TODAY IN HISTORY
TODAY IS WEDNESDAY, MARCH 1,
the 60th day of 2023. There are 305 days left in the year.
TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT IN HISTORY:
On this date in 1974, seven people, including former Nixon White House aides H.R. Haldeman and John D. Ehrlichman, former Attorney General John Mitchell and former assistant Attorney General Robert Mardian, were indicted on charges of conspiring to obstruct justice in connection with the Watergate break-in. (These four defendants were convicted in January 1975, though Mardian’s conviction was later reversed.) In 1893, inventor Nikola Tesla first publicly demonstrated radio during a meeting of the National Electric Light Association in St. Louis by transmitting electromagnetic energy without wires. In 1932, Charles A. Lindbergh Jr., the 20-month-old son of Charles and Anne Lindbergh, was kidnapped from the family home near Hopewell, New Jersey. (Remains identified as those of the child were found the following May.) In 1954, four Puerto Rican nationalists opened fire from the spectators’ gallery of the U.S. House of Representatives, wounding five members of Congress. In 1966, the Soviet space probe Venera 3 impacted the surface of Venus, becoming the first spacecraft to reach another planet; however, Venera was unable to transmit any data, its communications system having failed. In 1971, a bomb went off inside a men’s room at the U.S. Capitol; the radical group Weather Underground claimed responsibility for the predawn blast. In 2020, state officials said New York City had its first confirmed case of the coronavirus, a woman in her late 30s who had contracted the virus while traveling in Iran. Health officials in Washington state, announcing what was believed at the time to be the second U.S. death from the coronavirus, said the virus may have been circulating for weeks undetected in the Seattle area. TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS: Singer-actor Harry Belafonte is 96. Actor-director Ron Howard is 69. Actor Catherine Bach (“The Dukes of Hazzard”) is 68. Actor Lupita Nyong’o (“Black Panther”) is 40.