TODAY IN HISTORY
Today is Friday, March 5.
TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT
On March 5, 1953, Soviet dictator Josef Stalin died after three decades in power.
ON THIS DATE
In 1770, the Boston Massacre took place as British soldiers who’d been taunted by a crowd of colonists opened fire, killing five people.
In 1868, the impeachment trial of President Andrew Johnson began in the U.S. Senate, with Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase presiding. Johnson, the first U.S. president to be impeached, was accused of “high crimes and misdemeanors” stemming from his attempt to fire Secretary of War
Edwin M. Stanton; the trial ended on May 26 with Johnson’s acquittal.
In 1927, “The Adventure of Shoscombe Old Place,” the last Sherlock Holmes story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, was published in the U.S. in Liberty Magazine.
In 1933, in German parliamentary elections, the Nazi Party won 44 percent of the vote; the Nazis joined with a conservative nationalist party to gain a slender majority in the Reichstag.
In 1946, Winston Churchill delivered his “Iron Curtain” speech at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, in which he said: “From Stettin in the Baltic, to Trieste in the Adriatic, an ‘iron curtain’ has descended across the continent, allowing police governments to rule Eastern Europe.”
In 1960, Elvis Presley was discharged from the U.S. Army.
In 1963, country music performers Patsy Cline, Cowboy Copas and Hawkshaw Hawkins died in the crash of their plane, a Piper Comanche, near Camden, Tennessee, along with pilot Randy Hughes (Cline’s manager).
In 1977, President Jimmy Carter took questions from 42 telephone callers in 26 states on a network radio call-in program moderated by Walter Cronkite.
In 1982, comedian John Belushi was found dead of a drug overdose in a rented bungalow in Hollywood; he was 33.
In 1998, NASA scientists said enough water was frozen in the loose soil of the moon to support a lunar base and perhaps, one day, a human colony.
In 2003, in a blunt warning to the United States and Britain, the foreign ministers of France, Germany and Russia said they would block any attempt to get U.N. approval for war against Iraq.
In 2006, AT&T announced it was buying BellSouth Corp., a big step toward resurrecting the old Ma Bell telephone system.
Ten years ago: Egyptians turned their anger toward ousted President Hosni Mubarak’s internal security apparatus, storming the agency’s main headquarters and other offices.
Five years ago: Bernie Sanders won Democratic caucuses in Kansas and Nebraska, while Hillary Clinton prevailed in
Louisiana. Republican Ted Cruz won in Maine and Kansas while Donald Trump was victorious in Louisiana and Kentucky.
One year ago: Palestinian officials closed the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem over fears of the coronavirus. Officials ordered a cruise ship with 3,500 people aboard to stay back from the California coast until passengers and crew could be tested; a traveler from its previous voyage died of the coronavirus. Two weeks of wild swings in the stock market continued, with the Dow industrials falling 970 points, or 3.6 percent.