TODAY IN HISTORY

Today is Thursday, March 11.

TODAY'S HIGHLIGHT:

On March 11, 1918, what were believed to be the first confirmed U.S. cases of a deadly global flu pandemic were reported among U.S. Army soldiers stationed at Fort Riley, Kansas; 46 would die. (The worldwide outbreak of influenza claimed an estimated 20 to 40 million lives.)

ON THIS DATE:

In 1862, during the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln removed Gen. George B. McClellan as general-inchief of the Union armies, leaving him in command of the Army of the Potomac, a post McClellan also ended up losing.

In 1935, the Bank of Canada began operations, issuing its first series of bank notes.

In 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Lend-Lease Bill, providing war supplies to countries fighting the Axis.

In 1942, as Japanese forces continued to advance in the Pacific during World War

II, U.S. Army Gen. Douglas MacArthur left the Philippines for Australia, where he vowed on March 20,“I shall return”— a promise he kept more than 2½ years later.

In 1954, the U.S. Army charged that Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy, R-Wis., and his subcommittee’s chief counsel, Roy Cohn, had exerted pressure to obtain favored treatment for Pvt. G. David Schine, a former consultant to the subcommittee. (The confrontation culminated in the famous Senate ArmyMcCarthy hearings.)

In 1955, Sir Alexander Fleming, the discoverer of penicillin, died in London at age 73.

In 1959, the Lorraine Hansberry drama“A Raisin in the Sun” opened at New York’s Ethel Barrymore Theater.

In 1977, more than 130 hostages held in Washington, D.C., by Hanafi Muslims were freed after ambassadors from three Islamic nations joined the negotiations.

In 1985, Mikhail S. Gorbachev was chosen to succeed the late Konstantin U. Chernenko as general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party.

In 1986, the state of Georgia pardoned Leo Frank, a Jewish businessman lynched in 1915 for the murder of 13-year-old Mary Phagan.

In 2004, ten bombs exploded in quick succession across the commuter rail network in Madrid, Spain, killing 191 people in an attack linked to al-Qaida-inspired militants.

In 2006, former Serb leader Slobodan Milosevic was found dead of a heart attack in his prison cell in the Netherlands, abruptly ending his four-year U.N. war crimes trial; he was 64.

One year ago: With infection clusters expanding in the United States and Europe, the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic. In an Oval Office address to the nation,