This day in history

Today is Monday, March 11, the 71st day of 2024. There are 295 days left in the year.

Birthdays: Media mogul Rupert Murdoch is 93. Former ABC News correspondent Sam Donaldson is 90. Singer Bobby McFerrin is 74. Former US representative Jesse Jackson Jr., Democrat of Illinois, is 59. Singer Pete Droge is 55. Actor Terrence Howard is 55. Actor Johnny Knoxville is 53. Rock singer-musicians Benji and Joel Madden (Good Charlotte; The Madden Brothers) are 45. Singer LeToya Luckett is 43. Actor Jodie Comer is 31.

► In 1888, one of the most ferocious storms to ever hit New England blasted the region with 80 miles per hour winds and up to four feet of snow in some areas. Called “The White Hurricane,’’ the storm created drifts that reached to the second floor of many buildings and halted deliveries of food and fuel, accelerating the push for utility wires to be buried underground.

► In 1918, what were believed to be the first confirmed US cases of a deadly global flu pandemic were reported among US Army soldiers stationed at Fort Riley, Kan.; 46 soldiers would die. (The worldwide outbreak of influenza claimed about 20 million to 40 million lives.)

► In 1942, as Japanese forces continued to advance in the Pacific during World War II, US Army General Douglas MacArthur left the Philippines for Australia, where he vowed on March 20, “I shall return” — a promise he kept more than 2 1/2 years later.

► In 1985, Mikhail S. Gorbachev was chosen to succeed the late Konstantin U. Chernenko as general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party.

► In 2002, two columns of light soared skyward from Ground Zero in New York as a temporary memorial to the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks six months earlier.

► In 2006, former Serb leader Slobodan Milosevic was found dead of a heart attack in his prison cell in the Netherlands, abruptly ending his four-year UN war crimes trial; he was 64.

► In 2011, a magnitude-9.0 earthquake and resulting tsunami struck Japan’s northeastern coast, killing nearly 20,000 people and severely damaging the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station.

► In 2021, President Biden signed into law a $1.9 trillion COVID relief package that he said would help defeat the virus and nurse the economy back to health; Americans would receive up to $1,400 in direct payments, along with extended unemployment benefits.

► In 2022, Russia widened its offensive in Ukraine, striking airfields in the west and a major industrial city in the east, while the huge armored column that had been stalled for over a week outside Kyiv went on the move again.