TODAY IN HISTORY

Today is Monday, March 6, the 65th day of 2017. There are 300 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History

On March 6, 1857, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Dred Scott v. Sandford, ruled 7-2 that Scott, a slave, was not an American citizen and therefore could not sue for his freedom in federal court. 1834 — The city of York in Upper Canada was incorporated as Toronto.

1836 — The Alamo in San Antonio, Texas, fell to Mexican forces after a 13-day siege.

1853 — Verdi’s opera “La Traviata” premiered in Venice, Italy.

1933 — A national bank holiday declared by President Franklin D. Roosevelt aimed at calming panicked depositors went into effect.

1944 — U.S. heavy bombers staged the first full-scale American raid on Berlin during World War II.

1953 — Georgy Malenkov was named premier of the Soviet Union a day after the death of Josef Stalin.

1957 — The British Gold Coast and British Togoland became the independent state of Ghana.

1967 — The daughter of Josef Stalin, Svetlana Alliluyeva, appeared at the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi and declared her intention to defect to the West.

1970 — A bomb being built inside a Greenwich Village townhouse by the radical Weathermen accidentally went off, destroying the house and killing three group members.

1981 — Walter Cronkite signed off for the last time as principal anchorman of “The CBS Evening News.”

1987 — One hundred ninety-three people died when the British ferry Herald of Free Enterprise capsized off the Belgian port of Zeebrugge.

1997 — A gunman stole a million-dollar Picasso portrait (“Tete de Femme”) from a London gallery. (The painting was recovered and two suspects arrested a week later.)

2007 — Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, was convicted of lying and obstructing an investigation into the 2003 leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame’s identity. (President George W. Bush later commuted Libby’s 30-month prison sentence, but did not issue a pardon.)

Five years ago

In Super Tuesday contests, Republican Mitt Romney narrowly won in pivotal Ohio, seized a home-state victory in Massachusetts, triumphed in Idaho, Vermont and Alaska, and won easily in Virginia, where neither Rick Santorum nor Newt Gingrich was on the ballot; Santorum won contests in Oklahoma, Tennessee and North Dakota, while Gingrich won at home in Georgia.

Former Texas tycoon R. Allen Stanford was convicted in Houston of bilking his investors out of more than $7 billion through a Ponzi scheme. (Stanford was sentenced to 110 years in prison.)

One year ago

Former President Jimmy Carter announced he no longer needed treatment for cancer, less than seven months after revealing he’d been diagnosed with melanoma that spread to his brain.