TODAY IN HISTORY
TODAY IS SATURDAY, MARCH 11, the 70th day of 2023. There are 295 days left in the year.
TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT IN HISTORY:
On this date in 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Lend-Lease Bill, providing war supplies to countries fighting the Axis. In 1862, during the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln removed Gen. George B. McClellan as general-in-chief of the Union armies, leaving him in command of the Army of the Potomac, a post McClellan also ended up losing. In 1918, what were believed to be the first confirmed U.S. cases of a deadly global flu pandemic were reported among U.S. Army soldiers stationed at Fort Riley, Kansas; 46 soldiers would die. (The worldwide outbreak of influenza claimed an estimated 20 million to 40 million lives.) In 1985, Mikhail S. Gorbachev was chosen to succeed the late Konstantin U. Chernenko as general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party. In 2002, two columns of light soared skyward from Ground Zero in New York as a temporary memorial to the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks six months earlier. In 2004, ten bombs exploded in quick succession across the commuter rail network in Madrid, Spain, killing 191 people in an attack linked to al-Qaidainspired militants. In 2011, a magnitude-9.0 earthquake and resulting tsunami struck Japan’s northeastern coast, killing nearly 20,000 people and severely damaging the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power station. In 2020, the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic. TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS: Media mogul Rupert Murdoch is 92. Former ABC News correspondent Sam Donaldson is 89. Singer Bobby McFerrin and movie director Jerry Zucker are 73. Singer Cheryl Lynn is 72. Actor Alex Kingston is 60. Actor Wallace Langham and former U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., D-Ill., are 58. Actor John Barrowman is 56. Singer Lisa Loeb is 55. Actor Johnny Knoxville is 52. Rock singer-musicians Benji and Joel Madden (Good Charlotte; The Madden Brothers) are 44. Actor David Anders and singer LeToya Luckett are 42. Actor Thora Birch is 41. TV personality Melissa Rycroft is 40. Actor Rob Brown is 39. Actor Jodie Comer is 30.