TODAY IN HISTORY

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

March 25, 1947

A coal-dust explosion inside the Centralia Coal Co. Mine No. 5 in Washington County, Illinois, claimed 111 lives; 31 men survived.

ALSO ON THIS DATE

1306

Robert the Bruce was crowned King of Scots.

1776

Gen. George Washington, commander of the Continental Army, was awarded the first Congressional Gold Medal by the Continental Congress.

1865

During the Civil War, Confederate forces attacked Fort Stedman in Virginia but were forced to withdraw because of counterattacking Union troops.

1911

146 people, mostly young female immigrants, were killed when fire broke out at the Triangle Shirtwaist Co. in New York.

1924

The Second Hellenic Republic was proclaimed in Greece.

1931

In the so-called “Scottsboro Boys” case, nine young black men were taken off a train in Alabama, accused of raping two white women; after years of convictions, death sentences and imprisonment, the nine were eventually vindicated.

1965

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. led 25,000 people to the Alabama state capitol in Montgomery after a five-day march from Selma to protest the denial of voting rights to blacks. Later that day, civil rights activist Viola Liuzzo, a white Detroit homemaker, was shot and killed by Ku Klux Klansmen.