TODAY IN WORLD HISTORY
Today is Tuesday, March 7, the 66th day of 2017. There are 299 days left in the year.
Today’s Highlight in History On March 7, 1967, the musical “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown,” based on the “Peanuts” comic strips by Charles M. Schulz with Gary Burghoff in the title role, opened in New York’s Greenwich Village, beginning an off-Broadway run of 1,597 performances.
On this date
• In 1793, during the French Revolutionary Wars, France declared war on Spain.
• In 1850, in a three-hour speech to the U.S. Senate, Daniel Webster of Massachusetts endorsed the Compromise of 1850 as a means of preserving the Union.
• In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell received a U.S. patent for his telephone.
• In 1916, Bavarian Motor Works (BMW) had its beginnings in Munich, Germany, as an airplane engine manufacturer.
• In 1926, the first successful trans-Atlantic radio-telephone conversations took place between New York and London.
• In 1936, Adolf Hitler ordered his troops to march into the Rhineland, thereby breaking the Treaty of Versailles (vehr-SY’) and the Locarno Pact.
• In 1945, during World War II, U.S. forces crossed the Rhine at Remagen, Germany, using the damaged but still usable Ludendorff Bridge.
• In 1955, the first TV production of the musical “Peter Pan” starring Mary Martin aired on NBC.
• In 1965, a march by civil rights demonstrators was violently broken up at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, by state troopers and a sheriff’s posse in what came to be known as “Bloody Sunday.”
• In 1975, the U.S. Senate revised its filibuster rule, allowing 60 senators to limit debate in most cases, instead of the previously required two-thirds of senators present.
• In 1981, anti-government guerrillas in Colombia executed kidnapped American Bible translator Chester Bitterman, whom they’d accused of being a CIA agent.
• In 1994, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled that a parody that pokes fun at an original work can be considered “fair use.” (The ruling concerned a parody of the Roy Orbison song “Oh, Pretty Woman” by the rap group 2 Live Crew.)
Ten years ago A sex offender was found guilty in Miami of kidnapping, raping and murdering 9-year-old Jessica Lunsford, who was buried alive. (John Evander Couey (KOO’-ee) was sentenced to death, but died of natural causes in Sept. 2009.) Ten people, most of them children, were killed in The Bronx, New York, when fire tore through their home. A suicide attacker blew himself up in a cafe northeast of Baghdad, killing 30 people.
Five years ago President Barack Obama, speaking at a Daimler truck plant in Mount Holly, North Carolina, made his most urgent appeal to date for the nation to wean itself from oil, calling it a “fuel of the past” and demanding that the United States broaden its approach to energy. The Indianapolis Colts released injured quarterback Peyton Manning, who went on to play for the Denver Broncos.
One year ago Peyton Manning announced his retirement after 18 seasons in the National Football League. A jury in Nashville, Tennessee, awarded sports reporter Erin Andrews $55 million in her lawsuit against a stalker who rented a hotel room next to hers and secretly recorded her, finding that the hotel companies and the stalker shared in the blame. Stephen Curry scored 41 points and became the first player in NBA history to make 300 3pointers in a season as the Golden State Warriors held off the Orlando Magic 119-113 for their 45th straight home victory.