On this date
• In 1306, Robert the Bruce was crowned King of Scots.
• In 1776, Gen. George Washington, commander of the Continental Army, was awarded the first Congressional Gold Medal by the Continental Congress.
• In 1911, 146 people, mostly young female immigrants, were killed when fire broke out at the Triangle Shirtwaist Co. in New York.
• In 1931, in the so-called “Scottsboro Boys” case, nine young black men were taken off a train in Alabama, accused of raping two white women; after years of convictions, death sentences and imprisonment, the nine were eventually vindicated.
• In 1965, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. led 25,000 people to the Alabama state capitol in Montgomery after a five-day march from Selma to protest the denial of voting rights to blacks. Later that day, civil rights activist Viola Liuzzo, a white Detroit homemaker, was shot and killed by Ku Klux Klansmen.
• In 1987, the Supreme Court, in Johnson v. Transportation Agency, ruled 6-3 that an employer could promote a woman over an arguably more-qualified man to help get women into higher-ranking jobs.
• In 1990, 87 people, most of them Honduran and Dominican immigrants, were killed when fire raced through an illegal social club in New York City.
• In 1996, an 81-day standoff by the anti-government Freemen began at a ranch near Jordan, Montana.
On March 26 • In 1827, composer Ludwig van Beethoven died in Vienna.
• In 1874, poet Robert Frost was born in San Francisco.
• In 1892, poet Walt Whitman died in Camden, New Jersey.
• In 1945, during World War II, Iwo Jima was fully secured by U.S. forces following a final, desperate attack by Japanese soldiers. Former British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, 82, died in Ty Newydd, Llanystumdwy, Wales.
• In 1958, the U.S. Army launched America’s third successful satellite, Explorer 3.
• In 1982, groundbreaking ceremonies took place in Washington, D.C., for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
• In 1992, a judge in Indianapolis sentenced former heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson to six years in prison for raping a Miss Black America contestant. (Tyson ended up serving three years.)
On March 27 • In 1513, Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de Leon (hwahn pahns duh LEE’-ohn) sighted present-day Florida.
• In 1884, the first telephone line between Boston and New York was inaugurated.
• In 1912, first lady Helen Herron Taft and the wife of Japan’s ambassador to the United States, Viscountess Chinda, planted the first two of 3,000 cherry trees given to the U.S. as a gift by the mayor of Tokyo.
• In 1933, Japan officially withdrew from the League of Nations.
• In 1942, during World War II, Congress granted American servicemen free first-class mailing privileges.
• In 1964, Alaska was hit by a magnitude 9.2 earthquake (the strongest on record in North America) and tsunamis that together claimed about 130 lives.
• In 1996, an Israeli court convicted Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s (YIT’-sahk rah-BEENZ’) confessed assassin of murder, then sentenced former law student Yigal Amir (YEE’-gahl ah-MEER’) to life in prison.
• In 2002, President George W. Bush signed landmark bipartisan legislation designed to limit the role of big money in political campaigns.