TODAY IN HISTORY

Today is Saturday, March 25, the 84th day of 2017. There are 281 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History

On March 25, 1947, a coal-dust explosion inside the Centralia Coal Co. Mine No. 5 in Washington County, Illinois, claimed 111 lives; 31 men survived.

On this date

1306 — Robert the Bruce was crowned King of Scots.

1776 — Gen. George Washington, commander of the Continental Army, was awarded the first Congressional Gold Medal by the Continental Congress.

1865 — During the Civil War, Confederate forces attacked Fort Stedman in Virginia but were forced to withdraw because of counterattacking Union troops.

1911 — One hundred forty-six people, mostly young female immigrants, were killed when fire broke out at the Triangle Shirtwaist Co. in New York.

1924 — The Second Hellenic Republic was proclaimed in Greece.

1931 — In the so-called “Scottsboro Boys” case, nine young black men were taken off a train in Alabama, accused of raping two white women; after years of convictions, death sentences and imprisonment, the nine were eventually vindicated.

1957 — A signing ceremony was held for the Treaty of Rome, which established the European Economic Community.

1965 — The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. led 25,000 people to the Alabama state capitol in Montgomery after a five-day march from Selma to protest the denial of voting rights to blacks. Later that day, civil rights activist Viola Liuzzo, a white Detroit homemaker, was shot and killed by Ku Klux Klansmen.

1975 — King Faisal of Saudi Arabia was shot to death by a nephew with a history of mental illness. (The nephew was beheaded in June 1975.)

1987 — The Supreme Court, in Johnson v. Transportation Agency, ruled 6-3 that an employer could promote a woman over an arguably more-qualified man to help get women into higher-ranking jobs.

1990 — Eighty-seven people, most of them Honduran and Dominican immigrants, were killed when fire raced through an illegal social club in New York City.

1996 — An 81-day standoff by the anti-government Freemen began at a ranch near Jordan, Montana.

2012 — Caleb Heard rescued two ducks aptly named Curly and Rambo after a neighborhood dog attacked them near his Lakeshore Drive home.