On this day, March 20

1842 Charles Dickens, the English author, arrived with his wife at the Exchange Hotel at Penn Avenue and Sixth Street in Pittsburgh for a three-day visit.

1854 The Republican Party of the United States was founded by slavery opponents at a schoolhouse in Ripon, Wis.

1941 In the first public hearing before the smoke commission, Joseph H. Barach, a physician with Presbyterian Hospital, testified that smog increased the incidence of colds, pneumonia and other illnesses in Pittsburgh.

1985 Libby Riddles of Teller, Alaska, became the first woman to win the Iditarod Trail Dog Sled Race.

1995 Twelve people were killed and more than 5,500 were sickened in Tokyo when packages containing the deadly chemical sarin were leaked on five subway trains by members of the Aum Shinrikyo cult.

1998 The 105-year-old Phipps Conservatory in Oakland was renamed Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens as plans were revealed for a $30 million expansion.

2004 Hundreds of thousands of people worldwide rallied against the U.S.-led war in Iraq on the first anniversary of the start of the conflict.

Some items are from Stefan Lorant’s “Pittsburgh: The Story of an American City” (digital.library.pitt.edu/chronology).

— Compiled by Alyssa Brown

Today’s birthdays: Singer Dame Vera Lynn, 102. Producer-director-comedian Carl Reiner, 97. Hockey Hall of Famer Bobby Orr, 71. Rock musician Carl Palmer (Emerson, Lake and Palmer), 69. Actress Amy Aquino, 62. Movie director Spike Lee, 62. Actress Holly Hunter, 61. Actress-model-designer Kathy Ireland, 56. Actor Michael Rapaport, 49. Actor Nick Blood (TV: “Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.”), 37. Actresssinger Christy Carlson Romano, 35. Actress Ruby Rose, 33.

Thought for today: “Every spring is the only spring, a perpetual astonishment.”