TODAY IN HISTORY
Today is Saturday, March 4, the 63rd day of 2023.
Today’s highlight in history
On March 4, 1933, Franklin D. Roosevelt took office as America’s 32nd president.
On this date
In 1789, the Constitution of the United States went into effect as the first Federal Congress met in New York.
In 1863, the Idaho Territory was created.
In 1865, President Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated for a second term; with the end of the Civil War in sight, Lincoln declared: “With malice toward none, with charity for all.”
In 1917, Republican Jeannette Rankin of Montana took her seat as the first woman elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, the same day President Woodrow Wilson took his oath of office for a second term. (It being a Sunday, a private ceremony was held inside the U.S. Capitol; a second, public swearing-in took place the next day.)
In 1966, John Lennon of The Beatles was quoted in the London Evening Standard as saying, “We’re more popular than Jesus now,” a comment that caused an angry backlash in the United States.
In 1981, a jury in Salt Lake City convicted Joseph Paul Franklin, an avowed racist and serial killer, of violating the civil rights of two Black men, Ted Fields and David Martin, who’d been shot to death. (He received two life sentences for this crime; he was executed in 2013 for the 1977 murder of a Jewish man, Gerald Gordon.)
In 1987, President Ronald
Reagan addressed the nation on the Iran-Contra affair, acknowledging that his overtures to Iran had “deteriorated” into an arms-for-hostages deal.
In 1994, four extremists were convicted of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing that killed six people and injured more than a thousand. Actor John Candy died at age 43.
In 1998, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that sexual harassment at work can be illegal even when the offender and victim are of the same gender.
In 2015, the Justice Department cleared Darren Wilson, a
White former Ferguson, Mo., police officer, in the fatal shooting of Michael Brown, a Black 18-year-old, but also issued a scathing report calling for sweeping changes in city law enforcement practices.
In 2020, federal health officials investigated a suburban Seattle nursing home at the center of a coronavirus outbreak.
One year ago: Russian troops seized the biggest nuclear power plant in Europe after a middle-of-the-night attack that set it on fire and briefly raised worldwide fears of a catastrophe in the most chilling turn in Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine to that point.
Today’s birthdays
Actor Paula Prentiss is 85. Director Adrian Lyne is 82. Singer Shakin’ Stevens is 75. Author James Ellroy is 75. Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry is 73. Singer Chris Rea is 72. Actor Ronn Moss is 71. Actor Kay Lenz is 70. Musician Emilio Estefan is 70. Actor Catherine O’Hara is 69. Actor Patricia Heaton is 65. Actor Steven Weber is 62. Singer Evan Dando (Lemonheads) is 56. Actor Patsy Kensit is 55. Actor Chaz Bono is 54. Singer Jason Sellers is 52. TV personality Whitney Port is 38.