TODAY IN HISTORY

THURSDAY MAR 24, 2022

1989

The supertanker Exxon Valdez ran aground on a reef in Alaska’s Prince William Sound and began leaking an estimated 11million gallons of crude oil.

1765

Britain enacted the Quartering Act, requiring American colonists to provide temporary housing to British soldiers.

1832

A mob in Hiram, Ohio, attacked, tarred and feathered Mormon leaders Joseph Smith Jr. and Sidney Rigdon.

1882

German scientist Robert Koch announced in Berlin that he had discovered the bacillus responsible for tuberculosis.

1934

President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed a bill granting future independence to the Philippines.

1976

The president of Argentina, Isabel Peron, was deposed by her country’s military.

1980

One of El Salvador’s most respected Roman Catholic Church leaders, Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero, was shot to death by a sniper as he celebrated Mass in San Salvador.

1995

After 20 years, British soldiers stopped routine patrols in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

1999

NATO launched airstrikes against Yugoslavia, marking the first time in its 50year existence that it had ever attacked a sovereign country. Thirty-nine people were killed when fire erupted in the Mont Blanc tunnel in France and burned for two days.

2010

Keeping a promise he’d made to anti-abortion Democratic lawmakers to assure passage of his historic health care legislation, President Barack Obama signed an executive order against using federal funds to pay for elective abortions covered by private insurance.

2015

Germanwings Flight 9525, an Airbus A320, crashed into the French Alps, killing all 150 people on board; investigators said the jetliner was deliberately downed by the 27-year-old co-pilot, Andreas Lubitz.

2016

A U.N. war crimes court convicted former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic of genocide and nine other charges for orchestrating a campaign of terror that left 100,000 people dead during the 1992-95 war in Bosnia; Karadzic was sentenced to 40 years in prison.