Today in History – Monday, March 21, 2016
Today is Monday, March 21, the 81st day of 2016. There are 285 days left in the year.
Highlights in history on this date:
1500 – French garrison in Novara, Italy, capitulates to forces of Ludovico Sforza of Milan.
1801 – French forces are defeated at Alexandria, Egypt, by British under Ralph Abercromby, who is mortally wounded.
1829 – Earthquake in Spain kills 6,000.
1831 – Austrian troops enter Italy to put down revolt.
1848 – Denmark’s Frederick VII announces decision to incorporate Schleswig.
1871 – Journalist Henry M. Stanley begins his famous expedition to Africa to locate the missing Scottish missionary David Livingstone.
1884 – France legalizes trade unions.
1905 – Britain and Persia sign agreement to counter Russian designs in Near East.
1919 – Soviet Republic is proclaimed.
1939 – Germany annexes Memel from Lithuania.
1945 – After bombing the Gestapo headquarters in Copenhagen, British RAF planes mistakenly bomb the French School killing 86 children and 10 nuns.
1946 – The United Nations sets up temporary headquarters at Hunter College in New York City.
1953 – Sudan achieves self-government.
1960 – Pan-African demonstration against pass laws in South Africa leads to shooting and killing 60 blacks in Sharpeville. A state of emergency is declared.
1963 – Alcatraz prison in San Francisco Bay is emptied of its last inmates at the order of Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy.
1965 – More than 3,000 civil rights demonstrators led by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. begin a march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama.
1975 – Military government in Ethiopia abolishes royal position of Emperor.
1977 – India’s Prime Minister Indira Gandhi resigns after losing her seat in parliamentary elections.
1985 – Police in Langa, South Africa, open fire on black protesters marching to mark the 25th anniversary of the Sharpeville Massacre, killing at least 21 demonstrators.
1991 – A Saudi transport plane trying to land in bad weather and heavy smoke from burning Kuwaiti oil wells crashes, killing 92 Senegalese soldiers and six Saudi crew members.
1996 – Russian forces launch air and artillery attacks on villages in western Chechnya.
1997 – U.S. President Bill Clinton and Russian President Boris Yeltsin hold summit in Helsinki, Finland, and agree to slash their nuclear arsenals.
2002 – Pope John Paul II releases his first statement addressing the large number of recent cases of sexual abuse of minors by members of the Roman Catholic clergy. He denounces the priests saying they betrayed their vows and succumbed to evil.
2003 – South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), set up in 1995 to investigate human rights abuses during the apartheid system of white-minority rule, urges the government to pay $270 million (euro201.25 million) to some 20,000 victims who testified about atrocities suffered under apartheid.
2008 – A journalist for state-run Russian television is found dead in Moscow and prosecutors open a murder investigation. Firefighters found Channel One correspondent Ilyas Shurpayev’s body in his apartment with stab wounds and a belt around his neck.
2011 – Officials race to restore electricity to a leaking nuclear power plant in Fukushima, Japan, but getting the power flowing will hardly be the end of their battle: With its mangled machinery and partly melted reactor cores, bringing the complex under control is a monstrous job.
2013 – A suicide bombing tears through a mosque in Damascus, Syria, killing a top Sunni Muslim preacher and longtime supporter of President Bashar Assad along with at least 41 other people.
2014 – Russia formally annexes Crimea and the European Union pulls Ukraine closer into its orbit, deepening the divide between East and West.
2015 – President Barack Obama says he takes Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at his word for rejecting the creation of a Palestinian state.
Today’s Birthdays:
Johann Sebastian Bach, German composer (1685-1750); Frederick Richter (Jean Paul), German author (1763-1825); Benito Juarez, Mexican president (1806-1872); King Ghazi of Iraq (1912-1939); Timothy Dalton, Welsh actor (1946–); Gary Oldman, U.S. actor (1958–); Rosie O’Donnell, U.S. comedian/former TV talk show host (1962–).
Thought For Today:
The heaviest baggage for a traveler is an empty purse — German proverb.
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