This day in history
Today is Tuesday, March 28, the 87 th day of 2023. There are 278 days left in the year.
Birthdays: Author Mario Vargas Llosa is 87. Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte is 78. Actor Dianne Wiest is 77. Country singer Reba McEntire is 68. Olympic gold medal gymnast Bart Conner is 65. Actor Max Perlich is 55. Movie director Brett Ratner is 54. Actor Vince Vaughn is 53.Rapper Mr. Cheeks (Lost Boyz) is 52. Rock musician Dave Keuning (The Killers) is 47. Singer Lady Gaga is 37.
► In 1854, during the Crimean War, Britain and France declared war on Russia.
► In 1898, the US Supreme Court, in United States v. Wong Kim Ark, ruled 6-2 that Wong, who was born in the United States to Chinese immigrants, was an American citizen.
► In 1935, the notorious Nazi propaganda film “Triumph des Willens” (Triumph of the Will), directed by Leni Riefenstahl, premiered in Berlin with Adolf Hitler present.
► In 1939, the Spanish Civil War neared its end as Madrid fell to the forces of Francisco Franco.
► In 1941, novelist and critic Virginia Woolf, 59, drowned herself near her home in Lewes, East Sussex, England.
► In 1942, during World War II, British naval forces staged a successful raid on the Nazi-occupied French port of St. Nazaire in Operation Chariot, destroying the only dry dock on the Atlantic coast capable of repairing the German battleship Tirpitz.
► In 1979, America’s worst commercial nuclear accident occurred with a partial meltdown inside the Unit 2 reactor at the Three Mile Island plant near Middletown, Pa.
► In 1999, NATO broadened its attacks on Yugoslavia to target Serb military forces in Kosovo in the fifth straight night of airstrikes; thousands of refugees flooded into Albania and Macedonia from Kosovo.
► In 2000, in a unanimous ruling, the Supreme Court, in Florida v. J.L., sharply curtailed police power in relying on anonymous tips to stop and search people.
► In 2013, President Obama, flanked by grim-faced mothers who lost their children to guns, urged lawmakers not to “get squishy” in the face of powerful forces against gun control legislation.
► In 2018, President Trump fired Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin and nominated White House doctor Ronny Jackson to replace him; the move came in the wake of an ethics scandal and a rebellion within the agency. (Jackson withdrew his nomination amid allegations of workplace misconduct.)
► Last year, President Biden said he was making “no apologies” and wouldn’t be “walking anything back” after saying that Russian President Vladimir Putin “cannot remain in power.” The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences condemned the actions of Will Smith during the previous night’s Oscars and launched an inquiry into his slapping of Chris Rock. (Smith was later expelled from the movie academy and received a 10year ban from the Oscars.)