TODAY IN HISTORY
Today is Saturday, March 23, the 83rd day of 2024. There are 283 days left in the year.
Today’s Highlight in History:
On March 23, 1998, “Titanic” tied an Academy Awards record by winning 11 Oscars, including best picture, best director for James Cameron and best original song for “My Heart Will Go On.”
On this date:
In 1775, Patrick Henry delivered an address to the Virginia Provincial Convention in which he is said to have declared, “Give me liberty, or give me death!” In 1806, explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, having reached the Pacific coast, began their journey back east. In 1919, Benito Mussolini founded his Fascist political movement in Milan, Italy. In 1933, the German Reichstag adopted the Enabling Act, which effectively granted Adolf Hitler dictatorial powers. In 1942, the first Japanese-Americans interned by the U.S. Army during World War II arrived at the camp in Manzanar, California. In 1965, America’s first two-person space mission took place as Gemini 3 blasted off with astronauts Virgil I. “Gus” Grissom and John W. Young aboard for a nearly 5-hour flight.
In 1993, scientists announced they’d found the renegade gene that causes Huntington’s disease.
In 2003, during the Iraq War, a U.S. Army maintenance convoy was ambushed in Nasiriyah; 11 soldiers were killed, including Pfc. Lori Ann Piestewa; six were captured, including Pfc. Jessica Lynch, who was rescued on April 1, 2003.
In 2010, claiming a historic triumph, President Barack Obama signed the Affordable Care Act, a $938 billion health care overhaul.
In 2020, President Donald Trump said he wanted to reopen the country for business in weeks, not months; he asserted that continued closures could result in more deaths than the coronavirus itself.
Today’s Birthdays: Movie director Mark Rydell is 95. Former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is 72. Singer Chaka Khan is 71. Actor Amanda Plummer is 67. Actor Catherine Keener is 65. Actor Hope Davis is 60. Actor Richard Grieco is 59. Bandleader Reggie Watts is 52. Actor Randall Park is 50. Actor Michelle Monaghan is 48. Actor Keri Russell is 48. Gossip columnist-blogger Perez Hilton is 46. NBA point guard Kyrie Irving is 32.