Today in history
Today is Wednesday, March 22, the 81st day of 2017. There are 284 days left in the year.
Today’s Highlight in History
On March 22, 1765, the British Parliament passed the Stamp Act to raise money from the American colonies, which fiercely resisted the tax. (The Stamp Act was repealed a year later.)
On this date
In 1638, religious dissident Anne Hutchinson was expelled from the Massachusetts Bay Colony for defying Puritan orthodoxy.
In 1894, hockey’s first Stanley Cup championship game was played; home team Montreal defeated Ottawa, 3-1.
In 1929, a U.S. Coast Guard vessel sank a Canadian-registered schooner, the I’m Alone, which was suspected of carrying bootleg liquor, in the Gulf of Mexico.
In 1933, during Prohibition, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed a measure to make wine and beer containing up to 3.2 percent alcohol legal.
In 1941, the Grand Coulee hydroelectric dam in Washington state officially went into operation.
In 1958, movie producer Mike Todd, the husband of actress Elizabeth Taylor, and three other people, were killed in the crash of Todd’s private plane near Grants, New Mexico.
In 1968, President Lyndon B. Johnson named Gen. William C. Westmoreland to be the U.S. Army’s new Chief of Staff. In 1978, Karl Wallenda, the 73-year-old patriarch of “The Flying Wallendas” high-wire act, fell to his death while attempting to walk a cable strung between two hotel towers in San Juan, Puerto Rico. In 1987, a garbage barge, carrying 3,200 tons of refuse, left Islip, New York, on a six-month journey in search of a place to unload. (The barge was turned away by several states and three other countries until space was found back in Islip.)
In 1991, high school instructor Pamela Smart, accused of recruiting her teenage lover and his friends to kill her husband, Gregory, was convicted in Exeter, New Hampshire, of murder-conspiracy and being an accomplice to murder and was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
In 1992, 27 people were killed when a USAir Fokker F-28 jetliner bound for Cleveland crashed on takeoff from New York’s LaGuardia Airport; 24 people survived.
In 1997, Tara Lipinski, at age 14 years and 10 months, became the youngest ladies’ world figure skating champion in Lausanne, Switzerland.
Ten years ago: John and Elizabeth Edwards announced that her cancer had returned, but that the North Carolina Democrat planned to continue his presidential campaign. A rocket exploded 50 yards from U.N. SecretaryGeneral Ban Ki-moon during a news conference in Baghdad’s Green Zone just minutes after Iraq’s prime minister said the visit showed the city was “on the road to stability.” Brian Joubert became the first Frenchman in 42 years to win the world title by taking the men’s event at the World Figure Skating Championships in Tokyo.
Five years ago: Coroner’s officials ruled singer Whitney Houston died by drowning the previous February, but that heart disease and cocaine use were contributing factors. In a dramatic end to a 32-hour standoff, a French SWAT team slipped into the Toulouse apartment of an Islamic extremist suspected of seven killings, sparking a firefight that ended with the suspect jumping out the window and being fatally shot in the head.