Today in history

On March 14, 1689, William and Mary were proclaimed England’s king and queen.

In 1743 the first recorded town meeting in America was held, at Faneuil Hall in Boston.

In 1794 Eli Whitney received a patent for his cotton gin, an invention that revolutionized America’s cotton industry.

In 1879 physicist Albert Einstein was born in Ulm, Germany. In 1900 Congress ratified the Gold Standard Act. In 1907 President Theodore Roosevelt signed an executive order designed to prevent Japanese laborers from immigrating to the United States as part of a “gentlemen’s agreement” with Japan.

In 1915 the German cruiser Dresden surrendered to the British during World War I.

In 1923 President Warren Harding became the first chief executive to file an income tax report.

In 1939 the republic of Czechoslovakia was dissolved, opening the way for Nazi occupation.

In 1943 Aaron Copland’s orchestral work “Fanfare for the Common Man” premiered in New York, with George Szell conducting.

In 1951, during the Korean War, U.N. forces recaptured Seoul.

In 1964 a jury in Dallas found Jack Ruby guilty of murdering Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused assassin of President John Kennedy, the previous November.

In 1965 Israel’s Cabinet formally approved establishment of diplomatic relations with West Germany.

In 1967 the body of President John Kennedy was moved from a temporary grave to a permanent memorial site at Arlington National Cemetery. In 1968 it was disclosed that, after seven years of warfare, American combat deaths in Vietnam had passed 20,000.

In 1971 Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi gained firm control of Parliament in New Delhi, winning a two-thirds majority.

In 1978 Israel sent thousands of troops supported by air and naval forces into Lebanon to attack bases used by Palestinian guerrillas to launch attacks on Israel. Israel seized a 4- to 6-mile strip of land along its northern border in the assault, which began late at night and continued throughout the next day.

In 1990 the Soviet Congress elected Mikhail Gorbachev to the country’s new, powerful presidency, a day after creating the post.

In 1991 a British court reversed the convictions of the “Birmingham Six,” who had spent 16 years in prison for an Irish Republican Army bombing, and ordered them released.

In 1993 an independent UN-sponsored commission released a report blaming the bulk of atrocities committed during El Salvador’s civil war on the country’s military.

In 1995 astronaut Norman Thagard became the first American to enter space aboard a Russian rocket as he and two cosmonauts blasted off aboard a Soyuz spacecraft, headed for the Mir space station.

In 1998 India’s Congress Party selected Sonia Gandhi, the Italian-born widow of assassinated Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, as the party’s president.

In 2002 the government charged the Arthur Andersen accounting firm with obstruction of justice, securing its first indictment in the collapse of Enron. Also in 2002 Serbia and Montenegro signed a historic accord to radically restructure their federation, dropping the name “Yugoslavia” and granting greater autonomy to try to prevent the country’s final breakup.

In 2004 Russian President Vladimir Putin won a second term.

In 2007 the Pentagon released the transcript of a military hearing in which Khalid Sheikh Mohammed said he “was responsible for the 9/11 operation from A to Z.”