TODAY IN HISTORY

1639: New College was renamed Harvard College for clergyman John Harvard.

1781: The seventh planet of the solar system, Uranus, was discovered by Sir William Herschel.

1862: President Abraham Lincoln signed a measure prohibiting Union military officers from returning fugitive slaves to their owners.

1925: The Tennessee General Assembly approved a bill prohibiting the teaching of the theory of evolution. (Gov. Austin Peay signed the measure on March 21.)

1933: Banks in the U.S. began to reopen after a “holiday” declared by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

1934: A gang that included John Dillinger and “Baby Face” Nelson robbed the First National Bank in Mason City, Iowa, making off with $52,344. 1938: Famed attorney Clarence S. Darrow died in Chicago.

1954: The Battle of Dien Bien Phu began during the First Indochina War as Viet Minh forces attacked French troops, who were defeated nearly two months later.

1969: The Apollo 9 astronauts splashed down, ending a mission that included the successful testing of the Lunar Module.

1996: A gunman burst into an elementary school in Dunblane, Scotland, and opened fire, killing 16 children and one teacher before killing himself.

2011: The estimated death toll from Japan’s earthquake and tsunami climbed past 10,000 as authorities raced to combat the threat of multiple nuclear reactor meltdowns while hundreds of thousands of people struggled to find food and water.

2013: Jorge Bergoglio of Argentina was elected pope, choosing the name Francis; he was the first pontiff from the Americas and the first from outside Europe in more than a millennium.

2020: President Donald Trump declared the coronavirus pandemic a national emergency, freeing up money and resources for state and local governments to fight the outbreak. Stocks clawed back some of their losses on Wall Street and in Europe a day after the market’s worst session in more than three decades. Delta Air Lines said it would cut its passenger-carrying capacity by 40 percent to handle an unprecedented drop in air travel demand.