Today is Friday, March 18, the 78th day of 2016.There are 288 days left in the year.
Highlights in history on this date:
1554 – Britain’s Princess Elizabeth is sent to the Tower of London for suspected complicity in Sir Thomas Wyatt’s rebellion.
1766 – Great Britain repeals the Stamp Act, after Americans decried that taxation without representation was tyranny.
1776 – George Washington’s troops occupy Boston, Massachusetts, after evacuation of British in American Revolutionary War.
1813 – Hamburg, Germany, is occupied by Russians following patriotic outbreak in city against French.
1848 – Revolution breaks out in Milan against Austrian rule, and Joseph Radetzky’s forces abandon city.
1909 – Einar Dessau of Denmark uses a shortwave transmitter to converse with a government radio post about 10 kilometers (6 miles) away in what is believed to have been the first broadcast by a “ham” operator.
1913 – Greece’s King George I is assassinated in Salonika.
1922 – Mahatma Gandhi is sentenced to six years in prison in India for civil disobedience.
1931 – Schick Inc. markets the first electric razor in the United States.
1937 – A gas explosion at a school in New London, Texas, kills more than 400 people, most of them children.
1940 – Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini hold a meeting at the Brenner Pass during which the Italian dictator agrees to join in Germany’s war against France and Britain.
1946 – Status of Guadeloupe, Martinique and French Guyana changes from French West Indian territories to Overseas Departments, making them parts of France.
1949 – The North Atlantic Treaty Organization is formed.
1959 – U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower signs the Hawaii statehood bill.
1962 – French and Algerian rebel delegations in Evian-les-Bains, France, sign cease-fire agreement in Algerian War.
1965 – The first spacewalk takes place as Soviet cosmonaut Aleksei Leonov leaves his Voskhod 2 capsule and remains outside the spacecraft for 20 minutes, secured by a tether.
1969 – U.S. President Richard Nixon orders secret bombing of Cambodia; U.S. and Soviet Union propose international treaty to ban nuclear weapons from ocean floor.
1970 – Cambodia’s Prince Norodom Sihanouk is deposed as chief of state while he is on a visit to Moscow.
1990 – East German voters signal that they want unification with West Germany as soon as possible, giving the Conservative alliance 48 percent of the vote in parliamentary elections.
1991 – More than 70,000 people mass in the streets of several east German cities demanding an end to economic woes.
1992 – An explosion destroys the Israeli Embassy near downtown Buenos Aires, killing 29 people and wounding 252.
1994 – The Bosnian government and Croatia sign a federation accord.
2000 – Aid arrives in Mozambique, where flooding left as many as 700 people dead and destroyed the homes or livelihood of another 2 million.
2001 – In Paris, Socialists win municipal elections, ending nearly a century of unbroken rule by the right.
2010 – Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and her Russian counterpart clash openly over the planned launch in the summer of Iran’s first, Russian-built nuclear power plant, highlighting a split in views over how to steer Iran away from nuclear weapons.
2013 – A plan to seize up to 10 percent of people’s savings in the Mediterranean island of Cyprus sends shockwaves across Europe as households realize the money they have in the bank may not be safe.
2014 — President Vladimir Putin adds Crimea to the map of Russia, describing the move as correcting a past injustice.
2015 — Foreign tourists scramble in panic from a museum past security forces with guns drawn after militants kill 19 people in Tunisia’s capital,
Today’s Birthdays:
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Russian composer (1844-1908); Rudolf Diesel, German engineer (1858-1913); Neville Chamberlain, British statesman (1869-1940); Peter Graves, U.S. actor (1926–2010); John Updike, U.S. writer (1932-2009); F.W. de Klerk, former South African president, co-winner of 1993 Nobel Peace
Prize (1936–); Ingemar Stenmark, Swedish alpine skier (1956–); Irene Cara, U.S. singer (1959–); Queen Latifah, U.S. rapper/actress (1970–).
Thought For Today:
It’s easy to be independent when you’ve got money. But to be independent when you haven’t got a thing — that’s the Lord’s test — Mahalia Jackson, American gospel singer (1911-1972).
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