Today is Saturday, March 12, the 72nd day of 2016. There are 294 days left in the year.
Highlights in history on this date:
641 A.D. – Chinese Princess Wen Cheng goes to Tibet to marry the Tibetan ruler. The marriage is the basis for China’s claim to sovereignty over the region.
1470 – In the War of the Roses, English King Edward IV defeats rebels at Empingham.
1664 – New Jersey becomes a British colony as King Charles II grants land in the New World to his brother James, the Duke of York.
1799 – Austria declares war on France.
1832 – Captain Charles Boycott, the Irish estate manager who caused boycotts, was born. He earned a reputation for unfairness that drove peasant tenant-farmers in his charge to organize against him in an 1879 act of civil disobedience. Hence the derivation of the word, ‘boycott.’
1848 – Revolution breaks out in Vienna with university demonstrations.
1854 – Britain and France conclude alliance with Turks against Russia.
1867 – Napoleon III withdraws French support from Maximillian of Mexico.
1868 – Britain annexes Basutoland, South Africa.
1930 – Indian political and spiritual leader Mohandas K. Gandhi begins a 320-kilometer (200-mile) march to protest a British tax on salt.
1933 – U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt delivers the first of his radio “fireside chats,” telling Americans what was being done to deal with the nation’s economic crisis.
1938 – The “Anschluss” takes place as German troops enter Austria, completing Adolf Hitler’s mission to bring his homeland into the Third Reich.
1939 – Pope Pius XII is formally crowned in ceremonies at the Vatican.
1940 – Finland and the Soviet Union conclude an armistice during World War II. Fighting between the two countries flares again the following year.
1947 – U.S. President Harry Truman establishes what became known as the Truman Doctrine to help Greece and Turkey resist communism.
1966 – General Suharto is sworn in as acting President of Indonesia after President Sukarno is stripped of authority.
1980 – A Chicago jury finds John Wayne Gacy Jr. guilty of murdering 33 men and boys. He is executed in 1994.
1986 – Susan Butcher becomes the first woman to win the 1,863-kilometer (1158-mile) Iditarod Sled Dog race in the Alaskan wilderness.
1988 – South African government bans church-led opposition group headed by Archbishop Desmond Tutu as “threat to public safety.”
1993 -Janet Reno is sworn in as the United States’ first female attorney general.
1994 – The Church of England ordains its first women priests.
1999 – The Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland join NATO in a ceremony at Independence, Missouri.
2009 – The U.S. National Research Council says despite years of study and analysis the world is unprepared for climate change and needs to rethink basic assumptions that govern things as varied as choosing cars and building bridges.
2010 – Germany’s sex abuse scandal reaches Pope Benedict XVI: His former archdiocese acknowledges it transferred a suspected pedophile priest while Benedict was in charge.
2011 – The Japanese coastal city of Sendai is a landscape of debris and destruction after a massive tsunami hits, touching off huge surges of water that wash fleets of cars, boats and houses into the sea. Japanese officials say the death toll could eventually exceed 1,000.
2012 – Greece implements the biggest debt write-down in history, swapping the bulk of its privately-held bonds with new ones worth less than half their original value.
2013 – The Curiosity rover answers a key question about Mars: the red planet long ago harbored some of the ingredients needed for primitive life to thrive.
2014 — Iran’s president Hassan Rouhani holds talks with the leader of the sultanate of Oman, his first official trip to an Arab country since taking office last year.
2015 — Germany’s highest court strikes down a state law banning teachers from wearing headscarves as unconstitutional, saying it violates the right to religious freedom.
Today’s Birthdays:
Thomas Arne, English composer (1710-1778); Jack Kerouac, American writer (1922-1969); Elaine De Kooning, U.S. painter (1929-1989); Edward Albee, U.S. playwright (1928–); Barbara Feldon, U.S. actress (1933–); Liza Minnelli, U.S. singer-actress (1946–); James Taylor, U.S. singer (1948–); Aaron Eckhart, U.S. actor (1968–).
Thought For Today:
If power corrupts, being out of power corrupts absolutely — Douglass Cater, American author and educator.
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