THIS WEEK IN HISTORY
Sunday, March 17
1762: New York held its first St. Patrick’s Day parade.
1776: The Revolutionary War Siege of Boston ended as British forces evacuated the city.
1969: Golda Meir took power in Israel, beginning a stint as prime minister that would last through five crucial years in the nation’s history.
1970: The United States cast its first veto in the U.N. Security Council, killing a resolution that would have condemned Britain for failing to use force to overthrow the white-ruled government of Rhodesia.
2010: Michael Jordan became the first ex-player to become a majority owner in the NBA as the league’s Board of Governors unanimously approved Jordan’s $275million bid to buy the Charlotte Bobcats from Bob Johnson.
2016: Finally bowing to years of public pressure, SeaWorld said it would no longer breed killer whales or make them perform crowd-pleasing tricks.
2023: The International Criminal Court said it issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin for war crimes because of his alleged involvement in abductions of children from Ukraine.
Monday, March 18
1922: Mohandas K. Gandhi was sentenced in India to six years’ imprisonment for civil disobedience. (He was released after serving two years.)
1942: President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed an executive order authorizing the War Relocation Authority, which was put in charge of interning Japanese-Americans, with Milton S. Eisenhower (the younger brother of Dwight D. Eisenhower) as its director.
1963: The U.S. Supreme Court, in Gideon v. Wainwright, ruled unanimously that state courts were required to provide legal counsel to criminal defendants who could not afford to hire an attorney on their own.
1965: The first spacewalk took place as Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov went outside his Voskhod 2 capsule.
2002: Brittanie Cecil died two days short of her 14th birthday after being hit in the head by a puck at a game between the host Columbus Blue Jackets and Calgary Flames; it was apparently the first such fan fatality in NHL history.
Tuesday, March 19
1931: Nevada Gov. Fred B. Balzar signed a measure legalizing casino gambling in the state.
1995: After a 21-month hiatus, Michael Jordan returned to professional basketball with his former team, the Chicago Bulls. (He would go on to win three more NBA championships to go with the three he and the Bulls had already won.)
2003: President George W. Bush ordered the start of war against Iraq. 2013: Pope Francis officially began his ministry as the 266th pope, receiving the ring symbolizing the papacy and a wool stole exemplifying his role as shepherd of his 1.2billion strong flock during a Mass at the Vatican.
Wednesday, March 20
1413: England’s King Henry IV died; he was succeeded by Henry V.
1815: Napoleon Bonaparte returned to Paris after escaping his exile on Elba, beginning his “Hundred Days” rule. 1854: The Republican Party of the United States was founded by slavery opponents at a schoolhouse in Ripon, Wisconsin.
1995: In Tokyo, 12 people were killed, more than 5,500 others sickened when packages containing the deadly chemical sarin were leaked on five separate subway trains by Aum Shinrikyo cult members.
2013: Making his first visit to Israel since taking office, President Barack Obama affirmed Israel’s sovereign right to defend itself from any threat.
2017: U.S. Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch pledged to be independent or “hang up the robe” as the Senate began confirmation hearings on President Donald Trump’s conservative pick for the nation’s highest bench.
Thursday, March 21
1935: Persia officially changed its name to Iran.
1952: The Moondog Coronation Ball, considered the first rock and roll concert, took place at Cleveland Arena. 1965: Civil rights demonstrators led by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. began their third, successful march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama.
2006: The social media website Twitter was established with the sending of the first “tweet” by co-founder Jack Dorsey, who wrote: “just setting up my twttr.” 2013: In the Middle East, President Barack Obama insisted “peace is possible” as he prodded both Israelis and Palestinians to return to long-stalled negotiations with few, if any, pre-conditions.
2019: President Donald Trump abruptly declared that the U.S. would recognize Israel’s sovereignty over the disputed Golan Heights, a major shift in American policy.
Friday, March 22
1765: The British Parliament passed the Stamp Act to raise money from the American colonies, which fiercely resisted the tax. (The Stamp Act was repealed a year later.)
1894: Hockey’s first Stanley Cup championship game was played; home team Montreal Hockey Club defeated Ottawa Hockey Club, 3-1.
1963: The Beatles’ debut album, “Please Please Me,” was released in the United Kingdom by Parlophone.
1993: Intel Corp. unveiled the original Pentium computer chip.
1997: Tara Lipinski, at age 14 years and 10 months, became the youngest ladies’ world figure skating champion in Lausanne, Switzerland.
2019: Former President Jimmy Carter became the longest-living chief executive in American history; at 94 years and 172 days, he exceeded the lifespan of the late former President George H.W. Bush.
2020: New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo ordered all nonessential businesses in the state to close and nonessential workers to stay home.
Saturday, March 23
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!”
1806: Explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, having reached the Pacific coast, began their journey back east. 1919: Benito Mussolini founded his Fascist political movement in Milan, Italy.
1933: The German Reichstag adopted the Enabling Act, which effectively granted Adolf Hitler dictatorial powers. 1981: The U.S. Supreme Court, in H.L. v. Matheson, ruled that states could require, with some exceptions, parental notification when teenage girls seek abortions.
2010: Claiming a historic triumph, President Barack Obama signed the Affordable Care Act, a $938billion health care overhaul.
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. 2021: A cargo ship the size of a skyscraper ran aground and became wedged in the Suez Canal; hundreds of ships would be prevented from passing through the canal until the vessel was freed six days later.