On this date:
1685: Composer Johann Sebastian Bach was born in Eisenach, Germany.
1788: Fire broke out in New Orleans on Good Friday, destroying 856 out of more than 1,100 structures; one death was reported.
1918: During World War I, Germany launched its Spring Offensive on the Western Front, hoping to break through the Allied lines before American reinforcements could arrive. Although successful at first, the Spring Offensive ultimately failed.
1925: Tennessee Gov. Austin Peay signed the Butler Act, which prohibited the teaching of the Theory of Evolution in public schools. Tennessee repealed the law in 1967.
1963: The Alcatraz federal prison island in San Francisco Bay was emptied of its last inmates and closed at the order of Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy.
1976: Champion skier Vladimir “Spider” Sabich was shot and killed by his girlfriend, actress-singer Claudine Longet, in the home they had shared in Aspen, Colorado; Longet, who maintained the shooting was an accident, served 30 days in jail for negligent homicide.
1981: Michael Donald, a black teenager in Mobile, Alabama, was abducted, tortured and killed by members of the Ku Klux Klan. A lawsuit brought by Donald’s mother, Beulah Mae Donald, later resulted in a landmark judgment that bankrupted one Klan organization.
1990: Namibia became an independent nation as the former colony marked the end of 75 years of South African rule.
2007: Former Vice President Al Gore made an emotional return to Congress as he pleaded with House and Senate committees to fight global warming; skeptical Republicans questioned the science behind his climate-change documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth.”
Ten years ago: In Oakland, California, parolee Lovelle Mixon shot and killed two motorcycle officers, then killed two SWAT team members while holed up in an apartment before he was killed by law enforcement.
Five years ago: A federal judge ruled that Michigan’s ban on gay marriage was unconstitutional, striking down a law widely embraced by voters a decade earlier. More than 300 same-sex couples in four Michigan counties wed the next day before an appeals court suspended the decision.
One year ago: As a SWAT team moved in on his SUV, Mark Conditt, the suspect in the deadly bombings that had terrorized Austin, Texas, for three weeks, used one of his own devices to take his own life.