Today is Monday, March 28, the 88th day of 2016. There are 278 days left in the year.
Highlights in history on this date:
1800 – Act of Union with England passes in Ireland’s Parliament.
1801 – Peace of Florence between France and Naples goes into effect, whereby British vessels are to be excluded from Neopolitan ports.
1854 – Britain and France declare war on Russia, joining Turkey in the Crimean War.
1898 – First German naval bill, introduced by Alfred von Tirpitz, begins Germany’s naval expansion; the U.S. Supreme Court rules a child born in the United States to Chinese immigrants is a U.S. citizen, and therefore could not be deported under the Chinese Exclusion Act.
1930 – The names of the Turkish cities of Constantinople and Angora are changed to Istanbul and Ankara.
1938 – Japan installs puppet government of Chinese Republic in Nanking.
1939 – Madrid surrenders to forces of Gen. Francisco Franco, ending Spanish Civil War.
1942 – British naval forces raid the Nazi occupied French port of St. Nazaire during World War II.
1945 – Germany’s V-rocket attacks on Britain end during World War II; United States invades Cebu in heart of Philippines.
1957 – Britain releases Archbishop Makarios, an advocate of union between Cyprus and Greece who later becomes president of Cyprus.
1962 – European secret army organization in Algeria proclaims all-out guerrilla warfare against French forces.
1967 – U.N. Secretary-General U Thant proposes general truce in Vietnam, followed by peace talks. The United States says it will go along.
1974 – Mounting civil unrest virtually paralyzes foundering government of Ethiopia’s Emperor Haile Selassie.
1979 – America’s worst commercial nuclear accident occurs inside the Unit Two reactor at the Three Mile Island plant near Middletown, Pennsylvania.
1986 – Nicaragua sends truckloads of troops to area of heavy fighting with Contras rebels near border with Honduras.
1991 – Tens of thousands of Moscow residents defy a ban on demonstrations to rally in support of Boris Yeltsin, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev’s chief rival.
1992 – Emergency rule is imposed in Moldova after weeks of fighting between Romanian loyalists and Slavic separatists.
1993 – Israel announces it is sealing off the occupied Gaza Strip following a day of Arab knife attacks on Jews and retaliatory attacks by Israelis.
1994 – March by Zulu nationalists results in killings of at least 31 people in downtown Johannesburg.
1996 – An earthquake shakes remote villages in central Ecuador, killing about 50 people and injuring more than 100.
1999 – NATO aircraft widen their strikes against Yugoslavia, targeting ground forces in Kosovo that are expelling tens of thousands of ethnic Albanians from their homes. Around 130 Kosovo Albanian men are massacred by Serb troops near the village of Izbica.
2002 – U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft announces he has approved a request from federal prosecutors to seek the death penalty against Zacarias Moussaoui, an accused conspirator in the September 11 attacks.
2009 – China celebrates 50 years of direct control over Tibet with a lavish international Buddhist conference featuring a rare appearance by Beijing’s hand-picked Buddhist leader.
2011 – Workers discover new pools of radioactive water leaking from Japan’s crippled nuclear complex that officials believe are behind soaring levels of radiation spreading to soil and seawater.
2012 – Pope Benedict XVI demands more freedom for the Roman Catholic Church in communist-run Cuba and preaches against “fanaticism” in an unusually political sermon before hundreds of thousands at Revolution Plaza, with President Raul Castro in the front row.
2014 – Ukraine’s fugitive leader pushes for a vote to determine the status of each of the country’s regions — a call serving the Kremlin’s purposes of turning Ukraine into a loosely knit federation.
2015 — Yemen’s embattled president calls Shiite rebels who forced him to flee the country “stooges of Iran, “directly blaming the Islamic Republic for the chaos there.
Today’s birthdays:
Raphael, Italian artist (1483-1520); Saint Teresa of Avila, Spanish nun and mystic (1515-1582); Aristide Briand, French statesman and Nobel Peace laureate (1862-1932); Mario Vargas Llosa, Peruvian writer and Nobel laureate(1936–); Dianne Wiest, U.S. actress (1948–); Reba McEntire, U.S. country singer/actress (1955–); Vince Vaughn, U.S. actor (1970–).
Thought for Today:
You can’t shake hands with a clenched fist — Indira Gandhi, Indian prime minister (1917-1984)
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