TODAY IN HISTORY
On March 13, 2013, Jorge Bergoglio of Argentina was elected pope, choosing the name Francis.
Also on this date
In 1781, the seventh planet of the solar system, Uranus, was discovered by Sir William Herschel.
In 1862, President Abraham Lincoln signed a measure prohibiting Union military officers from returning fugitive slaves to their owners.
In 1925, the Tennessee General Assembly approved a bill prohibiting the teaching of the theory of evolution. (Gov. Austin Peay signed the measure on March 21; Tennessee repealed the law in 1967.
In 1933, banks in the U.S. began to reopen after a “holiday” declared by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
In 1946, U.S. Army Pfc. Sadao Munemori was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for sacrificing himself to save fellow soldiers from a grenade explosion in Seravezza, Italy; he was the only JapaneseAmerican service member so recognized in the immediate aftermath of World War II.
In 1996, a gunman burst into an elementary school in Dunblane, Scotland, and opened fire, killing 16 children and one teacher before killing himself.
In 2011, the death toll from Japan’s earthquake and tsunami climbed past 10,000 as authorities raced to combat the threat of multiple nuclear reactor meltdowns.
In 2012, a ferry carrying more than 200 people collided with a cargo boat and sank just short of Dhaka, Bangladesh; most on board died.
In 2017, Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, once the world’s most-wanted fugitive known as “Carlos the Jackal,” appeared in a French court for a 1974 attack on a Paris shopping arcade that killed two people. (He was sentenced to life in prison for the third time.)
In 2018, President Donald Trump abruptly dumped Secretary of State Rex Tillerson – via Twitter – and moved CIA Director Mike Pompeo from the role of America’s spy chief to its top diplomat.
In 2020, Breonna Taylor, a 26-yearold Black woman, was fatally shot in her apartment in Louisville, Kentucky, during a botched raid by plainclothes narcotics detectives; no drugs were found, and the “noknock” warrant used to enter by force was later found to be flawed.
In 2021, Marvelous Marvin Hagler, the middleweight boxing great, died at age 66 at his New Hampshire home.