Today in history

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KAJUN
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Re: Today in history

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Great story Paul.....It had to be hell to be a grunt in those times
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Re: Today in history

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37 On a trip to the Italian mainland from his home on Capreae, the emperor Tiberius dies on the Bay of Naples.
1190 The Crusades begin the massacre of Jews in York, England.
1527 The Emperor Babur defeats the Rajputs at the Battle of Khanwa, removing the main Hindu rivals in Northern India.
1621 The first Indian appears to colonists in Plymouth, Massachusetts.
1833 Susan Hayhurst becomes the first woman to graduate from a pharmacy college.
1850 Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter is published.
1865 Union troops push past Confederate blockers at the Battle of Averasborough, N.C.
1907 The British cruiser Invincible, the world's largest, is completed at Glasgow shipyards.
1913 The 15,000-ton battleship Pennsylvania is launched at Newport News, Va.
1917 Russian Czar Nicholas II abdicates his throne.
1926 Physicist Robert H. Goddard launches the first liquid-fuel rocket.
1928 The United States plans to send 1,000 more Marines to Nicaragua.
1935 Adolf Hitler orders a German rearmament and violates the Versailles Treaty.
1939 Germany occupies the rest of Czechoslovakia.
1945 Iwo Jima is declared secure by U.S. forces although small pockets of Japanese resistance still exist.
1954 CBS introduces The Morning Show hosted by Walter Cronkite to compete with NBC's Today Show.
1964 President Lyndon B. Johnson submits a $1 billion war on poverty program to Congress.
1968 U.S. troops in Vietnam destroy a village consisting mostly of women and children, the action is remembered as the My-Lai massacre.
1984 Mozambique and South Africa sign a pact banning support for one another's internal foes.
1985 Associated Press newsman, Terry Anderson is taken hostage in Beirut.


Born on March 16
1751 James Madison, fourth President of the United States (1809-17).
1789 George S. Ohm, German physicist.
1822 Rosa Bonheur, French painter and sculptor.
1822 John Pope, Union general in the American Civil War.
1861 Maxim Gorky, Russian dramatist
1912 Thelma Catherine Patricia Ryan Nixon, first lady to President Richard Nixon.
1926 Jerry Lewis, American comedian and film actor.







1802
U.S. Military Academy established

The United States Military Academy–the first military school in the United States–is founded by Congress for the purpose of educating and training young men in the theory and practice of military science. Located at West Point, New York, the U.S. Military Academy is often simply known as West Point.

Located on the high west bank of New York’s Hudson River, West Point was the site of a Revolutionary-era fort built to protect the Hudson River Valley from British attack. In 1780, Patriot General Benedict Arnold, the commander of the fort, agreed to surrender West Point to the British in exchange for 6,000 pounds. However, the plot was uncovered before it fell into British hands, and Arnold fled to the British for protection.

Ten years after the establishment of the U.S. Military Academy in 1802, the growing threat of another war with Great Britain resulted in congressional action to expand the academy’s facilities and increase the West Point corps. Beginning in 1817, the U.S. Military Academy was reorganized by superintendent Sylvanus Thayer–later known as the “father of West Point”–and the school became one of the nation’s finest sources of civil engineers. During the Mexican-American War, West Point graduates filled the leading ranks of the victorious U.S. forces, and with the outbreak of the Civil War former West Point classmates regretfully lined up against one another in the defense of their native states.

In 1870, the first African-American cadet was admitted into the U.S. Military Academy, and in 1976, the first female cadets. The academy is now under the general direction and supervision of the department of the U.S. Army and has an enrollment of more than 4,000 students.
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Re: Today in history

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Today in History March 17
1766 Britain repeals the Stamp Act.
1776 British forces evacuate from Boston to Nova Scotia.
1799 Napoleon Bonaparte and his army reach Mediterranean seaport of St. Jean d'Acra, only to find British warships ready to break his siege of the town.
1868 The first postage stamp canceling machine patent is issued.
1884 John Joseph Montgomery makes the first glider flight in Otay, Calif.
1886 Twenty African Americans are killed in the Carrollton Massacre in Mississippi.
1891 The British steamer Utopia sinks off the coast of Gibraltar.
1905 Anna Eleanor Roosevelt, niece of President Theodore Roosevelt, marries Franklin D. Roosevelt in New York.
1910 The Camp Fire Girls are founded in Lake Sebago, Maine.
1914 Russia increases the number of active duty military from 460,000 to 1,700,000.
1924 Four Douglas army aircraft leave Los Angeles for an around the world flight.
1930 Mob boss Al Capone is released from jail.
1942 The Nazis begin deporting Jews to the Belsen camp.
1944 The U.S. Eighth Air Force bombs Vienna.
1959 The 14th Dalai Lama flees Tibet and goes to India.
1961 The United States increases military aid and technicians to Laos.
1962 The Soviet Union asks the United States to pull out of South Vietnam.
1966 A U.S. submarine locates a missing H-bomb in the Mediterranean.
1970 The Army charges 14 officers with suppression of facts in the My Lai massacre case.
1972 Nixon asks Congress to halt busing in order to achieve desegregation.
1973 Twenty are killed in Cambodia when a bomb goes off that was meant for the Cambodian President Lon Nol.
1973 First POWs are released from the "Hanoi Hilton" in Hanoi, North Vietnam.
1985 President Ronald Reagan agrees to a joint study with Canada on acid rain.


Born on March 17
1828 Patrick R. Cleburne, Confederate general.
1832 Daniel Conway Moncure, U.S. clergyman, author, abolitionist
1846 Kate Greenway, painter and illustrator (Mother Goose).
1902 Bobby Jones, American golfer.
1919 Nat "King" Cole, American jazz pianist and singer.




1776
British evacuate Boston

On this day in 1776, British forces are forced to evacuate Boston following General George Washington’s successful placement of fortifications and cannons on Dorchester Heights, which overlooks the city from the south.

During the evening of March 4, American Brigadier General John Thomas, under orders from Washington, secretly led a force of 800 soldiers and 1,200 workers to Dorchester Heights and began fortifying the area. To cover the sound of the construction, American cannons, besieging Boston from another location, began a noisy bombardment of the outskirts of the city. By the morning, more than a dozen cannons from Fort Ticonderoga had been brought within the Dorchester Heights fortifications. British General Sir William Howe hoped to use the British ships in Boston Harbor to destroy the American position, but a storm set in, giving the Americans ample time to complete the fortifications and set up their artillery. Realizing their position was now indefensible, 11,000 British troops and some 1,000 Loyalists departed Boston by ship on March 17, sailing to the safety of Halifax, Nova Scotia.

The bloodless liberation of Boston by the Patriots brought an end to a hated eight-year British occupation of the city, known for such infamous events as the “Boston Massacre,” in which five colonists were shot and killed by British soldiers. The British fleet had first entered Boston Harbor on October 2, 1768, carrying 1,000 soldiers. Having soldiers living among them in tents on Boston Common–a standing army in 18th-century parlance–infuriated Bostonians.

For the victory, General Washington, commander of the Continental Army, was presented with the first medal ever awarded by the Continental Congress.
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Re: Today in history

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37 The Roman Senate annuls Tiberius' will and proclaims Caligula emperor.
1692 William Penn is deprived of his governing powers.
1863 Confederate women riot in Salisbury, N.C. to protest the lack of flour and salt in the South.
1865 The Congress of the Confederate States of America adjourns for the last time.
1874 Hawaii signs a treaty giving exclusive trading rights with the islands to the United States.
1881 Barnum and Bailey's Greatest Show on Earth opens in Madison Square Gardens.
1911 Theodore Roosevelt opens the Roosevelt Dam in Phoenix, Ariz., the largest dam in the United States to date.
1913 Greek King George I is killed by an assassin. Constantine I is to succeed.
1916 On the Eastern Front, the Russians counter the Verdun assault with an attack at Lake Naroch. The Russians lose 100,000 men and the Germans lose 20,000.
1917 The Germans sink the U.S. ships, City of Memphis, Vigilante and the Illinois, without any type of warning.
1922 Mahatma Gandhi is sentenced to six years in prison for civil disobedience in India.
1939 Georgia finally ratifies the Bill of Rights, 150 years after the birth of the federal government. Connecticut and Massachusetts, the only other states to hold out, also ratify the Bill of Rights in this year.
1942 The third military draft begins in the United States.
1943 Adolf Hitler calls off the offensive in the Caucasus.
1943 American forces take Gafsa in Tunisia.
1944 The Russians reach the Romanian border.
1950 Nationalist troops land on the mainland of China and capture Communist-held Sungmen.
1953 The Braves baseball team announces that they are moving from Boston to Milwaukee.
1965 Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov becomes the first man to spacewalk when he exits his Voskhod 2 space capsule while in orbit around the Earth.
1969 President Richard M. Nixon authorizes Operation Menue, the 'secret' bombing of Cambodia.
1970 The U.S. Postal Service is paralyzed by the first postal strike.
1971 U.S. helicopters airlift 1,000 South Vietnamese soldiers out of Laos.
1975 South Vietnam abandons most of the Central Highlands to North Vietnamese forces.
1977 Congo President Marien Ngouabi is killed by a suicide commando.
1981 The United States discloses biological weapons tests in Texas in 1966.
1986 Buckingham Palace announces the engagement of Prince Andrew to Sarah Ferguson.


Born on March 18
1782 John C. Calhoun, U.S. statesman.
1837 Stephen Grover Cleveland, 22nd and 24th President of the United States (1885-1889 and 1893-1897), the only U.S. president elected for two nonconsecutive terms.
1842 Stephane Mallarme, French symbolist poet.
1858 Rudolf Diesel, German engineer who designed the compression-ignition engine.
1869 Neville Chamberlin, British Prime Minister (1937-40).
1893 Wilfred Owen, World War I poet.
1932 John Updike, American poet and novelist.
1936 Frederik W. deKlerk, President of the Republic of South Africa.


1852
Wells and Fargo start shipping and banking company

On this day in 1852, in New York City, Henry Wells and William G. Fargo join with several other investors to launch their namesake business.
The discovery of gold in California in 1849 prompted a huge spike in the demand for cross-country shipping. Wells and Fargo decided to take advantage of these great opportunities. In July 1852, their company shipped its first loads of freight from the East Coast to mining camps scattered around northern California. The company contracted with independent stagecoach companies to provide the fastest possible transportation and delivery of gold dust, important documents and other valuable freight. It also served as a bank–buying gold dust, selling paper bank drafts and providing loans to help fuel California’s growing economy.
In 1857, Wells, Fargo and Co. formed the Overland Mail Company, known as the “Butterfield Line,” which provided regular mail and passenger service along an ever-growing number of routes. In the boom-and-bust economy of the 1850s, the company earned a reputation as a trustworthy and reliable business, and its logo–the classic stagecoach–became famous. For a premium price, Wells, Fargo and Co. would send an employee on horseback to deliver or pick up a message or package.

Wells, Fargo and Co. merged with several other “Pony Express” and stagecoach lines in 1866 to become the unrivaled leader in transportation in the West. When the transcontinental railroad was completed three years later, the company began using railroad to transport its freight. By 1910, its shipping network connected 6,000 locations, from the urban centers of the East and the farming towns of the Midwest to the ranching and mining centers of Texas and California and the lumber mills of the Pacific Northwest.

After splitting from the freight business in 1905, the banking branch of the company merged with the Nevada National Bank and established new headquarters in San Francisco. During World War I, the U.S. government nationalized the company’s shipping routes and combined them with the railroads into the American Railway Express, effectively putting an end to Wells, Fargo and Co. as a transportation and delivery business. The following April, the banking headquarters was destroyed in a major earthquake, but the vaults remained intact and the bank’s business continued to grow. After two later mergers, the Wells Fargo Bank American Trust Company–shortened to the Wells Fargo Bank in 1962–became, and has remained, one of the biggest banking institutions in the United States.
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Today in History March 19
1687 The French explorer La Salle is murdered by his own men while searching for the mouth of the Mississippi, along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico.
1702 On the death of William III of Orange, Anne Stuart, sister of Mary, succeeds to the throne of England, Scotland and Ireland.
1822 Boston is incorporated as a city.
1879 Jim Currie opens fire on the actors Maurice Barrymore and Ben Porter near Marshall, Texas. His shots wound Barrymore and kill Porter.
1903 The U.S. Senate ratifies the Cuban treaty, gaining naval bases in Guantanamo and Bahia Honda.
1916 The First Aero Squadron takes off from Columbus, NM to join Gen. John J. Pershing and his Punitive Expedition against Pancho Villa in Mexico.
1917 The Adamson Act, eight hour day for railroad workers, is ruled constitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court.
1918 Congress authorizes Daylight Savings Time.
1920 The U.S. Senate rejects the Versailles Treaty for the second time.
1924 U.S. troops are rushed to Tegucigalpa as rebel forces take the Honduran capital.
1931 The state of Nevada legalizes gambling.
1935 The British fire on 20,000 Muslims in India, killing 23.
1936 The Soviet Union signs a pact of assistance with Mongolia against Japan.
1944 The German 352nd Infantry Division deploys along the coast of France.
1945 Adolf Hitler orders a scorched-earth policy for his retreating German armies in the west and east.
1947 Chiang Kai-Shek's government forces take control of Yenan, the former headquarters of the Chinese Communist Party.
1949 The Soviet People's Council signs the constitution of the German Democratic Republic, and declares that the North Atlantic Treaty is merely a war weapon.
1963 In Costa Rica, President John F. Kennedy and six Latin American presidents pledge to fight Communism.
1981 One technician is killed and two others are injured during a routine test on space shuttle Columbia.


Born on March 19
1589 William Bradford, governor of Plymouth colony for 30 years.
1721 Tobias George Smollett, satirical author and physician (Roderick Random, Humphrey Clinker).
1813 David Livingston, explorer found by Henry Stanley in Africa.
1821 Sir Richard Burton, English explorer.
1848 Wyatt Earp, U.S. marshal.
1849 Alfred von Tirpitz, Prussian admiral who commanded the German fleet in early World War I.
1860 William Jennings Bryan, orator, statesman, known as "The Great Communicator."
1889 Sarah Gertrude Millina, South African writer (The Dark River, God's Stepchildren).
1891 Earl Warren, governor of California, later 14th Supreme Court Chief Justice.
1904 John J. Sirica, U.S. Federal Judge who ruled on Watergate issues.
1906 Adolf Eichman, Nazi Gestapo officer.
1912 Adolf Galland, German Luftwaffe pilot.
1925 Brent Scrowcroft, Lt. Gen. (USAF), National Security Advisor to President George H.W. Bush.
1933 Phillip Roth, American novelist and short-story writer (Portnoy's Complaint).

Lead Story
2003
War in Iraq begins

On this day in 2003, the United States, along with coalition forces primarily from the United Kingdom, initiates war on Iraq. Just after explosions began to rock Baghdad, Iraq’s capital, U.S. President George W. Bush announced in a televised address, “At this hour, American and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq, to free its people and to defend the world from grave danger.” President Bush and his advisors built much of their case for war on the idea that Iraq, under dictator Saddam Hussein, possessed or was in the process of building weapons of mass destruction.

Hostilities began about 90 minutes after the U.S.-imposed deadline for Saddam Hussein to leave Iraq or face war passed. The first targets, which Bush said were “of military importance,” were hit with Tomahawk cruise missiles from U.S. fighter-bombers and warships stationed in the Persian Gulf. In response to the attacks, Republic of Iraq radio in Baghdad announced, “the evil ones, the enemies of God, the homeland and humanity, have committed the stupidity of aggression against our homeland and people.”

Though Saddam Hussein had declared in early March 2003 that, “it is without doubt that the faithful will be victorious against aggression,” he went into hiding soon after the American invasion, speaking to his people only through an occasional audiotape. Coalition forces were able to topple his regime and capture Iraq’s major cities in just three weeks, sustaining few casualties. President Bush declared the end of major combat operations on May 1, 2003. Despite the defeat of conventional military forces in Iraq, an insurgency has continued an intense guerrilla war in the nation in the years since military victory was announced, resulting in thousands of coalition military, insurgent and civilian deaths.

After an intense manhunt, U.S. soldiers found Saddam Hussein hiding in a six-to-eight-foot deep hole, nine miles outside his hometown of Tikrit. He did not resist and was uninjured during the arrest. A soldier at the scene described him as “a man resigned to his fate.” Hussein was arrested and began trial for crimes against his people, including mass killings, in October 2005.

In June 2004, the provisional government in place since soon after Saddam’s ouster transferred power to the Iraqi Interim Government. In January 2005, the Iraqi people elected a 275-member Iraqi National Assembly. A new constitution for the country was ratified that October. On November 6, 2006, Saddam Hussein was found guilty of crimes against humanity and sentenced to death by hanging. After an unsuccessful appeal, he was executed on December 30, 2006.

No weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq.
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1413 Henry IV of England is succeed by his son Henry V.
1739 In India, Nadir Shah of Persia occupies Delhi and takes possession of the Peacock throne.
1760 The Great Fire of Boston destroys 349 buildings.
1792 In Paris, the Legislative Assembly approves the use of the guillotine.
1815 Napoleon Bonaparte enters Paris and begins his 100-day rule.
1841 Edgar Allan Poe's The Murders in the Rue Morgue, considered the first detective story, is published.
1852 Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin is published.
1906 Army officers in Russia mutiny at Sevastopol.
1915 The French call off the Champagne offensive on the Western Front.
1918 The Bolsheviks of the Soviet Union ask for American aid to rebuild their army.
1922 President Warren G. Harding orders U.S. troops back from the Rhineland.
1932 The German dirigible, Graf Zepplin, makes the first flight to South America on regular schedule.
1939 President Franklin D. Roosevelt names William O. Douglas to the Supreme Court.
1940 The British Royal Air Force conducts an all-night air raid on the Nazi airbase at Sylt, Germany.
1943 The Allies attack Field Marshall Erwin Rommel's forces on the Mareth Line in North Africa.
1965 President Lyndon B. Johnson orders 4,000 troops to protect the Selma-Montgomery civil rights marchers.
1969 Senator Edward Kennedy calls on the United States to close all bases in Taiwan.
1976 Patty Hearst is convicted of armed robbery.
1982 U.S. scientists return from Antarctica with the first land mammal fossils found there.
1987 The United State approves AZT, a drug that is proven to slow the progress of AIDS.


Born on March 20
43BC Ovid, Roman poet.
1811 Napoleon II, son of Napoleon Bonaparte, Duke of Reichstadt.
1828 Henrik Ibsen, Norwegian dramatist (Peer Gynt, Hedda Gabler).
1904 B.F. Skinner, American psychologist.
1917 Dame Vera Lynn , British singer.
1922 Raymond Walter Goulding, Radio comedian of Bob and Ray fame.
1925 John Ehrlichman, White House advisor to President Nixon.
1928 Fred Rogers, television performer (Mr. Roger's Neighborhood).




1854
Republican Party founded

In Ripon, Wisconsin, former members of the Whig Party meet to establish a new party to oppose the spread of slavery into the western territories. The Whig Party, which was formed in 1834 to oppose the “tyranny” of President Andrew Jackson, had shown itself incapable of coping with the national crisis over slavery.

With the successful introduction of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill of 1854, an act that dissolved the terms of the Missouri Compromise and allowed slave or free status to be decided in the territories by popular sovereignty, the Whigs disintegrated. By February 1854, anti-slavery Whigs had begun meeting in the upper midwestern states to discuss the formation of a new party. One such meeting, in Wisconsin on March 20, 1854, is generally remembered as the founding meeting of the Republican Party.

The Republicans rapidly gained supporters in the North, and in 1856 their first presidential candidate, John C. Fremont, won 11 of the 16 Northern states. By 1860, the majority of the Southern slave states were publicly threatening secession if the Republicans won the presidency. In November 1860, Republican Abraham Lincoln was elected president over a divided Democratic Party, and six weeks later South Carolina formally seceded from the Union. Within six more weeks, five other Southern states had followed South Carolina’s lead, and in April 1861 the Civil War began when Confederate shore batteries under General P.G.T. Beauregard opened fire on Fort Sumter in South Carolina’s Charleston Bay.

The Civil War firmly identified the Republican Party as the party of the victorious North, and after the war the Republican-dominated Congress forced a “Radical Reconstruction” policy on the South, which saw the passage of the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments to the Constitution and the granting of equal rights to all Southern citizens. By 1876, the Republican Party had lost control of the South, but it continued to dominate the presidency until the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933.
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630 Heraclius restores the True Cross, which he has recaptured from the Persians.
1556 Thomas Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury, is burned at the stake at Oxford after retracting the last of seven recantations that same day.
1617 Pocahontas (Rebecca Rolfe) dies of either small pox or pneumonia while in England with her husband, John Rolfe.
1788 Almost the entire city of New Orleans, Louisiana, is destroyed by fire.
1806 Lewis and Clark begin their trip home after an 8,000 mile trek of the Mississippi basin and the Pacific Coast.
1865 The Battle of Bentonville, N.C. ends, marking the last Confederate attempt to stop Union General William Sherman.
1851 Emperor Tu Duc orders that Christian priests are to put to death.
1858 British forces in India lift the siege of Lucknow, ending the Indian Mutiny.
1906 Ohio passes a law that prohibits hazing by fraternities.
1908 Frenchman Henri Farman carries a passenger in a bi-plane for the first time.
1910 The U.S. Senate grants ex-President Teddy Roosevelt an annual pension of $10,000.
1918 The Germans launch the 'Michael' offensive, better remembered as the First Battle of the Somme.
1928 President Calvin Coolidge presents the Congressional Medal of Honor to Charles Lindbergh, a captain in the US Army Air Corps Reserve, for making the first solo trans-Atlantic flight. On June 11, 1927, Lindbergh had received the first Distinguished Flying Cross ever awarded.
1939 Singer Kate Smith records "God Bless America" for Victor Records.
1941 The last Italian post in East Libya, North Africa, falls to the British.
1951 Secretary of Defense George C. Marshall reports that the U.S. military has doubled to 2.9 million since the start of the Korean War.
1963 Alcatraz Island, the federal penitentiary in San Francisco Bay, California, closes.
1965 The United States launches Ranger 9, last in a series of unmanned lunar explorations.
1971 Two U.S. platoons in Vietnam refuse their orders to advance.
1975 As North Vietnamese forces advance, Hue and other northern towns in South Vietnam are evacuated.
1980 President Jimmy Carter announces to the U.S. Olympic Team that they will not participate in the 1980 Summer Games in Moscow as a boycott against Soviet intervention in Afghanistan.
1984 A Soviet submarine crashes into the USS Kitty Hawk off the coast of Japan.


Born on March 21
1685 Johann Sebastian Bach, German composer.
1806 Benito Juarez, President of Mexico.
1869 Albert Kahn, architect who originated modern factory design.
1869 Florenz Ziegfeld, producer, creator of Ziegfeld Follies.
1885 Raoul Lufbery, French-born American fighter pilot of World War I.




Crime
1963
Alcatraz closes its doors

Alcatraz Prison in San Francisco Bay closes down and transfers its last prisoners. At it’s peak period of use in 1950s, “The Rock, or “”America’s Devil Island” housed over 200 inmates at the maximum-security facility. Alcatraz remains an icon of American prisons for its harsh conditions and record for being inescapable.
The twelve-acre rocky island, one and a half miles from San Francisco, featured the most advanced security of the time. Some of the first metal detectors were used at Alcatraz. Strict rules were enforced against the unfortunate inmates who had to do time at Alcatraz. Nearly complete silence was mandated at all times.
Alcatraz was first explored by Juan Manuel de Ayala in 1775, who called it Isla de los Alcatraces (Pelicans) because of all the birds that lived there. It was sold in 1849 to the U.S. government. The first lighthouse in California was on Alcatraz. It became a Civil War fort and then a military prison in 1907.
The end of its prison days did not end the Alcatraz saga. In March 1964, a group of Sioux claimed that the island belonged to them due to a 100-year-old treaty. Their claims were ignored until November 1969 when a group of eighty-nine Native Americans representing the American Indian Movement (AIM) occupied the island. They stayed there until 1971 when AIM was finally forced off the island by federal authorities.

The following year, Alcatraz was added to the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. It is now open for tourism.
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1622 Indians attack a group of colonists in the James River area of Virginia, killing 350 residents.
1630 The first legislation prohibiting gambling is enacted in Boston.
1664 Charles II gives large tracts of land from west of the Connecticut River to the east of Delaware Bay in North America to his brother James, the Duke of York.
1719 Frederick William abolishes serfdom on crown property in Prussia.
1765 The Stamp Act is passed, the first direct British tax on the American colonists.
1775 British statesman Edmund Burke makes a speech in the House of Commons, urging the government to adopt a policy of reconciliation with America.
1790 Thomas Jefferson becomes the first U.S. Secretary of State.
1794 Congress passes laws prohibiting slave trade with foreign countries although slavery remains legal in the United States.
1834 Horace Greeley publishes New Yorker, a weekly literary and news magazine and forerunner of Harold Ross' more successful The New Yorker.
1901 Japan proclaims that it is determined to keep Russia from encroaching on Korea.
1904 The first color photograph is published in the London Daily Illustrated Mirror.
1907 Russians troops complete the evacuation of Manchuria in the face of advancing Japanese forces.
1915 A German Zepplin makes a night raid on Paris railway stations.
1919 The first international airline service is inaugurated on a weekly schedule between Paris and Brussels.
1933 President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs a bill legalizing the sale and possession of beer and wine.
1935 Persia is renamed Iran.
1946 First U.S. built rocket to leave the Earth's atmosphere reaches a 50-mile height.
1948 The United States announces a land reform plan for Korea.
1954 The London gold market reopens for the first time since 1939.
1968 President Lyndon Johnson names General William Westmoreland as Army Chief of Staff.
1972 The U.S. Senate passes the Equal Rights Amendment. The amendment fails to achieve ratification.
1974 The Viet Cong propose a new truce with the United States and South Vietnam, which includes general elections.
1990 A jury in Anchorage, Alaska, finds Captain Hazelwood not guilty in the Valdez oil spill.


Born on March 22
1599 Sir Anthony Van Dyck, Flemish artist, the namesake of the beard style.
1797 Wilhelm I, German emperor (1871-88)
1846 Randolph Caldecott, illustrator.
1907 James Gavin, U.S. Army general of the 82nd Airborne Division in WWII.
1908 Louis L'Amour, American Western novelist.
1923 Marcel Marceau, French mime.
1930 Stephen Sondheim, American composer and lyricist (A Little Night Music, Passion).
1948 Andrew Lloyd Webber, British composer (The Phantom of the Opera, Cats)



Old West
1908
Louis L’Amour born

Louis L’Amour, the prolific author of scores of bestselling western novels, is born in Jamestown, North Dakota.

An indifferent student, L’Amour dropped out of high school at age 15. Over the next two decades, he traveled around the world working in an amazing variety of jobs. At various times, he tried his hand at being a cowboy, seaman, longshoreman, prizefighter, miner, and fruit picker. During World War II, L’Amour served time in Europe as an officer in the tanks corps.
After returning from the war, L’Amour began writing short stories and novels. His spare, flinty style caught the eyes of several editors, and L’Amour began to make a living as a writer. His big break came when a novel he wrote at the age of 46 became the basis for the popular John Wayne movie Hondo. Although L’Amour had not set out to become a writer of Westerns, he began producing more of what readers and editors clearly wanted. He wrote several other screenplay/novels, including the epic 1962 movie, How the West Was Won. By the mid-1970s, he had written 62 books, most of them Westerns.
L’Amour’s best-loved novels feature three pioneering families: the Sacketts, the Chantrys, and the Talons. L’Amour produced convincing and moving historical novels that spanned centuries and celebrated the strength and spirit of the American West. Most of his books also feature rough-hewn but intelligent men. “When you open a rough, hard country,” L’Amour once said, “you don’t open it with a lot of pantywaists.” In the tradition of classic Westerns like Owen Wister’s The Virginian, women primarily serve as love interests in need of protection.

Using extensive historical research to ensure authenticity, L’Amour avoided many of the simplistic cliches and racist stereotypes of earlier Westerns. Although he occasionally cast Indians as villains, he also offered sympathetic portraits that reflected an understanding and sympathy for different cultures and history.

Although he had written 108 books by the time he died in 1988, L’Amour considered himself a serious author and blamed the lack of critical respect on the fact that his books were Westerns. Still, having sold more than 225 million copies of his novels, L’Amour was one of the most popular and influential western authors of the 20th century. In recognition of his vivid depictions of America’s past, Congress awarded him the Congressional Gold Medal in 1983.
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Re: Today in history

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Today in History March 23
1657 France and England form an alliance against Spain.
1743 Handel's Messiah is performed for the first time in London.
1775 American revolutionary hero Patrick Henry, while addressing the House of Burgesses, declares "give me liberty, or give me death!"
1791 Etta Palm, a Dutch champion of woman's rights, sets up a group of women's clubs called the Confederation of the Friends of Truth.
1848 Hungary proclaims its independence of Austria.
1857 Elisha Otis installs the first modern passenger elevator in a public building, at the corner of Broome Street and Broadway in New York City.
1858 Eleazer A. Gardner of Philadelphia patents the cable street car, which runs on overhead cables.
1862 Confederate General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson faces his only defeat at the Battle of Kernstown, Va
1880 John Stevens of Neenah, Wis., patents the grain crushing mill. This mill allows flour production to increase by 70 percent.
1901 A group of U.S. Army soldiers, led by Brigadier General Frederick Funston, capture Emilio Aguinaldo, the leader of the Philippine Insurrection of 1899.
1903 The Wright brothers obtain an airplane patent.
1909 British Lt. Ernest Shackleton finds the magnetic South Pole.
1909 Theodore Roosevelt begins an African safari sponsored by the Smithsonian Institution and National Geographic Society.
1917 Austrian Emperor Charles I makes a peace proposal to French President Poincare.
1920 Great Britain denounces the United States because of its delay in joining the League of Nations.
1921 Arthur G. Hamilton sets a new parachute record, safely jumping 24,400 feet.
1927 Captain Hawthorne Gray sets a new balloon record soaring to 28,510 feet.
1933 The Reichstag gives Adolf Hitler the power to rule by decree.
1942 The Japanese occupy the Anadaman Islands in the Indian Ocean.
1951 U.S. paratroopers descend from flying boxcars in a surprise attack in Korea.
1956 Pakistan becomes the first Islamic republic, although it is still within the British Commonwealth.
1967 Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. calls the Vietnam War the biggest obstacle to the civil rights movement.
1970 Mafia boss Carlo Gambino is arrested for plotting to steal $3 million.
1972 The United States calls a halt to the peace talks on Vietnam being held in Paris.
1981 U.S. Supreme Court upholds a law making statutory rape a crime for men but not women.


Born on March 23
1900 Erich Fromm, German psychologist (The Sane Society).
1907 Daniel Bovet, Swiss-born Italian pharmacologist and Nobel Prize Winner.
1908 Joan Crawford, American actress.
1910 Akira Kurosawa, film director (Rashomon, The Seven Samurai).
1912 Werner von Braun, German-born rocket pioneer.
1929 Sir Roger Bannister, the first man to run the mile in less than four minutes.



Disaster
1913
Tornadoes devastate Nebraska

A horrible month for weather-related disasters in the United States culminates with a devastating tornado ripping through Nebraska, near Omaha, on this day in 1913. It was the worst of five twisters that struck that day in Nebraska and Iowa, killing 115 people in total.

The week prior to this disaster saw all types of calamitous weather strike throughout the country. Blizzards hit the Northeast while hurricane-strength winds were battering Alabama and Georgia. In Florida, a late freeze devastated much of the citrus crop. But the worst weather came in Nebraska on the afternoon of March 23.
Rain began falling at 5 p.m., southwest of Omaha. Twenty minutes later, the first tornado touched down in Craig, Nebraska. At 5:30, another twister hit the town of Ithaca and began a 70-mile run through the countryside. In Yutan, a woman was reported to have been carried a full quarter-mile in her home before coming down unharmed.
It was the third tornado that did the most damage. It began near Ashland, 65 miles from Omaha. The people of Omaha believed that due to the location of the city, separated from the flatlands of the Nebraska plains, they were protected from tornadoes. On March 23, this belief was proven to be mistaken. The tornado roared and cut through the city for 12 minutes. Witnesses reported seeing houses explode or collapse in seconds. Seven people at the Idlewild Pool Hall were killed when they were struck by a pool table thrown violently into the air. Fires broke out all over the city, forcing the delivery of electricity to be discontinued. Lanterns were needed to guide rescue workers. Fortunately, the heavy rains put out most of the fires.

Meanwhile, another twister traveled from Berlin, Nebraska, into Iowa, killing 26 people total in both states. Within two days, heavy snow hit the area, complicating clean-up efforts. Overall, 115 people were killed, hundreds of homes were demolished and millions of dollars in damages were incurred by the tornadoes. The next deadly tornado in Omaha did not strike until 1975.
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Re: Today in history

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Today in History March 24
1208 King John of England opposes Innocent III on his nomination for archbishop of Canterbury.
1603 Queen Elizabeth I dies which will bring into power James VI of Scotland.
1663 Charles II of England awards land known as Carolina in North America to eight members of the nobility who assisted in his restoration.
1664 In London, Roger Williams is granted a charter to colonize Rhode Island.
1720 The banking houses of Paris close in the wake of financial crisis.
1721 In Germany, the supremely talented Johann Sebastian Bach publishes the Six Brandenburg Concertos.
1765 Britain passes the Quartering Act, requiring the colonies to house 10,000 British troops in public and private buildings.
1862 Abolitionist Wendell Phillips speaks to a crowd about emancipation in Cincinnati, Ohio and is pelted by eggs.
1900 Mayor Van Wyck of New York breaks ground for the New York subway tunnel that will link Manhattan and Brooklyn.
1904 Vice Admiral Togo sinks seven Russian ships as the Japanese strengthen their blockade of Port Arthur.
1927 Chinese Communists seize Nanking and break with Chiang Kai-shek over the Nationalist goals.
1938 The United States asks that all powers help refugees fleeing from the Nazis.
1944 The Gestapo rounds up innocent Italians in Rome and shoots them to death in reprisal for a bomb attack that killed 33 German policemen.
1947 Congress proposes limiting the United States presidency to two terms.
1951 General Douglas MacArthur threatens the Chinese with an extension of the Korean War if the proposed truce is not accepted.
1954 Great Britain opens trade talks with Hungary.
1955 Tennessee Williams' play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof opens at the Morosco Theatre in New York City.
1958 Elvis Presley trades in his guitar for a rifle and Army fatigues.
1965 The Freedom Marchers, citizens for civil rights, reach Montgomery, Alabama.
1967 Viet Cong ambush a truck convoy in South Vietnam damaging 82 of the 121 trucks.
1972 Great Britain imposes direct rule over Northern Ireland.
1985 Thousands demonstrate in Madrid against the NATO presence in Spain.
1989 The Exxon Valdez oil tanker spills 240,000 barrels of oil in Alaska's Prince William Sound.
1999 NATO planes, including stealth aircraft, attack Serbian forces in Kosovo.


Born on March 24
1755 Rufus King, framer of the U.S. Constitution.
1834 William Morris, English craftsman, poet and socialist.
1855 Andrew Mellon, U.S. financier and philanthropist.
1874 Harry Houdini, magician, escape artist.
1886 Edward Weston, photographer.
1893 George Sisler, baseball player.
1895 Arthur Murray, American dancer who founded dance schools.
1902 Thomas E. Dewey, New York governor.
1903 Adolf Butenandt, biochemist.
1919 Lawrence Ferlinghetti, 'beat' poet.
1926 Dario Fo, Italian actor and playwright.
1941 Joseph H. Taylor, Jr., radio astronomer and physicist.


Lead Story
1989
Exxon Valdez runs aground

One of the worst oil spills in U.S. territory begins when the supertanker Exxon Valdez, owned and operated by the Exxon Corporation, runs aground on a reef in Prince William Sound in southern Alaska. An estimated 11 million gallons of oil eventually spilled into the water. Attempts to contain the massive spill were unsuccessful, and wind and currents spread the oil more than 100 miles from its source, eventually polluting more than 700 miles of coastline. Hundreds of thousands of birds and animals were adversely affected by the environmental disaster.
It was later revealed that Joseph Hazelwood, the captain of the Valdez, was drinking at the time of the accident and allowed an uncertified officer to steer the massive vessel. In March 1990, Hazelwood was convicted of misdemeanor negligence, fined $50,000, and ordered to perform 1,000 hours of community service. In July 1992, an Alaska court overturned Hazelwood’s conviction, citing a federal statute that grants freedom from prosecution to those who report an oil spill.
Exxon itself was condemned by the National Transportation Safety Board and in early 1991 agreed under pressure from environmental groups to pay a penalty of $100 million and provide $1 billion over a 10-year period for the cost of the cleanup. However, later in the year, both Alaska and Exxon rejected the agreement, and in October 1991 the oil giant settled the matter by paying $25 million, less than 4 percent of the cleanup aid promised by Exxon earlier that year.
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Re: Today in history

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Today in History March 25
708 Constantine begins his reign as Catholic Pope.
1634 Lord Baltimore founds the Catholic colony of Maryland.
1655 Puritans jail Governor Stone after a military victory over Catholic forces in the colony of Maryland.
1668 The first horse race in America takes place.
1776 The Continental Congress authorizes a medal for General George Washington.
1807 British Parliament abolishes the slave trade.
1813 The frigate USS Essex flies the first U.S. flag in battle in the Pacific.
1865 Confederate forces capture Fort Stedman, during the siege of Petersburg, Va.
1879 Japan invades the kingdom of Liuqiu (Ryukyu) Islands, formerly a vassal of China.
1905 Rebel battle flags that were captured during the American Civil War are returned to the South.
1911 A fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company, a sweatshop in New York City, claims the lives of 146 workers.
1915 The first submarine disaster occurs when a U.S. F-4 sinks off the Hawaiian coast.
1919 The Paris Peace Commission adopts a plan to protect nations from the influx of foreign labor.
1931 Fifty people are killed in riots that break out in India. Mahatma Gandhi was one of many people assaulted.
1940 The United States agrees to give Britain and France access to all American warplanes.
1941 Yugoslavia joins the Axis powers.
1953 The USS Missouri fires on targets at Kojo, North Korea, the last time her guns fire until the Persian Gulf War of 1992.
1954 RCA manufactures its first color TV set and begins mass production.
1957 The European Common Market Treaty is signed in Rome. The goal is to create a common market for all products--especially coal and steel.
1965 Martin Luther King Jr. leads a group of 25,000 to the state capital in Montgomery, Ala.
1969 John Lennon and Yoko Ono stage a bed-in for peace in Amsterdam.
1970 The Concorde makes its first supersonic flight.
1975 Hue is lost and Da Nang is endangered by North Vietnamese forces. The United States orders a refugee airlift to remove those in danger.
1981 The U.S. Embassy in San Salvador is damaged when gunmen attack, firing rocket propelled grenades and machine guns.
1986 President Ronald Reagan orders emergency aid for the Honduran army. U.S. helicopters take Honduran troops to the Nicaraguan border.


Born on March 25
1767 Joachim Murat, Napoleon's brother-in-law who became King of Naples in 1808.
1797 John Winebrenner, U.S. clergyman who founded the Church of God.
1839 William Bell Wait, educator of the blind.
1867 Gutzon Borglum, sculptor of Mount Rushmore.
1868 Arturo Toscanini, Italian conductor.
1906 Alan John Percivale Taylor, English historian.
1908 David Lean, British film director (Bridge on the River Kwai, Lawrence of Arabia).
1925 (Mary) Flannery O'Connor, novelist and short story writer.
1934 Gloria Steinem, political activist, editor.
1942 Aretha Franklin, American singer, the "Queen of Soul."




Lead Story
1911
Triangle Shirtwaist Fire in New York City

In one of the darkest moments of America’s industrial history, the Triangle Shirtwaist Company factory in New York City burns down, killing 145 workers, on this day in 1911. The tragedy led to the development of a series of laws and regulations that better protected the safety of factory workers.

The Triangle factory, owned by Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, was located in the top three floors of the 10-story Asch Building in downtown Manhattan. It was a sweatshop in every sense of the word: a cramped space lined with work stations and packed with poor immigrant workers, mostly teenaged women who did not speak English. At the time of the fire, there were four elevators with access to the factory floors, but only one was fully operational and it could hold only 12 people at a time. There were two stairways down to the street, but one was locked from the outside to prevent theft by the workers and the other opened inward only. The fire escape, as all would come to see, was shoddily constructed, and could not support the weight of more than a few women at a time.

Blanck and Harris already had a suspicious history of factory fires. The Triangle factory was twice scorched in 1902, while their Diamond Waist Company factory burned twice, in 1907 and in 1910. It seems that Blanck and Harris deliberately torched their workplaces before business hours in order to collect on the large fire-insurance policies they purchased, a not uncommon practice in the early 20th century. While this was not the cause of the 1911 fire, it contributed to the tragedy, as Blanck and Harris refused to install sprinkler systems and take other safety measures in case they needed to burn down their shops again.

Added to this delinquency were Blanck and Harris’ notorious anti-worker policies. Their employees were paid a mere $15 a week, despite working 12 hours a day, every day. When the International Ladies Garment Workers Union led a strike in 1909 demanding higher pay and shorter and more predictable hours, Blanck and Harris’ company was one of the few manufacturers who resisted, hiring police as thugs to imprison the striking women, and paying off politicians to look the other way.

On March 25, a Saturday afternoon, there were 600 workers at the factory when a fire broke out in a rag bin on the eighth floor. The manager turned the fire hose on it, but the hose was rotted and its valve was rusted shut. Panic ensued as the workers fled to every exit. The elevator broke down after only four trips, and women began jumping down the shaft to their deaths. Those who fled down the wrong set of stairs were trapped inside and burned alive. Other women trapped on the eighth floor began jumping out the windows, which created a problem for the firefighters whose hoses were crushed by falling bodies. Also, the firefighters’ ladders stretched only as high as the seventh floor, and their safety nets were not strong enough to catch the women, who were jumping three at a time.

Blanck and Harris were on the building’s top floor with some workers when the fire broke out. They were able to escape by climbing onto the roof and hopping to an adjoining building.

The fire was out within half an hour, but not before 49 workers had been killed by the fire, and another 100 or so were piled up dead in the elevator shaft or on the sidewalk. The workers’ union organized a march on April 5 to protest the conditions that led to the fire; it was attended by 80,000 people.

Though Blanck and Harris were put on trial for manslaughter, they managed to get off scot-free. Still, the massacre for which they were responsible did finally compel the city to enact reform. In addition to the Sullivan-Hoey Fire Prevention Law passed that October, the New York Democratic set took up the cause of the worker and became known as a reform party.
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Re: Today in history

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Today in History March 29
1461 The armies of two kings, Henry VI and Edward IV, collide at Towton.
1638 A permanent European colony is established in present-day Delaware.
1827 Composer Ludwig van Beethoven is buried in Vienna amidst a crowd of over 10,000 mourners.
1847 U.S. troops under General Winfield Scott take possession of the Mexican stronghold at Vera Cruz.
1867 The United States purchases Alaska from Russia for $7.2 million dollars.
1879 British troops of the 90th Light Infantry Regiment repulse a major attack by Zulu tribesmen in northwest Zululand.
1886 Coca-Cola goes on sale for the first time at a drugstore in Atlanta. Its inventor, Dr. John Pemberton, claims it can cure anything from hysteria to the common cold.
1903 A regular news service begins between New York and London on Marconi's wireless.
1913 The German government announces a raise in taxes in order to finance the new military budget.
1916 The Italians call off the fifth attack on Isonzo.
1936 Italy firebombs the Ethiopian city of Harar.
1941 The British sink five Italian warships off the Peloponnesus coast in the Mediterranean.
1951 The Chinese reject Gen. Douglas MacArthur's offer for a truce in Korea.
1951 Rodgers and Hammerstein's musical The King and I opens on Broadway starring Gertrude Lawrence and Yul Brynner.
1952 President Harry Truman removes himself from the presidential race.
1961 The 23rd amendment, allowing residents of Washington, D.C. to vote for president, is ratified.
1962 Cuba opens the trial of the Bay of Pigs invaders.
1966 Leonid Brezhenev becomes First Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party. He denounces the American policy in Vietnam and calls it one of aggression.
1967 France launches its first nuclear submarine.
1971 Lt. William L. Calley Jr. is found guilty for his actions in the My Lai massacre.
1973 The last U.S. troops withdraw from South Vietnam.
1975 Egyptian president Anwar Sadat declares that he will reopen the Suez Canal on June 5, 1975.
1976 Eight Ohio National Guardsmen are indicted for shooting four Kent State students during an anti-war protest on May 4, 1970.
1986 A court in Rome acquits six men in a plot to kill the Pope.


Born on March 29
1790 John Tyler, 10th President of the United States (1841-1845).
1819 Edwin Drake, drilled the first productive oil well.
1835 Elihu Thomson, the English-born American inventor of electric welding and arc lighting.
1867 Cy Young, major league baseball pitcher with the most wins (509 or 511 total).
1875 Lou Henry Hoover, first lady President Herbert Hoover.
1881 Raymond Hood, architect.
1888 James E. Casey, founder of the United Parcel Service
1910 Helen Wells, author of the Cherry Ames series.
1916 Eugene McCarthy, U.S. senator and presidential candidate.
1918 Pearl Bailey, singer and actress.
1936 Judith Guest, novelist (Ordinary People).





Lead Story
1973
U.S. withdraws from Vietnam

Two months after the signing of the Vietnam peace agreement, the last U.S. combat troops leave South Vietnam as Hanoi frees the remaining American prisoners of war held in North Vietnam. America’s direct eight-year intervention in the Vietnam War was at an end. In Saigon, some 7,000 U.S. Department of Defense civilian employees remained behind to aid South Vietnam in conducting what looked to be a fierce and ongoing war with communist North Vietnam.

In 1961, after two decades of indirect military aid, U.S. President John F. Kennedy sent the first large force of U.S. military personnel to Vietnam to bolster the ineffectual autocratic regime of South Vietnam against the communist North. Three years later, with the South Vietnamese government crumbling, President Lyndon B. Johnson ordered limited bombing raids on North Vietnam, and Congress authorized the use of U.S. troops. By 1965, North Vietnamese offensives left President Johnson with two choices: escalate U.S. involvement or withdraw. Johnson ordered the former, and troop levels soon jumped to more than 300,000 as U.S. air forces commenced the largest bombing campaign in history.

During the next few years, the extended length of the war, the high number of U.S. casualties, and the exposure of U.S. involvement in war crimes, such as the massacre at My Lai, helped turn many in the United States against the Vietnam War. The communists’ Tet Offensive of 1968 crushed U.S. hopes of an imminent end to the conflict and galvanized U.S. opposition to the war. In response, Johnson announced in March 1968 that he would not seek reelection, citing what he perceived to be his responsibility in creating a perilous national division over Vietnam. He also authorized the beginning of peace talks.

In the spring of 1969, as protests against the war escalated in the United States, U.S. troop strength in the war-torn country reached its peak at nearly 550,000 men. Richard Nixon, the new U.S. president, began U.S. troop withdrawal and “Vietnamization” of the war effort that year, but he intensified bombing. Large U.S. troop withdrawals continued in the early 1970s as President Nixon expanded air and ground operations into Cambodia and Laos in attempts to block enemy supply routes along Vietnam’s borders. This expansion of the war, which accomplished few positive results, led to new waves of protests in the United States and elsewhere.

Finally, in January 1973, representatives of the United States, North and South Vietnam, and the Vietcong signed a peace agreement in Paris, ending the direct U.S. military involvement in the Vietnam War. Its key provisions included a cease-fire throughout Vietnam, the withdrawal of U.S. forces, the release of prisoners of war, and the reunification of North and South Vietnam through peaceful means. The South Vietnamese government was to remain in place until new elections were held, and North Vietnamese forces in the South were not to advance further nor be reinforced.

In reality, however, the agreement was little more than a face-saving gesture by the U.S. government. Even before the last American troops departed on March 29, the communists violated the cease-fire, and by early 1974 full-scale war had resumed. At the end of 1974, South Vietnamese authorities reported that 80,000 of their soldiers and civilians had been killed in fighting during the year, making it the most costly of the Vietnam War.

On April 30, 1975, the last few Americans still in South Vietnam were airlifted out of the country as Saigon fell to communist forces. North Vietnamese Colonel Bui Tin, accepting the surrender of South Vietnam later in the day, remarked, “You have nothing to fear; between Vietnamese there are no victors and no vanquished. Only the Americans have been defeated.” The Vietnam War was the longest and most unpopular foreign war in U.S. history and cost 58,000 American lives. As many as two million Vietnamese soldiers and civilians were killed.
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Re: Today in history

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Today in History March 30
1492 King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella sign a decree expelling all Jews from Spain.
1840 "Beau" Brummell, the English dandy and former favorite of the prince regent, dies in a French lunatic asylum for paupers.
1858 Hyman L. Lipman of Philadelphia patents the pencil with an eraser attached on one end.
1867 Russian Baron Stoeckl and U.S. Secretary of State Seward complete the draft of a treaty ceding Alaska to the United States. The treaty is signed the following day.
1870 The 15th amendment, guaranteeing the right to vote regardless of race, passes.
1870 President U.S. Grant signs bill readmitting Texas to the Union, the last Confederate state readmitted.
1885 In Afghanistan, Russian troops inflict a crushing defeat on Afghan forces, despite orders not to fight.
1909 The Queensboro Bridge in New York opens. It is the first double decker bridge and links Manhattan and Queens.
1916 Mexican bandit Pancho Villa kills 172 at the Guerrero garrison in Mexico.
1936 Britain announces a naval construction program of 38 warships. This is the largest construction program in 15 years.
1941 The German Afrika Korps under General Erwin Rommel begins its first offensive against British forces in Libya.
1943 Rodgers and Hammerstein's first collaboration, Oklahoma, opens on Broadway.
1944 The U.S. fleet attacks Palau, near the Philippines.
1945 The Red Army advances into Austria.
1946 The Allies seize 1,000 Nazis attempting to revive the Nazi party in Frankfurt.
1950 President Harry S Truman denounces Senator Joe McCarthy as a saboteur of U.S. foreign policy.
1957 Tunisia and Morocco sign a friendship treaty in Rabat.
1972 Hanoi launches its heaviest attack in four years, crossing the DMZ.
1975 As the North Vietnamese forces move toward Saigon, desperate South Vietnamese soldiers mob rescue jets.
1981 President Ronald Reagan is shot and wounded in Washington, D.C. by John W. Hinckley Jr.
1987 Vincent Van Gogh's Sunflowers is bought for $39.85 million.


Born on March 30
1719 Sir John Hawkins, author of the first history of music.
1820 Anna Sewell, English novelist (Black Beauty).
1853 Vincent Van Gogh, Dutch impressionist artist.
1880 Sean O'Casey, Irish playwright.
1883 Jo Davidson, American sculptor.






Lead Story

President Reagan shot
1981, President Ronald Reagan is shot in the chest outside a Washington, D.C., hotel by a deranged drifter named John Hinckley Jr.

The president had just finished addressing a labor meeting at the Washington Hilton Hotel and was walking with his entourage to his limousine when Hinckley, standing among a group of reporters, fired six shots at the president, hitting Reagan and three of his attendants. White House Press Secretary James Brady was shot in the head and critically wounded, Secret Service agent Timothy McCarthy was shot in the side, and District of Columbia policeman Thomas Delahaney was shot in the neck. After firing the shots, Hinckley was overpowered and pinned against a wall, and President Reagan, apparently unaware that he’d been shot, was shoved into his limousine by a Secret Service agent and rushed to the hospital.

The president was shot in the left lung, and the .22 caliber bullet just missed his heart. In an impressive feat for a 70-year-old man with a collapsed lung, he walked into George Washington University Hospital under his own power. As he was treated and prepared for surgery, he was in good spirits and quipped to his wife, Nancy, ”Honey, I forgot to duck,” and to his surgeons, “Please tell me you’re Republicans.” Reagan’s surgery lasted two hours, and he was listed in stable and good condition afterward.

The next day, the president resumed some of his executive duties and signed a piece of legislation from his hospital bed. On April 11, he returned to the White House. Reagan’s popularity soared after the assassination attempt, and at the end of April he was given a hero’s welcome by Congress. In August, this same Congress passed his controversial economic program, with several Democrats breaking ranks to back Reagan’s plan. By this time, Reagan claimed to be fully recovered from the assassination attempt. In private, however, he would continue to feel the effects of the nearly fatal gunshot wound for years.

Of the victims of the assassination attempt, Secret Service agent Timothy McCarthy and D.C. policeman Thomas Delahaney eventually recovered. James Brady, who nearly died after being shot in the eye, suffered permanent brain damage. He later became an advocate of gun control, and in 1993 Congress passed the “Brady Bill,” which established a five-day waiting period and background checks for prospective gun buyers. President Bill Clinton signed the bill into law.

After being arrested on March 30, 1981, 25-year-old John Hinckley was booked on federal charges of attempting to assassinate the president. He had previously been arrested in Tennessee on weapons charges. In June 1982, he was found not guilty by reason of insanity. In the trial, Hinckley’s defense attorneys argued that their client was ill with narcissistic personality disorder, citing medical evidence, and had a pathological obsession with the 1976 film Taxi Driver, in which the main character attempts to assassinate a fictional senator. His lawyers claimed that Hinckley saw the movie more than a dozen times, was obsessed with the lead actress, Jodie Foster, and had attempted to reenact the events of the film in his own life. Thus the movie, not Hinckley, they argued, was the actual planning force behind the events that occurred on March 30, 1981.

The verdict of “not guilty by reason of insanity” aroused widespread public criticism, and many were shocked that a would-be presidential assassin could avoid been held accountable for his crime. However, because of his obvious threat to society, he was placed in St. Elizabeth’s Hospital, a mental institution. In the late 1990s, Hinckley’s attorney began arguing that his mental illness was in remission and thus had a right to return to a normal life. Beginning in August 1999, he was allowed supervised day trips off the hospital grounds and later was allowed to visit his parents once a week unsupervised. The Secret Service voluntarily monitors him during these outings. If his mental illness remains in remission, he may one day be released.
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Re: Today in history

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Today in History March 31
1282 The great massacre of the French in Sicily The Sicilian Vespers comes to an end.
1547 In France, Francis--king since 1515--dies and is succeeded by his son Henry II.
1776 Abigail Adams writes to husband John that women are "determined to foment a rebellion" if the new Declaration of Independence fails to guarantee their rights.
1779 Russia and Turkey sign a treaty by which they promise to take no military action in the Crimea.
1790 In Paris, France, Maximilien Robespierre is elected president of the Jacobin Club.
1836 The first monthly installment of The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens is published in London.
1862 Skirmishing between Rebels and Union forces takes place at Island 10 on the Mississippi River.
1880 The first electric street lights ever installed by a municipality are turned on in Wabash, Indiana.
1889 The Eiffel Tower in Paris officially opens on the Left Bank as part of the Exhibition of 1889.
1916 General John Pershing and his army rout Pancho Villa's army in Mexico.
1917 The United States purchases the Virgin Islands from Denmark for $25 million.
1918 Daylight Savings Time goes into effect throughout the United States for the first time.
1921 Great Britain declares a state of emergency because of the thousands of coal miners on strike.
1933 To relieve rampant unemployment, Congress authorizes the Civilian Conservation Corps .
1939 Britain and France agree to support Poland if Germany threatens to invade.
1940 La Guardia airport in New York officially opens to the public.
1941 Germany begins a counter offensive in North Africa.
1945 The United States and Britain bar a Soviet supported provisional regime in Warsaw from entering the U.N. meeting in San Francisco.
1948 The Soviet Union begins controlling the Western trains headed toward Berlin.
1949 Winston Churchill declares that the A-bomb was the only thing that kept the Soviet Union from taking over Europe.
1954 The siege of Dien Bien Phu, the last French outpost in Vietnam, begins after the Viet Minh realize it cannot be taken by direct assault.
1960 The South African government declares a state of emergency after demonstrations lead to the deaths of more than 50 Africans.
1966 An estimated 200,000 anti-war demonstrators march in New York City.
1967 President Lyndon Johnson signs the Consular Treaty, the first bi-lateral pact with the Soviet Union since the Bolshevik Revolution.
1970 U.S. forces in Vietnam down a MIG-21, the first since September 1968.
1980 President Jimmy Carter deregulates the banking industry.
1991 Albania offers a multi-party election for the first time in 50 years.


Born on March 31
1596 René Descartes, French philosopher and scientist.
1621 Andrew Marvell, English poet and politician.
1693 John Harrison, Englishman who invented the chronometer.
1732 Franz Joseph Haydn, Austrian composer.
1809 Edward Fitzgerald, American writer.
1809 Nikolai V. Gogol, Russian writer (The Inspector General, Dead Souls).
1811 Robert Wilhelm Bunsen, chemist, inventor of the Bunsen burner.
1854 Sir Dugald Clerk, inventor of the two-stroke motorcycle engine.
1878 Jack Johnson, first Africa-American boxer to become the world heavyweight champion.
1914 Octavio Paz, Mexican diplomat and Nobel Prize-winning writer.
1915 Henry Morgan, comedian, radio performer.
1926 John Fowles, English novelist (The Collector, The French Lieutenant's Woman).
1936 Marge Piercy, poet and novelist.
1948 Al Gore, Vice President to President William J. Clinton (1993-2001).






1889
Eiffel Tower opens

On March 31, 1889, the Eiffel Tower is dedicated in Paris in a ceremony presided over by Gustave Eiffel, the tower’s designer, and attended by French Prime Minister Pierre Tirard, a handful of other dignitaries, and 200 construction workers.

In 1889, to honor of the centenary of the French Revolution, the French government planned an international exposition and announced a design competition for a monument to be built on the Champ-de-Mars in central Paris. Out of more than 100 designs submitted, the Centennial Committee chose Eiffel’s plan of an open-lattice wrought-iron tower that would reach almost 1,000 feet above Paris and be the world’s tallest man-made structure. Eiffel, a noted bridge builder, was a master of metal construction and designed the framework of the Statue of Liberty that had recently been erected in New York Harbor.

Eiffel’s tower was greeted with skepticism from critics who argued that it would be structurally unsound, and indignation from others who thought it would be an eyesore in the heart of Paris. Unperturbed, Eiffel completed his great tower under budget in just two years. Only one worker lost his life during construction, which at the time was a remarkably low casualty number for a project of that magnitude. The light, airy structure was by all accounts a technological wonder and within a few decades came to be regarded as an architectural masterpiece.

The Eiffel Tower is 984 feet tall and consists of an iron framework supported on four masonry piers, from which rise four columns that unite to form a single vertical tower. Platforms, each with an observation deck, are at three levels. Elevators ascend the piers on a curve, and Eiffel contracted the Otis Elevator Company of the United States to design the tower’s famous glass-cage elevators.

The elevators were not completed by March 31, 1889, however, so Gustave Eiffel ascended the tower’s stairs with a few hardy companions and raised an enormous French tricolor on the structure’s flagpole. Fireworks were then set off from the second platform. Eiffel and his party descended, and the architect addressed the guests and about 200 workers. In early May, the Paris International Exposition opened, and the tower served as the entrance gateway to the giant fair.

The Eiffel Tower remained the world’s tallest man-made structure until the completion of the Chrysler Building in New York in 1930. Incredibly, the Eiffel Tower was almost demolished when the International Exposition’s 20-year lease on the land expired in 1909, but its value as an antenna for radio transmission saved it. It remains largely unchanged today and is one of the world’s premier tourist attractions.
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Re: Today in history

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April 1
1572 The Sea Beggars under Guillaume de la Marck land in Holland and capture the small town of Briel.
1778 Oliver Pollock, creates the dollar sign.
1863 The first wartime conscription law goes into effect in the United States.
1865 At the Battle of Five Forks, Gen. Robert E. Lee begins his final offensive.
1868 The Hampton Institute is founded in Hampton, Va.
1905 Berlin and Paris are linked by telephone.
1918 England's Royal Air Force is formed.
1920 Germany's Workers Party changes its name to the Nationalist Socialist German Worker's Party (Nazis).
1924 Adolf Hitler sentenced to five years in prison for the "Beer Hall Putsch."
1928 China's Chiang Kai-shek begins attacks on communists.
1929 The yo-yo is introduced in the United States by Louie Marx.
1939 The Spanish Civil War effectively ends with the official recognition of Franco's government.
1942 The U.S. Navy begins a partial convoy system in the Atlantic.
1945 U.S. forces launch invasion of Okinawa.
1946 A miner's strike in the U.S. idles 400,000 workers.
1948 The Berlin Airlift begins, relieving the surrounded city from the Soviet siege.
1951 United Nations forces again move northward across the 38th Parallel in Korea.
1954 The U.S. Air Force Academy is founded in Colorado.
1968 The U.S. Army launches Operation Pegasus, the reopening of a land route to the besieged Khe Sanh Marine base.
1970 The U.S. Army charges Captain Ernest Medina for his role in the My Lai massacre.
1982 The United States transfers control of the Panama Canal Zone to Panama.


Born on April 1
1578 William Harvey, English physician and biologist.
1815 Otto Von Bismarck, chancellor of Germany.
1868 Edmond Rostand, French dramatist (Cyrano de Bergerac).
1883 Lon Chaney, film actor.
1883 William Manchester, U.S. historian and biographer.
1895 Alberta Hunter, blues singer.
1919 Joseph E. Murray, transplant physician.
1929 Milan Kundera, Czech writer (The Farewell Party, The Unbearable Lightness of Being).



Lead Story
1700
April Fools tradition popularized

On this day in 1700, English pranksters begin popularizing the annual tradition of April Fools’ Day by playing practical jokes on each other.

Although the day, also called All Fools’ Day, has been celebrated for several centuries by different cultures, its exact origins remain a mystery.

Some historians speculate that April Fools’ Day dates back to 1582, when France switched from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar, as called for by the Council of Trent in 1563. People who were slow to get the news or failed to recognize that the start of the new year had moved to January 1 and continued to celebrate it during the last week of March through April 1 became the butt of jokes and hoaxes.

These pranks included having paper fish placed on their backs and being referred to as “poisson d’avril” (April fish), said to symbolize a young, easily caught fish and a gullible person.

Historians have also linked April Fools’ Day to festivals such as Hilaria, which was celebrated in ancient Rome at the end of March and involved people dressing up in disguises. There’s also speculation that April Fools’ Day was tied to the vernal equinox, or first day of spring in the Northern Hemisphere, when Mother Nature fooled people with changing, unpredictable weather.

April Fools’ Day spread throughout Britain during the 18th century. In Scotland, the tradition became a two-day event, starting with “hunting the gowk,” in which people were sent on phony errands (gowk is a word for cuckoo bird, a symbol for fool) and followed by Tailie Day, which involved pranks played on people’s derrieres, such as pinning fake tails or “kick me” signs on them.

In modern times, people have gone to great lengths to create elaborate April Fools’ Day hoaxes. Newspapers, radio and TV stations and Web sites have participated in the April 1 tradition of reporting outrageous fictional claims that have fooled their audiences.

In 1957, the BBC reported that Swiss farmers were experiencing a record spaghetti crop and showed footage of people harvesting noodles from trees; numerous viewers were fooled. In 1985, Sports Illustrated tricked many of its readers when it ran a made-up article about a rookie pitcher named Sidd Finch who could throw a fastball over 168 miles per hour.

In 1996, Taco Bell, the fast-food restaurant chain, duped people when it announced it had agreed to purchase Philadelphia’s Liberty Bell and intended to rename it the Taco Liberty Bell. In 1998, after Burger King advertised a “Left-Handed Whopper,” scores of clueless customers requested the fake sandwich.
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Re: Today in history

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Ok, I don't know the date, and I'm sure it wasn't April Fool's Day, but hey, it's Easter Sunday, so

HAPPY EASTER everyone!

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Re: Today in history

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April 2
1792 The United States authorizes the minting of the $10 Eagle, $5 half-Eagle & 2.50 quarter-Eagle gold coins as well as the silver dollar, dollar, quarter, dime & half-dime.
1796 Haitian revolt leader Toussaint L'Ouverture takes command of French forces at Santo Domingo.
1801 The British navy defeats the Danish at the Battle of Copenhagen.
1865 Confederate President Jefferson Davis flees Richmond, Virginia as Grant breaks Lee's line at Petersburg.
1910 Karl Harris perfects the process for the artificial synthesis of rubber.
1914 The U.S. Federal Reserve Board announces plans to divide the country into 12 districts.
1917 President Woodrow Wilson presents a declaration of war against Germany to Congress.
1917 Jeannette Pickering Rankin is sworn in as the first woman to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives.
1931 Virne "Jackie" Mitchell becomes the first woman to play for an all-male pro baseball team. In an exhibition game against the New York Yankees, she strikes out both Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig.
1932 Charles Lindbergh pays over $50,000 ransom for his kidnapped son.
1944 Soviet forces enter Romania, one of Germany's allied countries.
1958 The National Advisory Council on Aeronautics is renamed NASA.
1963 Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King begins the first non-violent campaign in Birmingham, Alabama.
1982 Argentina invades the British-owned Falkland Islands.


Born on April 2
742 Charlemagne, first Holy Roman Emperor.
1725 Giovanni Casanova, Italian adventurer.
1805 Hans Christian Andersen, Danish author of fairy tales.
1834 Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi, sculptor.
1840 Emile Zola, French novelist and activist.
1875 Walter P. Chrysler, founder of Chrysler Automobile Company.
1891 Max Ernst, German painter, sculptor and founder of surrealism.
1905 Kurt Adler, American conductor.
1905 Serge Lifar, dancer and opera director.
1914 Alec Guinness, British actor.
1948 Emmylou Harris, American singer.


Presidential
1917
Wilson asks for declaration of war

On this day in 1917, President Woodrow Wilson asks Congress to send U.S. troops into battle against Germany in World War I. In his address to Congress that day, Wilson lamented it is a fearful thing to lead this great peaceful people into war. Four days later, Congress obliged and declared war on Germany.
In February and March 1917, Germany, embroiled in war with Britain, France and Russia, increased its attacks on neutral shipping in the Atlantic and offered, in the form of the so-called Zimmermann Telegram, to help Mexico regain Texas, New Mexico and Arizona if it would join Germany in a war against the United States. The public outcry against Germany buoyed President Wilson in asking Congress to abandon America’s neutrality to make the world safe for democracy.
Wilson went on to lead what was at the time the largest war-mobilization effort in the country’s history. At first, Wilson asked only for volunteer soldiers, but soon realized voluntary enlistment would not raise a sufficient number of troops and signed the Selective Service Act in May 1917. The Selective Service Act required men between 21 and 35 years of age to register for the draft, increasing the size of the army from 200,000 troops to 4 million by the end of the war. One of the infantrymen who volunteered for active duty was future President Harry S. Truman.
In addition to raising troop strength, Wilson authorized a variety of programs in 1917 to mobilize the domestic war effort. He appointed an official propaganda group called the Committee on Public Information (CPI) to give speeches, publish pamphlets and create films that explained America’s role in the war and drummed up support for Wilson’s war-time policies. For example, the CPI’s representatives, known as four-minute men, traveled throughout the U.S. urging Americans to buy war bonds and conserve food. Wilson appointed future President Herbert Hoover to lead the Food Administration, which cleverly changed German terms, like hamburger and sauerkraut, to more American-sounding monikers, like liberty sandwich or liberty cabbage.
Wilson hoped to convince Americans to voluntarily support the war effort, but was not averse to passing legislation to suppress dissent. After entering the war, Wilson ordered the federal government to take over the strike-plagued railroad industry to eliminate the possibility of work stoppages and passed the Espionage Act aimed at silencing anti-war protestors and union organizers.

The influx of American troops, foodstuffs and financial support into the Great War contributed significantly to Germany’s surrender in November 1918. President Wilson led the American delegation to Paris for the negotiation of the Treaty of Versailles in June 1919, a controversial treaty—which was never ratified by Congress–that some historians claim successfully dismantled Germany’s war machine but contributed to the rise of German fascism and the outbreak of World War II. Wilson’s most enduring wartime policy remains his plan for a League of Nations, which, though unsuccessful, laid the foundation for the United Nations.
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Re: Today in history

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April 3
628 In Persia, Kavadh sues for peace with the Byzantines.
1367 John of Gaunt and Edward the Black Prince win the Battle of Najera, in Spain.
1559 Philip II of Spain and Henry II of France sign the peace of Cateau-Cambresis, ending a long series of wars between the Hapsburg and Valois dynasties.
1860 The Pony Express connects St. Joseph, Missouri and Sacramento, California.
1862 Slavery is abolished in Washington, D.C.
1865 Union forces occupy the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia.
1882 The American outlaw Jesse James is shot in the back and killed by his cousin, Bob Ford.
1910 Alaska's Mount McKinley, the highest mountain in North America is climbed.
1920 F. Scott Fitzgerald and Zelda Sayre are married at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City.
1936 Bruno Hauptmann, killer of the Lindbergh baby, is executed.
1942 The Japanese begin their all-out assault on the U.S. and Filipino troops at Bataan.
1944 The U.S. Supreme Court rules that black citizens are eligible to vote in all elections, including primaries.
1948 President Harry Truman signs Marshall Plan. It will revive war-torn Europe.
1966 Three-thousand South Vietnamese Army troops lead a protest against the Ky regime in Saigon.
1972 Charlie Chaplin returns to the United States after a twenty-year absence.
1984 Coach John Thompson of Georgetown University becomes the first African-American coach to win an NCAA basketball tournament.


Born on April 3
1783 Washington Irving, American writer (The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Rip Van Winkle).
1822 Edward Everett Hale, American clergyman and author (Man without a Country).
1823 William Macy "Boss" Tweed, New York City political boss.
1837 John Burroughs, nature writer.
1842 Hermann Karl Vogel, German astronomer.
1888 Gertrude Bridget "Ma" Rainey, American singer, "the mother of the blues."
1898 Henry R. Luce, magazine publisher, founder of Time, Fortune and Life.
1924 Marlon Brando, actor (On the Waterfront, The Godfather).
1924 Doris Von Kappelhoff [Doris Day], American singer and actress.
1930 Helmut Kohl, chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany.
1934 Jane Goodall, British anthropologist, known for her work with African chimpanzees.




Lead Story
1860
Pony Express debuts

On this day in 1860, the first Pony Express mail, traveling by horse and rider relay teams, simultaneously leaves St. Joseph, Missouri, and Sacramento, California. Ten days later, on April 13, the westbound rider and mail packet completed the approximately 1,800-mile journey and arrived in Sacramento, beating the eastbound packet’s arrival in St. Joseph by two days and setting a new standard for speedy mail delivery. Although ultimately short-lived and unprofitable, the Pony Express captivated America’s imagination and helped win federal aid for a more economical overland postal system. It also contributed to the economy of the towns on its route and served the mail-service needs of the American West in the days before the telegraph or an efficient transcontinental railroad.

The Pony Express debuted at a time before radios and telephones, when California, which achieved statehood in 1850, was still largely cut off from the eastern part of the country. Letters sent from New York to the West Coast traveled by ship, which typically took at least a month, or by stagecoach on the recently established Butterfield Express overland route, which could take from three weeks to many months to arrive. Compared to the snail’s pace of the existing delivery methods, the Pony Express’ average delivery time of 10 days seemed like lightning speed.

The Pony Express Company, the brainchild of William H. Russell, William Bradford Waddell and Alexander Majors, owners of a freight business, was set up over 150 relay stations along a pioneer trail across the present-day states of Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Nevada and California. Riders, who were paid approximately $25 per week and carried loads estimated at up to 20 pounds of mail, were changed every 75 to 100 miles, with horses switched out every 10 to 15 miles. Among the riders was the legendary frontiersman and showman William “Buffalo Bill” Cody (1846-1917), who reportedly signed on with the Pony Express at age 14. The company’s riders set their fastest time with Lincoln’s inaugural address, which was delivered in just less than eight days.

The initial cost of Pony Express delivery was $5 for every half-ounce of mail. The company began as a private enterprise and its owners hoped to gain a profitable delivery contract from the U.S. government, but that never happened. With the advent of the first transcontinental telegraph line in October 1861, the Pony Express ceased operations. However, the legend of the lone Pony Express rider galloping across the Old West frontier to deliver the mail lives on today.
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Re: Today in history

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April 4
527 In Constantinople, Justin, seriously ill, crowns his nephew Justinian as his co-emperor.
1581 Francis Drake completes circumnavigation of the world.
1812 The territory of Orleans becomes the 18th state and will become known as Louisiana.
1818 The United States flag is declared to have 13 red and white stripes and 20 stars.
1841 President William Henry Harrison, aged 68, becomes the first president to die in office, just a month after being sworn in.
1862 The Battle of Yorktown begins as Union gen. George B. McClellan closes in on Richmond, Va.
1917 The U.S. Senate votes 90-6 to enter World War I on Allied side.
1918 The Battle of the Somme ends.
1941 Field Marshal Erwin Rommel captures the British held town of Benghazi in North Africa.
1949 The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) treaty is signed.
1968 Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. is assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee.
1974 Hank Aaron ties Babe Ruth's home-run record.
1979 Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the president of Pakistan is executed.
1985 A coup in Sudan ousts President Nimeiry and replaces him with General Dahab.


Born on April 4
1780 Edward Hicks, Quaker preacher and painter (The Peaceable Kingdom).
1792 Thaddeus Stevens, U.S. Republican congressional leader.
1802 Dorothea Dix, American social reformer.
1821 Linus Yale, inventor of the Yale lock.
1884 Isoroku Yamamoto, Japanese naval commander during WWII.
1896 Arthur Murray, ballroom dance instructor.
1896 Robert Sherwood, playwright.
1914 Marguerite Duras, French author (The Lover).
1915 Muddy Waters, American blues musician.
1928 Maya Angelou, American poet and author.
1932 Anthony Perkins, actor (Psycho).
1938 Bart Giamatti, baseball commissioner, president of Yale.



Automotive
1933
Man who took NASCAR mainstream is born

Bill France Jr., the leading force behind the transformation of the National Association of Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR) from a regional sport into a multibillion-dollar industry with fans worldwide, is born on this day in 1933 in Washington, D.C. France’s father, William France Sr. (1909-92), founded NASCAR in 1948.
In 1934, Bill France Jr.’s family moved to Daytona Beach, Florida, where his auto mechanic father, known as “Big Bill,” raced cars on the hard-packed sand and promoted races. After witnessing how racing rules could vary from event to event and how dishonest promoters could abscond with prize money, France saw a need for a governing body to sanction and promote racing. NASCAR was officially incorporated in February 1948.
Bill France Jr., nicknamed “Little Bill,” began working for his father as a teenager and joined the family business full-time after attending the University of Florida and serving in the U.S. Navy. From the start, the younger France’s involvement with NASCAR was hands-on. According to his New York Times obituary: “At various times at racetracks, he was a corner worker, flagman and chief steward. He dug post holes, parked cars, sold programs, repaired guard rails, worked in concession stands and took tickets.” France also tried racing for a brief period. When Bill France Sr. built the Daytona International Speedway, his son drove a road grader and performed other jobs. The track opened in 1959 with the first Daytona 500 race, which became one of NASCAR’s marquee events.
France became head of NASCAR in 1972, after his father retired. At the time, NASCAR races were held primarily in the South and the sport’s drivers and fans were largely Southern. Under France’s leadership over the next three decades, NASCAR grew into one of America’s most-popular spectator sports. According to USA Today, when Bill France Jr. handed over the chairmanship of the family dynasty to his son Brian (1962-) in 2003, “NASCAR had morphed into a multi-billion-dollar industry flush with Fortune 500 backing, long-term network TV contracts and races at gleaming super speedways in metropolitan markets such as Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas and Boston.”

Bill France Jr. died at age 74 on June 4, 2007, in Daytona Beach. In 2010, NASCAR sanctioned over 1,200 races at 100 tracks in 30 states across America, as well as locations in Canada and Mexico. The races were broadcast in over 150 countries.
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Re: Today in history

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April 5
1242 Russian troops repel an invasion by Teutonic knights.
1614 Pocahontas marries English colonist John Rolfe.
1792 George Washington casts the first presidential veto.
1843 Queen Victoria proclaims Hong Kong a British crown colony.
1861 Gideon Welles, the Secretary of the Navy issues official orders for the USS Powhatan to sail to Fort Sumter.
1865 As the Confederate army approaches Appomattox, it skirmishes with Union forces at Amelia Springs and Paine's Cross Road.
1908 The Japanese Army reaches Yalu River as Russians retreat.
1919 Eamon de Valera becomes president of Ireland.
1930 Mahatma Gandhi defies British law by making salt in India instead of buying it from the British.
1941 German commandos secure docks along the Danube River in preparation for Germany's invasion of the Balkans.
1943 The British 8th Army attacks the next blocking position of the retreating Axis forces at Wadi Akarit.
1951 Americans Julius and Ethel Rosenberg are sentenced to death for espionage.
1955 Winston Churchill resigns as British prime minister.
1986 A bomb explodes in a West Berlin disco packed with American soldiers.


Born on April 5
1588 Thomas Hobbes, English philosopher (Leviathan).
1827 Joseph Lister, English physician, founded the idea of using antiseptics during surgery.
1839 Robert Smalls, black congressman from South Carolina, 1875-87.
1856 Booker T. Washington, former slave, educator, founded the Tuskegee Institute.
1858 Washington Atlee Burpee, founder of the world's largest mail-order seed company.
1900 Spencer Tracy, actor (Adam's Rib, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner).
1908 Bette Davis, film actress (Jezebel, All About Eve).
1916 Gregory Peck, film actor (To Kill a Mockingbird).
1917 Robert Bloch, novelist (Psycho).
1920 Arthur Hailey, novelist (Hotel, Airport).
1923 Nguyen Van Thieu, president of South Vietnam.
1937 Colin Powell, U.S. Army general, Secretary of State.


Presidential
1792
Washington exercises first presidential veto

George Washington exercises the first presidential veto of a Congressional bill on this day in 1792. The bill introduced a new plan for dividing seats in the House of Representatives that would have increased the amount of seats for northern states. After consulting with his politically divided and contentious cabinet, Washington, who came from the southern state of Virginia, ultimately decided that the plan was unconstitutional because, in providing for additional representatives for some states, it would have introduced a number of representatives higher than that proscribed by the Constitution.
After a discussion with the president, Jefferson wrote in a letter that votes for or against the bill were divided along perfectly geographical lines between the North and South. Jefferson observed that Washington feared that a veto would incorrectly portray him as biased toward the South. In the end, Jefferson was able to convince the president to veto the bill on the grounds that it was unconstitutional and introduced principles that were liable to be abused in the future. Jefferson suggested apportionment instead be derived from arithmetical operation, about which no two men can ever possibly differ.” Washington’s veto sent the bill back to Congress. Though representatives could have attempted to overrule the veto with a two-thirds vote, Congress instead threw out the original bill and instituted a new one that apportioned representatives at “the ratio of one for every thirty-three thousand persons in the respective States.”

Washington exercised his veto power only one other time during his two terms in office. In February 1797, the former commanding general of the Continental Army vetoed an act that would have reduced the number of cavalry units in the army.
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