Also on this date
explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, having reached the Pacific coast, began their journey back east.
In 1806,
In 1919,
Benito Mussolini founded his Fascist political movement in Milan, Italy.
In 1933,
the German Reichstag adopted the Enabling Act, which effectively granted Adolf Hitler dictatorial powers.
In 1942,
the first Japanese-Americans evacuated by the U.S. Army during World War II arrived at the internment camp in Manzanar, California.
In 1973,
before sentencing a group of Watergate break-in defendants, Chief U.S. District Judge John J. Sirica read aloud a letter he’d received from James W. McCord Jr. which said there was “political pressure” to “plead guilty and remain silent.”
In 2003,
during the Iraq War, a U.S. Army maintenance convoy was ambushed in Nasiriyah; 11 soldiers were killed, including Pfc. Lori Ann Piestewa; six were captured, including Pfc. Jessica Lynch, who was rescued on April 1, 2003.
In 2004,
a federal commission concluded that Clinton and Bush administration officials had engaged in lengthy, ultimately fruitless diplomatic efforts instead of military action to try to get Osama bin Laden before the Sept. 11 attacks; top Bush officials countered that the terror attacks would have occurred even if the United States had killed the al-Qaida leader.
In 2010,
President Barack Obama signed the Affordable Care Act, a $938 billion health care overhaul.
Academy Awardwinning actor Elizabeth Taylor died in Los Angeles at age 79.
President Barack Obama held up Argentina as an emerging world leader worthy of U.S. support, as he and President Mauricio Macri broke with years of tensions between their countries.
President Donald Trump said he wanted to reopen the country for business in weeks, not months; he asserted that continued closures could result in more deaths than the coronavirus itself. Britain became the latest European country to go into effective lockdown, as Prime Minister Boris Johnson ordered the closure of most retail stores and banned public gatherings. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced plans to convert a New York City convention center into a hospital with 1,000 beds.
Associated Press