TODAY IN HISTORY
Today’s highlight:
On March 24, 1989, the supertanker Exxon Valdez ran aground on a reef in Alas- ka’s Prince William Sound and began leaking an esti- mated 11 million gallons of crude oil.
On this date:
In 1765, Britain enacted the Quartering Act, requir- ing American colonists to provide temporary housing to British soldiers.
In 1832, a mob in Hiram, Ohio, attacked, tarred and feathered Mormon leaders Joseph Smith Jr. and Rigdon.
In 1882, German scientist Robert Koch announced in Berlin that he had discov- ered the bacillus responsi- ble for tuberculosis.
In 1934, President Frank- lin D. Roosevelt signed a bill granting future dence to the Philippines.
In 1980, one of El Salva- dor’s most respected Roman Catholic Church leaders, Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero, was shot to death by a sniper as he celebrated Mass in San Salvador.
In 1995, after 20 years, British soldiers stopped routine patrols in Belfast, North- ern Ireland.
NATO launched airstrikes against Yugosla
marking the first time in its 50-year existence it had ever attacked a sovereign country. people were killed when fire
in the Mont Blanc tunnel in France burned for two days.
keeping a prom- ise he’d made to anti-abor- tion Democratic lawmakers to assure passage of his historic health-care legislation, President Barack Obama signed an executive order against using federal funds to pay for elective abortions covered by private insurance.
In 2015, Germanwings Flight 9525, an Airbus A320, crashed into the French Alps, killing all 150 people on board; investigators said
jetliner was deliberately downed by the 27-year-old co-pilot, Andreas Lubitz.
In 2016, a U.N. war crimes court onvicted former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic of genocide
nine other charges for orchestrating a campaign of terror that left 100,000 peo
dead during 199295 war in Bosnia; Karadzic was sentenced to 40 years in prison. (The sentence was later to life in prison.)
the tional Olympic Committee announced that the Summer Olympics in Tokyo would be postponed until 2021 because of the coronavirus.
Five years ago: In the streets of the nation’s capital
in cities across the country, hundreds of thousands of teenagers and their supporters rallied against gun violence, spurred by a call to action from student survivors of the school shoot
in Florida, that left 17 people dead.
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell announced that he would vote against confirming Ketanji Brown Jackson, saying he “cannot and will not” support the groundbreaking nominee for a lifetime appointment on the Supreme Court.