TODAY IN HISTORY

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

March 7, 1936 ALSO ON THIS DATE

Adolf Hitler ordered his troops to march into the Rhineland, thereby breaking the Treaty of Versailles and the Locarno Pact.

1793

During the French Revolutionary Wars, France declared war on Spain.

1850

In a three-hour speech to the U.S. Senate, Daniel Webster of Massachusetts endorsed the Compromise of 1850 as a means of preserving the Union.

1911

President William Howard Taft ordered 20,000 troops to patrol the U.S.-Mexico border in response to the Mexican Revolution.

1912

Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen arrived in Hobart, Australia, where he dispatched telegrams announcing his success in leading the first expedition to the South Pole the previous December.

1926

The first successful trans-Atlantic radio-telephone conversations took place between New York and London.

1945

During World War II, U.S. forces crossed the Rhine at Remagen, Germany, using the damaged but still usable Ludendorff Bridge.

1955

The first TV production of the musical “Peter Pan” starring Mary Martin aired on NBC.

1965

A march by civil rights demonstrators was violently broken up at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, by state troopers and a sheriff’s posse in what came to be known as “Bloody Sunday.”

1975

The U.S. Senate revised its filibuster rule, allowing 60 senators to limit debate in most cases, instead of the previously required two-thirds of senators present.

1981

Anti-government guerrillas in Colombia executed kidnapped American Bible translator Chester Bitterman, whom they accused of being a CIA agent.