Today is Saturday, March 26, the 86th day of 2016 .There are 280 days left in the year.
Highlights in history on this date:
1793 – Holy Roman Empire declares war on France.
1885 – The Eastman Dry Plate and Film Co. of Rochester, New York, forerunner of Eastman Kodak, manufactures the first commercial motion picture film.
1881 – Romania becomes a monarchy, and King Carol I, of the German house of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, is proclaimed king.
1895 – Japan occupies Pescadores Islands in Formosa Strait.
1913 – More than 1,400 people perish in floods in U.S. states of Ohio, Indiana and Texas.
1931 – Treaty of friendship is signed between Iraq and Transjordan.
1953 – American Dr. Jonas E. Salk announces new vaccine to immunize against polio.
1970 – Foreign ministers of Islamic countries decide at Jordan meeting to establish permanent secretariat.
1971 – East Pakistan proclaims its independence, taking the name Bangladesh.
1975 – South Vietnamese government announces arrest of several people for plotting to overthrow President Nguyen van Thieu.
1977 – A KLM Boeing 747, attempting to take off, crashes into a Pan Am 747 on the Canary Island of Tenerife, killing 582 people.
1979 – Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat sign the Camp David peace treaty at the White House.
1981 – Groundbreaking ceremonies take place in Washington, D.C., for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
1988 – Iran and Iraq battle for mastery over Kurdistan mountains, just east of Iraqi oil fields.
1990 – Police fire on demonstrators in Sebokeng, South Africa, killing 11 people and wounding hundreds.
1991 – Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay sign Treaty of Asuncion in the Paraguayan capital, launching the Southern Cone Common Market.
1993 – U.N. Security Council votes to set up the largest and most expensive peacekeeping operation so far — 30,000 troops and civilians are to go to Somalia.
1996 – The International Monetary Fund agrees to offer Russia new loans worth $10.2 billion over the next three years, nearly doubling what Russia owes to the organization.
2000 – Pope John Paul II crowns his Holy Land sojourn with a stunning gesture to Jews at their holiest site: he places a plea for forgiveness in a nook in the Western Wall in Jerusalem, expressing sorrow for past errors of his church.
2001 – A boarding school fire in Kenya kills 58 boys and seriously injures 28 others.
2007 – Ian Paisley and Gerry Adams, the leaders of Northern Ireland’s major Protestant and Catholic parties, open face-to-face relations after four decades of conflict and announce a stunning deal to create a power-sharing administration.
2011 – More than 250,000 people take to London’s streets to protest the toughest spending cuts since World War II — one of the largest demonstrations since the Iraq war — as riot police clash with a small groups. More than 200 people are arrested.
2012 – Pope Benedict XVI arrives in Cuba in the footsteps of his more famous predecessor, saying he holds great affection for Cubans on both sides of the Florida Straits and heartfelt hopes for reconciliation.
2013 – American Amanda Knox and her former Italian boyfriend face the prospect of another trial as Italy’s highest court overturns their acquittals in the 2007 slaying of her British roommate a year and a half after being freed from prison.
2014 — Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi , the Egyptian military chief who last summer removed the elected Islamist president, announces that he has resigned from the military and will run for president.
2015 — Prosecutors say the Germanwings co-pilot alleged to have intentionally crashed his aircraft appears to have hddiden evidence of illness from his employers, including having been execused by a doctor from work on the day of the crash.
Today’s Birthdays:
Robert Frost, U.S. poet (1874-1963); Syngman Rhee, South Korea’s founding president (1875-1965); Chips Rafferty, Australian actor (1909-1971); Tennessee Williams, U.S. playwright (1911-1983); Leonard Nimoy, U.S. actor (1931–2015); Erica Jong, U.S. writer (1942–); Diana Ross, U.S. singer (1944–); Steven Tyler, U.S. singer (1948–); Keira Knightley, British actress (1985–).
Thought For Today:
When elephants fight it is the grass that suffers — Kikuyu proverb.
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