Today in history
On March 31,1492, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain issued an edict expelling Jews from Spanish soil, except for those willing to convert to Christianity.
In 1889 French engineer Alexandre Gustave Eiffel unfurled the French tricolor from a top the Eiffel Tower, officially marking its completion.
In1917 the U.S. took possession of the Danish West Indies, which were renamed the Virgin Islands, after their purchase from Denmark.
In1932 Ford Motor Co. publicly unveiled its V-8 engine.
In1943 the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical “Oklahoma!” opened on Broadway.
In 1968 President Lyndon Johnson stunned the country by announcing he would not seek another termin office.
In 1980 track star Jesse Owens, hero of the1936 Berlin Olympics, died in Tucson, Ariz.; hewas 66.
In1986167 people died when a Mexicana Airlines Boeing 727 crashed in a remote mountainous region of Mexico.
In 1991 the Warsaw Pact spent the last day of its existence as a military alliance.
In1992 the U.N. Security Council voted to ban flights and arms sales to Libya, branding it a terrorist state for shielding six men accused of blowing up Pan Am Flight 103 and a French airliner.
In1993 actor Brandon Lee was accidentally killed by a prop gun during the filming of amovie in Wilmington, N.C.; hewas 28.
In 1995 Mexican- American singer Selena Quintanilla-Perez, 23, was shot to death in Corpus Christi, Texas, by the founder of her fan club.
In 2000 the U. N. Security Council decided to let Iraq spend moremoney to repair its oil industry— an investment intended to boost the amount of food and medicine Baghdad could buy through the U.N. humanitarian program.
In 2003 New York banned smoking in the city’s bars and restaurants.
In 2005 a damning report by a presidential commission concluded the United States knew “disturbingly little” about nuclear and biological threats from dangerous adversaries.
In 2008 Housing and Urban Development Secretary Alphonso Jackson announced his resignation amid the wreckage of the national housing crisis.
In 2011 NATO announced it had begun Operation Unified Protector in Libya, including an arms embargo, a no-fly zone and “actions to protect civilians and civilian centers.”