Today in History
Today is Monday, March 6, the 65th day of 2023. There are 300 days left in the year.
Today’s highlight in history: On March 6, 1944, U.S. heavy bombers staged the first fullscale American raid on Berlin during World War II.
On this date:
• In 1834, the city of York in Upper Canada was incorporated as Toronto.
• In 1836, the Alamo in San Antonio, Texas, fell as Mexican forces led by General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna stormed the fortress after a 13-day siege; the battle claimed the lives of all the Texan defenders, nearly 200 strong, including William Travis, James Bowie and Davy Crockett.
• In 1857, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Dred Scott v. Sandford, ruled 7-2 that Scott, a slave, was not an American citizen and therefore could not sue for his freedom in federal court.
• In 1912, Oreo sandwich cookies were first introduced by the National Biscuit Co.
• In 1933, a national bank holiday declared by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, aimed at calming panicked depositors, went into effect.
• In 1964, heavyweight boxing champion Cassius Clay officially changed his name to Muhammad Ali.
• In 1970, a bomb being built inside a Greenwich Village townhouse in New York by the radical Weathermen accidentally went off, destroying the house and killing three group members.
• In 1973, Nobel Prize-winning author Pearl S. Buck, 80, died in Danby, Vermont.
• In 1981, Walter Cronkite signed off for the last time as principal anchorman of “The CBS Evening News.”
• In 1998, the Army honored three Americans who’d risked their lives and turned their weapons on fellow soldiers to stop the slaughter of Vietnamese villagers at My Lai (mee ly) in 1968.
Ten years ago: Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., a critic of the Obama administration’s drone policy, launched an old-style filibuster to block Senate confirmation of John Brennan’s nomination to be CIA director; Paul lasted nearly 13 hours before yielding the floor. Syria’s accelerating humanitarian crisis hit a grim milestone as the number of U.N.-registered refugees topped 1 million, half of them children.