TODAY IN HISTORY
Today is Friday, March 20.
TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT
On March 20, 1854, the Republican Party of the United States was founded by slavery opponents at a schoolhouse in Ripon (RIH’puhn), Wisconsin.
ON THIS DATE
In 1413, England’s King Henry IV died; he was succeeded by Henry V.
In 1760, a 10-hour fire erupted in Boston, destroying 349 buildings and burning 10 ships, but claiming no lives.
In 1815, Napoleon Bonaparte returned to Paris after escaping his exile on Elba, beginning his “Hundred Days” rule.
In 1899, Martha M. Place of Brooklyn, New York, became the first woman to be executed in the electric chair as she was put to death at Sing Sing for the murder of her stepdaughter.
In 1933, the state of Florida electrocuted Giuseppe Zangara for shooting to death Chicago Mayor Anton J. Cermak at a Miami event attended by Presidentelect Franklin D. Roosevelt, the presumed target, the previous February.
In 1942, U.S. Army Gen. Douglas MacArthur, having evacuated the Philippines at the order of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, told reporters in Terowie, Australia: “I came out of Bataan, and I shall return.”
In 1952, the U.S. Senate ratified, 66-10, a Security Treaty with Japan.
In 1976, kidnapped newspaper heiress Patricia Hearst was convicted of armed robbery for her part in a San Francisco bank holdup carried out by the Symbionese Liberation Army. (Hearst was sentenced to seven years in prison; she was released after serving 22 months, and was pardoned in 2001 by President Bill Clinton.) In 1977, voters in Paris chose former French Prime Minister Jacques Chirac to be the French capital’s first mayor in more than a century.
In 1995, in Tokyo, 12 people were killed, more than 5,500 others sickened when packages containing the deadly chemical sarin were leaked on five separate subway trains by Aum Shinrikyo cult members.
In 1996, a jury in Los Angeles convicted Erik and Lyle Menendez of first-degree murder in the shotgun slayings of their wealthy parents. (They were sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.)
In 2004, hundreds of thousands of people worldwide rallied against the U.S.-led war in Iraq on the first anniversary of the start of the conflict. The U.S. military charged six soldiers with abusing inmates at the Abu Ghraib prison.
Ten years ago: Pope Benedict XVI sent an unprecedented letter to Ireland apologizing for chronic child abuse within the Roman Catholic Church, but failed to calm anger of many victims.
Five years ago: A jury in Gadsden, Alabama, convicted 49-year-old
Joyce Hardin Garrard of capital murder for running to death her 9-year-old granddaughter, Savannah Hardin. (Garrard was sentenced to life in prison without parole; she died in February 2016.) Suicide bombers attacked a pair of mosques in the capital of Yemen, unleashing blasts that killed 137 people.
One year ago: Mike Trout and the Los Angeles Angels announced agreement on a $426.5 million, 12-year contract, a record deal that would tie baseball’s top player to the Angels for what would likely be the rest of his career.
THOUGHT FOR TODAY
“Common sense is genius dressed in its working clothes.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson, American writer and poet (1803-1882).
— ASSOCIATED PRESS