TODAY IN HISTORY

On March 21, 1935, Persia officially changed its name to Iran.

In 1945, during World War II, Allied bombers began four days of raids over Germany.

In 1963, the Alcatraz federal prison island in San Francisco Bay was emptied of its last inmates and closed.

In 1965, civil rights demonstrators led by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. began their third, successful march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama.

In 1972, the Supreme Court, in Dunn v. Blumstein, ruled that states may not require at least a

year’s residency for voting eligibility.

In 1981, Michael Donald, a Black teenager in Mobile, Alabama, was abducted, tortured and killed by members of the Ku Klux Klan.

In 1986, Debi Thomas of the U.S. won the ladies’ title at the

World Figure Skating Championships in Geneva, Switzerland, dethroning Katarina Witt of East Germany.

In 1990, Namibia became an independent nation as the former colony marked the end of 75 years of South African rule.

In 1997, President Bill Clinton

and Russian President Boris Yeltsin wrapped up their summit in Helsinki, Finland, still deadlocked over NATO expansion, but able to agree on slashing nuclear weapons arsenals.

In 2006, the social media website Twitter was established with the sending of the

first “tweet” by co-founder Jack Dorsey, who wrote: “just setting up my twttr.”

In 2019, President Donald Trump abruptly declared that the U.S. would recognize Israel’s sovereignty over the disputed Golan Heights, a major shift in American policy.