TODAY IN HISTORY
Today is Saturday, March 31, the 90th day of 2018. There are 275 days left in the year.
Today’s Highlight in History:
On March 31, 1968, at the conclusion of a nationally broadcast address on Vietnam, President Lyndon B. Johnson stunned listeners by declaring, “I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your President.”
On this date:
In 1492, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain issued an edict expelling Jews from Spanish soil, except those willing to convert to Christianity.
In 1889, French engineer Gustave Eiffel unfurled the French tricolor from atop the Eiffel Tower, officially marking its completion.
In 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Emergency Conservation Work Act, which created the Civilian Conservation Corps.
In 1986, 167 people died when a Mexicana Airlines Boeing 727 crashed in a remote mountainous region of Mexico.
In 1993, actor Brandon Lee, 28, was accidentally shot to death during the filming of a movie in Wilmington, N.C., when he was hit by a bullet fragment that had become lodged inside a prop gun.
In 1995, Mexican-American singer Selena Quintanilla-Perez, 23, was shot to death in Corpus Christi, Texas, by the founder of her fan club, Yolanda Saldivar, who was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison.
In 2005, Terri Schiavo, 41, died at a hospice in Pinellas Park, Florida, 13 days after her feeding tube was removed in a wrenching right-to-die dispute.
Ten years ago: HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson announced his resignation amid the wreckage of the national housing crisis. A Bahamas jury ruled that Anna Nicole Smith’s son, Daniel, died from an accidental drug overdose, just like his mother. American movie director Jules Dassin, whose Greek wife, Melina Mercouri, starred in his hit movie “Never on Sunday” and six more of his films, died in Athens at age 96. Thought for Today: “Man does not speak because he thinks, he thinks because he speaks.”— Octavio Paz, Mexican poet (born this date in 1914, died 1998).