TODAY IN HISTORY

On March 13, 1639, Harvard University was named for clergyman John Harvard.

In 1852

the first cartoon depicting Uncle Sam as the symbol of the United States appeared in a drawing by Frank Bellew in the New York Lantern.

In 1868

the Senate began its impeachment trial of President Andrew Johnson. (He would be acquitted on a vote of 35-19.)

In 1884

Standard Time was adopted across the U.S.

In 1925

a law went into effect in Tennessee prohibiting the teaching of evolution.

In 1947

“Brigadoon,” the Lerner and Loewe musical, made its Broadway debut.

In 1969

the Apollo 9 astronauts splashed down, ending a mission that included the successful testing of the lunar module.

In 1980

Ford Motor Co. was acquitted of reckless-homicide charges that had resulted from three deaths in a fiery accident involving a Pinto.

In 1988,

yielding to student protests, the board of trustees of Gallaudet University in Washington, a liberal arts college for the hearing-impaired, chose I. King Jordan to become the school’s first deaf president, replacing Elisabeth Ann Zinser, a hearing woman.

In 1994

the Israeli Cabinet outlawed two Jewish extremist groups, Kach and Kahane Lives, branding them terrorist organizations.

In 1996,

in a crime that shocked Britain, a gunman burst into a kindergarten classroom in Dunblane, Scotland, and killed 16 children and their teacher before shooting himself to death.