On this day, March 4
1789 The Constitution of the United States went into effect as the first Federal Congress met in New York. (The lawmakers then adjourned for lack of a quorum.)
1865 President Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated for a second term of office; with the end of the Civil War in sight, Lincoln declared: “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the fight as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan (tilde) to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”
1917 Republican Jeannette Rankin of Montana took her seat as the first woman elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, the same day President Woodrow Wilson took his oath of office for a second term (it being a Sunday, a private ceremony was held inside the U.S. Capitol; a second, public swearing-in took place the next day).
1933 Franklin D. Roosevelt took office as America’s 32nd president.
1981 A jury in Salt Lake City convicted Joseph Paul Franklin, an avowed racist and serial killer, of violating the civil rights of two Black men, Ted Fields and David Martin, who’d been shot to death. (Franklin received two life sentences for this crime; he was executed in 2013 for the 1977 murder of a Jewish man, Gerald Gordon.)
1987 President Ronald Reagan addressed the nation on the Iran-Contra affair, acknowledging that his overtures to Iran had “deteriorated” into an arms-for-hostages deal.
1998 The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that sexual harassment at work can be illegal even when the offender and victim are of the same gender.
2012 Vladimir Putin scored a decisive victory in Russia’s presidential election to return to the Kremlin and extend his hold on power.
2015 The Justice Department cleared Darren Wilson, a white former Ferguson, Mo., police officer, in the fatal shooting of Michael Brown, a Black 18-year-old, but also issued a scathing report calling for sweeping changes in city law enforcement practices.
2020 Federal health officials investigated a suburban Seattle nursing home at the center of a coronavirus outbreak.
Today’s birthdays: Actor Paula Prentiss, 86. Movie director Adrian Lyne, 83. Singer Shakin’ Stevens, 76. Author James Ellroy, 76. Former Energy Secretary Rick Perry, 74. Musician Emilio Estefan, 71. Movie director Scott Hicks, 71. Actor Catherine O’Hara, 70. Actor Mykelti Williamson, 67. Actor Patricia Heaton, 66. Sen. Tina Smith, D-Minn., 66. Actor Steven Weber, 63. Actor Patsy Kensit, 56. Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., 56. Gay rights activist Chaz Bono, 55. Actor Andrea Bendewald, 54. Actor Nick Stabile, 54. Jazz musician Jason Marsalis, 47. Actor Jessica Heap, 41. Actor Jenna Boyd, 31.