Today in History
Today is Friday, March 17, the 76th day of 2023. There are 289 days left in the year. This is St. Patrick’s Day.
Today’s highlight in history: On March 17, 1969, Golda Meir became prime minister of Israel. On this date:
In 1762, New York held its first St. Patrick’s Day parade.
In 1776, the Revolutionary War Siege of Boston ended as British forces evacuated the city.
In 1905, Anna Eleanor Roosevelt married Franklin Delano Roosevelt in New York.
In 1941, the National Gallery of Art opened in Washington, D.C.
In 1942, six days after departing the Philippines during World War II, Gen. Douglas MacArthur arrived in Australia to become supreme commander of Allied forces in the southwest Pacific theater.
In 1950, scientists at the University of California at Berkeley announced they had created a new radioactive element, “californium.”
In 1966, a U.S. Navy midget submarine located a missing hydrogen bomb that had fallen from a U.S. Air Force B-52 bomber into the Mediterranean off Spain. (It took several more weeks to actually recover the bomb.)
In 1970, the United States cast its first veto in the U.N. Security Council, killing a resolution that would have condemned Britain for failing to use force to overthrow the white-ruled government of Rhodesia.
In 2003, edging to the brink of war, President George W. Bush gave Saddam Hussein 48 hours to leave his country. Iraq rejected Bush’s ultimatum, saying that a U.S. attack to force Saddam from power would be “a grave mistake.”
In 2010, Michael Jordan became the first ex-player to become a majority owner in the NBA as the league’s Board of Governors unanimously approved Jordan’s $275 million bid to buy the Charlotte Bobcats from Bob Johnson.
In 2016, finally bowing to years of public pressure, SeaWorld Entertainment said it would no longer breed killer whales or make them perform crowd-pleasing tricks.
In 2020, the Kentucky Derby and the French Open were each postponed from May to September because of the coronavirus.
Ten years ago: Two members of Steubenville, Ohio’s celebrated high school football team were found guilty of raping a drunken 16-year-old girl and sentenced to at least a year in juvenile prison in a case that rocked the Rust Belt city of 18,000. Former Oklahoma quarterback Steve Davis, 60, who led the Sooners to back-toback national championships in the 1970s, was killed in a private plane crash in northern Indiana. Louisville earned the top overall seed in the NCAA tournament after a topsyturvy season in college basketball.
Five years ago: Superstore company Fred Meyer announced that it would stop selling guns and ammunition; in the aftermath of the Florida high school shooting, the company had earlier said it would stop selling firearms to anyone under 21. Russia said it was expelling 23 British diplomats in a growing diplomatic dispute over a nerve agent attack on a former spy in Britain.
One year ago: Rescuers searched for survivors in the ruins of a theater blown apart by a Russian airstrike in the besieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol, while ferocious bombardment left dozens dead in a northern city. U.S. Olympic figure skater Alysa Liu and her father Arthur Liu – a former political refugee – were among those targeted in a spying operation that the Justice Department alleged was ordered by the Chinese government. St. Patrick’s Day parades across the U.S., including the largest in New York City, resumed after a pandemicdriven hiatus.