TODAY IN HISTORY

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

March 30, 1867

U.S. Secretary of State William H. Seward reached agreement with Russia to purchase the territory of Alaska for $7.2million, a deal ridiculed by critics as “Seward’s Folly.”

ALSO ON THIS DATE 1870

The 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which prohibited denying citizens the right to vote and hold office on the basis of race, was declared in effect by Secretary of State Hamilton Fish. Texas was readmitted to the Union.

1959

A narrowly divided U.S. Supreme Court, in Bartkus v. Illinois, ruled that a conviction in state court following an acquittal in federal court for the same crime did not constitute double jeopardy.

1964

John Glenn withdrew from the Ohio race for the U.S. Senate because of injuries suffered in a fall. The original version of the TV game show “Jeopardy!” hosted by Art Fleming, premiered on NBC.

1981

President Ronald Reagan was shot and seriously injured outside a Washington, D.C., hotel by John W. Hinckley, Jr.; also wounded were White House press secretary James Brady, Secret Service agent Timothy McCarthy and a District of Columbia police officer, Thomas Delahanty.

1991

Patricia Bowman of Jupiter, Florida, told authorities she’d been raped hours earlier by William Kennedy Smith, the nephew of Sen. Edward Kennedy, at the family’s Palm Beach estate.

2006

American reporter Jill Carroll, a freelancer for The Christian Science Monitor, was released after 82days as a hostage in Iraq.