TODAY IN HISTORY
On March 1, 1954, four Puerto Rican nationalists opened fire from the spectators’ gallery of the U.S. House of Representatives, wounding five members of Congress.
Also on this date
In 1815, Napoleon, having escaped exile in Elba, arrived in Cannes, France, and headed for Paris to begin his “Hundred Days” rule.
In 1893, inventor Nikola Tesla first publicly demonstrated radio during a meeting of the National Electric Light Association in St. Louis by transmitting electromagnetic energy without wires.
In 1932, Charles A. Lindbergh Jr., the 20-month-old son of Charles and Anne Lindbergh, was kidnapped from the family home near Hopewell, New Jersey. (Remains identified as those of the child were found the following May.)
In 1971, a bomb went off inside a men’s room at the U.S. Capitol; the radical group Weather Underground claimed responsibility for the pre-dawn blast.
In 1974, seven people, including former Nixon White House aides H.R. Haldeman and John D. Ehrlichman, former Attorney General John Mitchell and former Assistant Attorney General Robert Mardian, were indicted on charges of conspiring to obstruct justice in connection with the Watergate breakin. (These four defendants were convicted in January 1975; Mardian’s conviction was later reversed.)
In 2005, a closely divided Supreme Court outlawed the death penalty for juvenile criminals.
In 2020, state officials said New York City had its first confirmed case of COVID-19, a woman who had contracted the virus while traveling in Iran. Health officials in Washington state, announcing what was believed at the time to be the second U.S. death from the coronavirus, said the virus may have been circulating for weeks undetected in the Seattle area.
Ten years ago: Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley signed a measure legalizing same-sex marriage in his state, effective January 2013.
Five years ago: Former Montana Rep. Ryan Zinke was sworn in as secretary of the Interior Department by Vice President Mike Pence, hours after being confirmed by the Senate.
One year ago: Twitter said it had begun labeling tweets that included misleading information about COVID-19 vaccines, and that it would use a “strike system” to remove accounts that repeatedly violate its rules.