TODAY’S HIGHLIGHTS
Today is Monday, March 22.
On March 22, 1941, the Grand Coulee hydroelectric dam in Washington state officially went into operation.
ON THIS DATE:
In 1820, U.S. naval hero Stephen Decatur was killed in a duel with Commodore James Barron near Washington, D.C.
In 1882, President Chester Alan Arthur signed a measure outlawing polygamy.
In 1945, the Arab League was formed with the adoption of a charter in Cairo, Egypt.
In 1976, principal photography for the first “Star Wars” movie, directed by George Lucas, began in Tunisia.
In 1987, a garbage barge, carrying 3,200 tons of refuse, left Islip, New York, on a sixmonth journey in search of a place to unload. (The barge was turned away by several states and three other countries until space was found back in Islip.)
In 1988, both houses of Congress overrode President Ronald Reagan’s veto of the Civil Rights Restoration Act. In 1991, high school instructor Pamela Smart, accused of recruiting her teenage lover and his friends to kill her husband, Gregory, was convicted in Exeter, New Hampshire, of murderconspiracy and being an accomplice to murder and was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
In 1993, Intel Corp. unveiled the original Pentium computer chip.
In 1997, Tara Lipinski, at age 14 years and 10 months, became the youngest ladies’ world figure skating champion in Lausanne, Switzerland.
In 2010, Google Inc. stopped censoring the internet for
China by shifting its search engine off the mainland to Hong Kong.
In 2019, special counsel Robert Mueller closed his Russia investigation with no new charges, delivering his final report to Justice Department officials. 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.
Yemen’s U.S.-backed president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, his support crumbling among political allies and the army, warned that the country could slide into civil war as the opposition rejected his offer to step down by the end of the year.
Capping a remarkable visit to Cuba, President Barack Obama sat beside President Raul Castro at a baseball game between Cuba’s national team and the Tampa Bay Rays (the Rays won, 4-1); Obama left the game early to fly to Argentina for a state visit there.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo ordered all nonessential businesses in the state to close and nonessential workers to stay home. The Senate voted against advancing a $2 trillion coronavirus rescue package that Democrats said was tilted toward corporations, but negotiations continued. (Approval would come by week’s end.) Kentucky Republican Rand Paul became the first member of the U.S. Senate to report testing positive for the coronavirus; his announcement led Utah senators Mike Lee and Mitt Romney to place themselves in quarantine.