This day in history
Today is Saturday, March 23, the 83rd day of 2024. There are 283 days left in the year.
▶ Birthdays: Movie director Mark Rydell is 95. Former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is 72. Singer Chaka Khan is 71. Actor Amanda Plummer is 67. Actor Catherine Keener is 65. Actor Hope Davis is 60. Actor Richard Grieco is 59. Actor Marin Hinkle is 58. Rock singermusician Damon Albarn (Blur) is 56. Actor Kelly Perine is 55. Actor-singer Melissa Errico is 54. Rock musician John Humphrey (The Nixons) is 54. Bandleader Reggie Watts (TV: “The Late Late Show With James Corden”) is 52. Actor Randall Park is 50. Actor Michelle Monaghan is 48. Actor Keri Russell is 48. Gossip columnist-blogger Perez Hilton is 46. Country singer Brett Young is 43. NBA point guard Kyrie Irving is 32.
▶ In 1775, Patrick Henry delivered an address to the Virginia Provincial Convention in which he is said to have declared, “Give me liberty, or give me death!”
▶ In 1806, explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, having reached the Pacific coast, began their journey back east.
▶ In 1919, Benito Mussolini founded his Fascist political movement in Milan.
▶ In 1933, the German Reichstag adopted the Enabling Act, which effectively granted Adolf Hitler dictatorial powers.
▶ In 1942, the first JapaneseAmericans interned by the US Army during World War II arrived at the camp in Manzanar, Calif.
▶ In 1965, America’s first twoperson space mission took place as Gemini 3 blasted off with astronauts Virgil I. “Gus” Grissom and John W. Young aboard for a nearly 5-hour flight.
▶ In 1981, the US Supreme Court, in H.L. v. Matheson, ruled that states could require, with some exceptions, parental notification when teenage girls seek abortions.
▶ In 1993, scientists announced they’d found the renegade gene that causes Huntington’s disease.
▶ In 1994, Aeroflot Flight 593, an Airbus A310, crashed in Siberia with the loss of all 75 people on board; it turned out that a pilot’s teenage son who was allowed to sit at the controls had accidentally disengaged the autopilot, causing loss of control.
▶ In 1998, “Titanic” tied an Academy Awards record by winning 11 Oscars, including best picture, best director for James Cameron, and best original song for “My Heart Will Go On.”
▶ In 2003, during the Iraq War, a US Army maintenance convoy was ambushed in Nasiriyah; 11 soldiers were killed, including Private First Class Lori Ann Piestewa; six were captured, including Private First Class Jessica Lynch, who was rescued on April 1, 2003.
▶ In 2010, claiming a historic triumph, President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act, a $938 billion health care overhaul.
▶ In 2012, urging Americans to “do some soul searching,” President Obama injected himself into the emotional debate over the fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin in Florida, saying, “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon.”
▶ In 2018, President Trump released an order banning most transgender troops from serving in the military except under “limited circumstances.”
▶ In 2020, President Trump said he wanted to reopen the country for business in weeks, not months; he asserted that continued closures could result in more deaths than the coronavirus itself. Britain became the latest European country to go into effective lockdown, as Prime Minister Boris Johnson ordered the closure of most retail stores and banned public gatherings.
▶ In 2021, a cargo ship the size of a skyscraper ran aground and became wedged in the Suez Canal; hundreds of ships would be prevented from passing through the canal until the vessel was freed six days later.
▶ In 2022, NATO estimated that 7,000 to 15,000 Russian soldiers were killed in four weeks of fighting in Ukraine, where the country’s defenders put up stiffer-than-expected resistance and denied Moscow the lightning victory it hoped for.