Today in history

On March 22, 1638, religious dissident Anne Hutchinson was expelled from the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

In 1765 Britain enacted the Stamp Act to raise money from the American colonies. (The act was repealed the following year.)

In 1758 Puritan theologian Jonathan Edwards died in Princeton, N.J.; he was 54.

In 1820 U.S. naval hero Stephen Decatur was killed in a duel with Commodore James Barron near Washington.

In 1882 Congress outlawed polygamy.

In 1894 hockey’s first Stanley Cup championship game was played; the home team Montreal Amateur Athletic Association defeated the Ottawa Capitals, 3-1.

In 1895 Auguste and Louis Lumiere showed their first movie to an invited audience in Paris.

In 1908 prolific frontier novelist Louis L’Amour was born in Jamestown, N.D.

In 1933, during Prohibition, President Franklin Roosevelt signed a measure to make wine and beer containing up to 3.2 percent alcohol legal.

In 1941 the Grand Coulee Dam in Washington state went into operation.

In 1945 the Arab League was formed with the adoption of a charter in Cairo.

In 1946 the British mandate in Transjordan came to an end.

In 1963 the Beatles’ first album, “Please Please Me,” was released in Britain.

In 1972 Congress sent the proposed Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution to the states for ratification. (It fell three states short of the 38 needed for approval.)

In 1978 Karl Wallenda, patriarch of “The Flying Wallendas” high-wire act, fell to his death while attempting to walk a cable strung between two hotels in San Juan, Puerto Rico; he was 73.

In 1986 world financier Michele Sindona died two days after ingesting cyanide in his Italian prison cell in what authorities later ruled a suicide.

In 1987 a garbage barge carrying 3,200 tons of refuse left Islip, N.Y., on a 6-month journey in search of a place to unload. (The barge was turned away by several states and three other countries until space was found back in Islip.)

In 1988 both houses of Congress overrode President Ronald Reagan’s veto of a sweeping civil rights bill.

In 1990 a jury in Anchorage found former tanker captain Joseph Hazelwood not guilty of three major charges in connection with the Exxon Valdez oil spill, but convicted him of a minor charge of negligent discharge of oil.

In 1992, 27 people were killed when a US-Air jetliner crashed on takeoff from New York’s LaGuardia Airport; 24 people survived.

In 1993 Cleveland Indians pitchers Steve Olin and Tim Crews were killed when the boat they were riding in slammed into a Florida pier; pitcher Bob Ojeda was seriously injured.

In 1994 “Woody Woodpecker” creator Walter Lantz died in Burbank, Calif.; he was 93.