TODAY IN HISTORY

Today’s highlight:

On March 8, 1965, the United States landed its first combat troops in South Vietnam as 3,500 Marines arrived to defend the U.S. air base at Da Nang.

On this date:

In 1618, German astrono- mer Johannes Kepler devised his third law of planetary motion.

In 1817, the New York Stock & Exchange Board, which had its beginnings in 1792, was formally organized; it later became known as the New York Stock Exchange.

In 1948, the Supreme Court, in Mccollum v. Board of Education, struck down voluntary religious education classes in Champaign, Illinois, public schools, saying the program violated separation of church and state.

1971, Joe Frazier defeated Muhammad Ali by decision in what was billed as “The Fight of the Century” at Madison Square Garden in New York.

In 1983, in a speech to the National Association of Evangelicals convention in Orlando, Florida, President Ronald Reagan referred to the Soviet Union as an “evil empire.”

In 1988, 17 soldiers were killed when two Army helicopters from Fort Camp- bell, Kentucky, collided in mid-flight.

In 1999, baseball Hall of Famer Joe Dimaggio died in Hollywood, Florida, at age 84.

In 2000, President Bill Clinton submitted to Congress legislation to establish permanent normal trade relations with China. (The U.S. and China signed a trade pact in November 2000.)

In 2004, Iraq’s Governing Council signed a landmark interim constitution.

In 2008, President George W. Bush vetoed a bill that would have banned the CIA from using simulated drowning and other coercive interrogation methods to gain information from suspected terrorists.

In 2014, Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, a Boeing 777 with 239 people on board, vanished during a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, setting off a massive and ultimately unsuccessful search.

In 2016, Sir George Martin, the Beatles’ urbane producer who guided the band’s swift, historic transformation from rowdy club act to musical and cultural revolutionaries, died at age 90.

Ten years ago: Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez was lauded at his state funeral.

Five years ago: Mississippi lawmakers passed one of the most restrictive abortion laws in the nation, making the procedure illegal in most cases after 15 weeks of pregnancy; a federal judge later struck down the law as unconstitutional.

One year ago: President Joe Biden announced that the U.S. would ban all Russian oil imports, toughening the toll on Russia’s economy in retaliation for its invasion of Ukraine as a humanitarian crisis unfolded in the port city of Mariupol. Guy Wesley Reffitt of Texas was convicted of storming the U.S. Capitol with a holstered handgun, a milestone victory for federal prosecutors in the first trial among hundreds of cases arising from the Jan. 6 riots.