary elections after an acrimonious campaign, giving him a mandate to form the next government.

One year ago: Thousands of people paid tribute at makeshift memorials to the victims of a gunman who killed 51 people at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand.

THOUGHT FOR TODAY

“May your neighbors respect you, trouble neglect you, the angels protect you, and heaven accept you.” — Irish saying.

— ASSOCIATED PRESS