Today in history

On March Congress1, 1781, adoptedthe Continental the Articles of Confederation. In 1792 Holy Roman Emperor Leopold II died; he was succeeded by his son, Francis II. In 1790 Congress authorized the first U.S. Census. In 1803 Ohio’s legislature met for the first time. This event was recognized by Congress in 1953 as the official date of Ohio statehood.

In 1845 President John Tyler signed a congressional resolution to annex the Republic of Texas. In 1867 Nebraska became the 37th state.

In 1872 Congress authorized creation of Yellowstone National Park.

In 1875 Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which guaranteed all Americans regardless of “race, color or persuasion” equal access to public facilities. (The Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional in 1883.)

In 1932 the 20-month-old son of Charles and Anne Lindbergh, was kidnapped from the family home near Hopewell, N.J. In 1942 the cruiser USS Houston, flagship of the U.S. Asiatic Fleet, sank after a battle with a Japanese fleet in the Sunda Strait off Java island, killing 651 crew members. (Japan captured 360 Americans, most of whom spent 3 1⁄2 years as POWs. The sinking prompted the dissolution of the Asiatic Fleet.) In 1945 President Franklin Roosevelt, back from the Yalta Conference, proclaimed the meeting a success as he addressed a joint session of Congress.

In 1954 Puerto Rican nationalists opened fire from the gallery of the U.S. House of Representatives, wounding five congressmen.

In 1961 President John Kennedy established the Peace Corps.

In 1974 seven aides of President Richard Nixon were indicted by a federal grand jury in the Watergate scandal on charges of conspiring to obstruct justice.

In 1979 the United States and China formally upgraded their liaison offices in Beijing and Washington to embassy status.

In 1981 Irish Republican Army member Bobby Sands began a hunger strike at the Maze Prison in Northern Ireland; he died 65 days later. In 2001 Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban, defying international

protests, began destroying all statues in the country. In 2002 NASA said its Mars Odyssey spacecraft had found evidence that vast regions of Mars may abound in water. In 2003 suspected mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, was captured by CIA and Pakistani agents in Rawalpindi, Pakistan.

In 2004 rebels rolled into Haiti’s capital, Port-auPrince, where they were met by thousands of residents cheering the ouster of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide the day before, on Leap Day.

In 2005 Dennis Rader, the churchgoing family man accused of leading a double life as the BTK serial killer, was charged in Wichita, Kan., with 10 counts of first-degree murder. (Rader later pleaded guilty and received multiple life sentences.) Also in 2005, a closely divided Supreme Court outlawed the death penalty for juvenile criminals. In 2014 Russian forces seized military installations across Crimea in southern Ukraine, prompting President Barack Obama and the West to threaten political and economic isolation. Also in 2014, Uighurs, a Turkic Muslim minority, killed 29 people and injured 130 in a mass stabbing in Kunming, China.