This Week In History
March 25, 1958
U.S. boxer Sugar Ray Robinson, widely regarded as one of the greatest boxers in history, won the world middleweight title for an unprecedented fifth time 1957: The Treaty of Rome set up the European Economic Community 1995: The world’s first user-editable website, WikiWikiWeb, was launched by Ward Cunningham. “Wiki” is the Hawaiian word for quick 1996: More than 100 gay couples were married in a mass ceremony approved by city authorities in San Francisco 1997: Treasure hunters found the wreck of a Spanish galleon that sank in 1654 with a cargo of gold bars
March 26, 1953
Jonas Salk, from the University of Pittsburgh, reported successful tests of his polio vaccine. The vaccine virtually ended the crippling viral disease 1828: Austrian composer Franz Schubert gave his only public concert, in Vienna. He died later that year, at 31 2003: WHO officials were refused access to Guangdong province, where the SARS epidemic began 2013: A new trial was ordered in Italy of U.S. student Amanda Knox for the murder of a fellow student in 2007 2017: Carrie Lam was elected Chief Executive of Hong Kong, its first female leader
March 27, 1968
Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarinwas killed in a plane crash near Moscow. In 1961 he was the first human to fly into space, orbiting Earth in his Vostok spacecraft 1958: Nikita Khrushchev removed Nikolai Bulganin as Soviet prime minister and assumed the post himself 2008: Heathrow airport’s Terminal Five opened for business 2016: The Syrian Army recaptured Palmyra from the so-called Islamic State group 2017: Thieves stole a 100kg Canadian coin of 99.999% pure gold from a Berlin museum. The Big Maple Leaf was valued at $4.5m
March 28, 1483
Italian renaissance painter Raphael was born. His frescoes in the papal apartments of Pope Julius II in the Vatican are among his best known works 1979: A meltdown at the Three Mile Island power plant caused the worst nuclear accident in U.S. history 2011: Levels of radioactive iodine-131 in sea water near Japan’s crippled Fukushima nuclear plant were 1,850 times higher than permitted 2011: Egypt’s former President Hosni Mubarak was put under house arrest 2016: The FBI revealed they could access encrypted data on a suspect’s iPhone without Apple’s help
March 29, 2017
The United Kingdom invoked Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty on European Union, beginning the formal process of Brexit. Britain is due to leave in March 2019 1974: NASA’s Mariner 10 became the first spacecraft to reach the planet Mercury 2003: The Liverpool house where musician John Lennon spent his childhood opened to the public
2004: Ireland became the world’s first country to impose a nationwide ban on smoking in public places 2008: President Robert Mugabe hung on to power despite apparently losing Zimbabwe’s election
March 30, 1989
President Mitterrand of France opened the new entrance of the Louvre Museum, a dramatic glass pyramid designed by ChineseAmerican architect I.M. Pei 1867: The United States purchased Alaska from Russia for $7.2 million 2003: New York City imposed a ban on cigarette smoking in all places of employment, restaurants and bars 2010: The Large Hadron Collider shattered records by colliding particle beams at a combined energy of 7 TeV 2017: Protests followed a ruling that allowed President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela to establish business ventures without Congress approval
March 31, 2016
Iraqi-born British architect Zaha Hadid, whose dramatic designs include the Guangzhou Opera House (pictured above) in China, died aged 65 1861: The body of Napoleon Bonaparte was reinterred in Les Invalides in Paris 21 years after his death 1889: The Eiffel Tower was opened in Paris. At 324m, it was the world’s tallest man-made structure 1913: A record 6,745 immigrants arrived at Ellis Island in New York City 2014: UN climate change experts predicted dire consequences if greenhouse gas emissions were not reduced immediately