Today in History

Sunday, March 12, 2023

Today is Sunday, March 12, the 71st day of 2023. There are 294days left in the year.

Today’s highlight in history:

On March 12, 2009, disgraced financier Bernard Madoff pleaded guilty in New York to pulling off perhaps the biggest swindle in Wall Street history; he would be sentenced to 150 years behind bars. (Madoff died in prison in April 2021.)

On this date:

In 1864, Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant assumed command as General-in-chief of the Union armies in the Civil War.

In 1912, the Girl Scouts of the USA had its beginnings as Juliette Gordon Low of Savannah, Georgia, founded the first American troop of the Girl Guides.

In 1925, Chinese revolutionary leader Sun Yat-sen died in Beijing.

In 1947, President Harry S. Truman announced what became known as the “Truman Doctrine” to help Greece and Turkey resist Communism. In 1955, legendary jazz musician Charlie “Bird” Parker died in New York at age 34.

In 1971, Hafez Assad was confirmed as president of Syria in a referendum.

In 1980, a Chicago jury found John Wayne Gacy Jr. guilty of the murders of 33 men and boys. (The next day, Gacy was sentenced to death; he was executed in May 1994.) In 1987, the musical play “Les Miserables” opened on Broadway.

In 1994, the Church of England ordained its first women priests.

In 2003, Elizabeth Smart, the 15-year-old girl who vanished from her bedroom nine months earlier, was found alive in a Salt Lake City suburb with two drifters, Brian David Mitchell and Wanda Barzee. (Mitchell is serving a life sentence; Barzee was released from prison in September 2018.)

In 2011, fifteen passengers were killed when a tour bus returning from a Connecticut casino scraped along a guard rail on the outskirts of New York City, tipped on its side and slammed into a pole that sheared it nearly end to end. (Driver Ophadell Williams was later acquitted of manslaughter and negligent homicide.) In 2020, the stock market had its biggest drop since the Black Monday crash of 1987 as fears of economic fallout from the coronavirus crisis deepened; the Dow industrials plunged more than 2,300points, or 10%. The NCAA canceled its basketball tournaments because of the coronavirus, after earlier planning to play in empty arenas. The NHL joined the NBA in suspending play. Major League Baseball delayed the start of its season by at least two weeks. (An abbreviated 60-game season would begin in July.)

Ten years ago: Black smoke poured from the Sistine Chapel chimney, signaling that cardinals had failed on their first vote of the papal conclave to choose a new leader of the Catholic Church to succeed Benedict XVI. Mitch Seavey, a 53-year-old former champion, won the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race in nine days, 7hours and 39minutes to become the oldest winner of Alaska’s grueling test of endurance.

Five years ago: Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee said they’d completed a draft report concluding that there was no collusion or coordination between Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and Russia. British Prime Minister Theresa May said Russia was “highly likely” to blame for poisoning a former spy and his daughter in an English city with a military-grade nerve agent. Two package bomb blasts a few miles apart killed a teenager and wounded two women in Austin less than two weeks after a similar attack left a man dead in another part of the Texas capital.

One year ago: Russian forces pounding the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol shelled a mosque that was sheltering more than 80 people, including children, Ukrainian officials said. Fighting also raged in the outskirts of Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and Russia kept up its bombardment of other resisting cities. Soccer’s English Premier League banned Roman Abramovich from running Chelsea after the club owner was sanctioned by the British government over Russia’s war on Ukraine. Saudi Arabia executed 81people convicted of crimes ranging from killings to belonging to militant groups, the largest known mass execution carried out in the kingdom in its modern history. Today’s Birthdays: Politician, diplomat and civil rights activist Andrew Young is 91. Actor Barbara Feldon is 90. Actor-singer Liza Minnelli is 77. Sen. Mitt Romney, Rutah, is 76. Singer-songwriter James Taylor is 75. Former Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., is 75. Rock singer-musician Bill Payne (Little Feat) is

74. Actor Jon Provost (TV: “Lassie”) is 73. Author Carl Hiaasen is 70. Rock musician Steve Harris (Iron Maiden) is 67. Actor Lesley Manville is 67. Actor Jerry Levine is

66. Singer Marlon Jackson (The Jackson Five) is 66. Actor Jason Beghe is 63. Actor Courtney B. Vance is

63. Actor Titus Welliver is 61. Former MLB All-star Darryl Strawberry is 61. Actor Julia Campbell is 60. Actor Jake Weber is 60. Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-ill., is 55. Actor Aaron Eckhart is 55. CNN reporter Jake Tapper is

54. Rock musician Graham Coxon is 54. Country musician Tommy Bales (Flynnville Train) is 50. Actor Rhys Coiro is 44. Country singer Holly Williams is 42. Actor Samm (cq) Levine is 40. Actor Jaimie Alexander is 39. Actor Tyler Patrick Jones is 29.

Monday, March 13, 2023

Today is Monday, March 13, the 72nd day of 2023. There are 293days left in the year.

Today’s highlight in history:

In 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; Tennessee repealed the law in 1967.

On this date:

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

In 1862, President Abraham Lincoln signed a measure prohibiting Union military officers from returning fugitive slaves to their owners. In 1933, banks in the U.S. began to reopen after a “holiday” declared by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

In 1938, famed attorney Clarence S. Darrow died in Chicago.

In 1943, financier and philanthropist J.P. Morgan Jr., 75, died in Boca Grande, Florida. In 1946, U.S. Army Pfc. Sadao Munemori was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for sacrificing himself to save fellow soldiers from a grenade explosion in Seravezza, Italy; he was the only Japanese-american service member so recognized in the immediate aftermath of World War II.

In 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. In 1995, two Americans working for U.S. defense contractors in Kuwait, David Daliberti and William Barloon, were seized by Iraq after they strayed across the border; sentenced to eight years in prison, both were freed later the same year.

In 1996, a gunman burst into an elementary school in Dunblane, Scotland, and opened fire, killing 16 children and one teacher before killing himself. In 2011, the estimated death toll from Japan’s earthquake and tsunami climbed past 10,000as authorities raced to combat the threat of multiple nuclear reactor meltdowns while hundreds of thousands of people struggled to find food and water. In 2020, Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman, was fatally shot in her apartment in Louisville, Kentucky, during a botched raid by plainclothes narcotics detectives; no drugs were found, and the “no-knock” warrant used to enter by force was later found to be flawed. (A grand jury brought no charges against officers in her death, and prosecutors said two officers who fired at her were justified because her boyfriend shot at them; one officer was found not guilty of endangering Taylor’s neighbors by firing into the side of her apartment during the raid.)

Ten years ago: In 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. A man went on a shooting rampage in the small villages of Mohawk and Herkimer in New York state, killing four and wounding two more at a barbershop and a car wash. (Police would shoot and kill the suspect, 64-yearold Kurt Myers, the following day.)

Five years ago: President Donald Trump abruptly dumped Secretary of State Rex Tillerson — via Twitter — and moved CIA Director Mike Pompeo from the role of America’s spy chief to its top diplomat. On his first trip to California as president, Trump accused the state of putting “the entire nation at risk” by refusing to take tough action against illegal immigration. Joy Behar of “The View” apologized for suggesting that mental illness was behind claims by people that Jesus Christ talks to them; her comment had come during a discussion about Vice President Mike Pence.

One year ago: Russian missiles pounded a military base that served as a crucial hub between Ukraine and the NATO countries supporting its defense, killing 35 people. The barrage marked an escalation of Moscow’s offensive and moved the fighting perilously close to the Polish border. A year after holding its basketball tournament in isolated bubbles and two years after holding no tournament at all, the NCAA announced teams for a full-fledged March Madness. Former President Barack Obama announced he had tested positive for the coronavirus. Today’s Birthdays: Jazz musician Roy Haynes is 98. Songwriter Mike Stoller is

90. Singer-songwriter Neil Sedaka is 84. R&b/gospel singer Candi Staton is 83. Opera singer Julia Migenes is

74. Actor William H. Macy is

73. Comedian Robin Duke is

69. Actor Dana Delany is 67. Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., is 66. Rock musician Adam Clayton (U2) is 63. Jazz musician Terence Blanchard is 61. Actor Christopher Collet is 55. Rock musician Matt Mcdonough (Mudvayne) is

54. Actor Annabeth Gish is 52. Actor Tracy Wells is

52. Rapper-actor Common is 51. Rapper Khujo (Goodie Mob, The Lumberjacks) is

51. Singer Glenn Lewis is 48. Actor Danny Masterson is 47. Actor Noel Fisher is 39. Singers Natalie and Nicole Albino (Nina Sky) are 39. Actor Emile Hirsch is 38. U.S. Olympic gold medal skier Mikaela Shiffrin is 28. Tennis star Coco Gauff is 19.