On this date

In 1770, the Boston Massacre took place as British soldiers who’d been taunted by a crowd of colonists opened fire, killing five people.

In 1927, “The Adventure of Shoscombe Old Place,” the last Sherlock Holmes story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, was published in the U.S. in Liberty Magazine.

In 1933, in German parliamentary elections, the Nazi Party won 44% of the vote; the Nazis joined with a conservative nationalist party to gain a slender majority in the Reichstag.

In 1946, Winston Churchill delivered his “Iron Curtain” speech at Westminster College in Fulton, Mo., in which he said: “From Stettin in the Baltic, to Trieste in the Adriatic, an ‘iron curtain’ has descended across the continent, allowing police governments to rule Eastern Europe.”

In 1953, Soviet dictator Josef Stalin died after three decades in power.

In 1963, country music performers Patsy Cline, Cowboy Copas and Hawkshaw Hawkins died in the crash of their plane, a Piper Comanche, near Camden, Tenn., along with pilot Randy Hughes (Cline’s manager).

In 1970, the Treaty on the NonProliferation of Nuclear Weapons went into effect after 43 nations ratified it.

Ten years ago: John McCain, having sewn up the Republican presidential nomination, got a White House embrace from President George W. Bush, who praised the Arizona senator’s “incredible courage and strength of character and perseverance.”

Five years ago: Transportation Security Administration head John Pistole announced that airline passengers would be able to carry small knives, souvenir baseball bats, golf clubs and other sports equipment onto planes (the plan was dropped three months later amid fierce congressional and industry opposition).

One year ago: Throngs of people converged in the city of Selma, Ala., for the annual re-enactment of a key event in the civil rights movement — the 1965 march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge by demonstrators seeking voting rights.