TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

On March 13, 2013, Jorge Bergoglio of Argentina was elected pope, choosing the name Francis; he was the first pontiff from the Americas and the first from outside Europe in more than a millennium.

ON THIS DATE

In 1639, New College was renamed Harvard College for clergyman John Harvard.

In 1862, President Abraham Lincoln signed a measure prohibiting Union military officers from returning fugitive slaves to their owners.

In 1865, Confederate President Jefferson Davis signed a measure allowing black slaves to enlist in the Confederate States Army with the promise they would be set free.

In 1901, the 23rd President of the United States, Benjamin Harrison, died in Indianapolis at age 67.

In 1925, the Tennessee General Assembly approved a bill prohibiting the teaching of the theory of evolution. (Gov. Austin Peay signed the measure on March 21.)

In 1933, banks in the U.S. began to reopen after a “holiday” declared by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

In 1934, a gang that included John Dillinger and “Baby Face” Nelson robbed the First National Bank in Mason City, Iowa, making off with $52,344.

In 1954, the Battle of Dien Bien Phu began during the First Indochina War as Viet Minh forces attacked French troops, who were defeated nearly two months later.

In 1969, the Apollo 9 astronauts splashed down, ending a mission that included the successful testing of the Lunar Module. In 1975, the first Chili’s restaurant was opened in Dallas by entrepreneur Larry Lavine.

In 1980, Ford Motor Co. Chairman Henry Ford II announced he was stepping down, the same day a jury in Winamac, Indiana, found the company not guilty of reckless homicide in the fiery deaths of three young women in a Ford Pinto.

In 1996, a gunman burst into an elementary school in Dunblane, Scotland, and opened fire, killing 16 children and one teacher before killing himself.

At least 30 people were killed in a series of Taliban suicide bombings in Afghanistan in what appeared to be a failed attempt to free inmates from a Kandahar prison.

In his first visit to the Phoenix Veterans Affairs hospital whose practices sparked a health care scandal, President Barack Obama acknowledged lingering weaknesses in the federal government’s response to the chronic delays and false waiting lists in the VA health system.

A late winter storm brought blizzards, floods and a tornado across more than 25 states from the northern Rocky Mountains to Texas and beyond.

THOUGHT FOR TODAY “History repeats itself. That’s one of the things wrong with history.” — Clarence Darrow, American lawyer (born 1857, died this date in 1938).