Today is Sunday, March 13, the 73rd day of 2016. There are 293 days left in the year.
Highlights in history on this date:
1325 – Tenochtitlan, the capital of the Aztec Empire, is founded.
1552 – Turks invade Hungary.
1567 – Margaret of Parma, Regent of the Netherlands, uses German mercenaries to annihilate 2,000 Calvinists.
1639 – Harvard University is named for clergyman John Harvard.
1707 – Holy Roman Empire agrees to Convention of Milan whereby French troops are to leave northern Italy.
1714 – Battle of Storkyro leads to Russian domination of Finland.
1781 – The planet Uranus is discovered by Sir William Herschel just past the planet Saturn. It was the first of three planets to be sighted during the next two hundred years.
1868 – The impeachment trial of U.S. President Andrew Johnson begins in the U.S. Senate.
1881 – Russia’s Czar Alexander II is assassinated by radical terrorists who demand a constitutional government in Russia. Ironically, the czar had just signed a bill to establish exactly what they wanted. When he died, so did the agreement.
1884 – Using Greenwich, England as the commencement point from which all time will be measured, an international time standard is adopted throughout the United States.
1900 – British forces under Frederick Roberts capture Bloemfontein, South Africa.
1913 – New Australian federal capital officially named Canberra.
1925 – A law goes into effect in Tennessee prohibiting the teaching of evolution.
1938 – Austria is annexed by Germany a day after Nazi troops march in.
1967 – Peasant rioting is reported in China.
1971 – Quebec separatist Paul Rose is given life sentence in Montreal, Canada, for his part in kidnap and murder of Quebec Labor Minister Pierre LaPorte.
1974 – The Arab nations agree to end their five-month oil embargo on sales to the U.S. Their sanction crippled both the American industry and economy.
1989 – Christian army units and Syrian-backed Muslim militiamen shatter cease-fire in clash across Beirut’s dividing Green Line.
1991 – Kuwait’s emir, Sheik Jeber al-Ahmed al-Sabah, returns from exile after his country is liberated from Iraqi occupation.
1992 – A 6.2 magnitude earthquake rocks Turkey, claiming at least 570 lives.
1996 – A gunman in Dunblane, Scotland, shoots to death 16 children and a teacher.
1997 – A military cargo plane crashes in the mountains in northeastern Iran, killing all 88 people on board.
2002 – Angola’s government announces a cease-fire in its 27-year civil war against the rebel National Union for the Total Independence of Angola, known as UNITA.
2008 – Serbia’s president dissolves parliament and calls an early election that should determine whether the country aligns itself with the European Union and other Western groups or returns to its isolationist past.
2011 – The estimated death toll from Japan’s natural disasters climbs past 10,000 as authorities race to combat the threat of multiple nuclear reactor meltdowns and hundreds of thousands of people struggle to find food and water.
2012 – Former News International executive Rebekah Brooks and her racehorse trainer husband Charlie are arrested in dawn raids that also netted four other suspects in the spreading phone hacking scandal.
2013 – Jorge Bergoglio of Argentina is elected pope, becoming the first pontiff from the Americas and the first from outside Europe in more than a millennium. He chooses the name Francis.
2014 — Russia conducts new military maneuvers near its border with Ukraine and President Vladimir Putin says the world should not blame his country for what he called Ukraine’s “internal crisis.”
2015 — Winds from an extremely powerful cyclone that blew through the Pacific Vanuatu archipelago begin to subside, revealing widespread destruction and unconfirmed reports of dozens of deaths.
Today’s Birthdays:
Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II (1741-1790); Hugo Wolf, Austrian composer (1860-1903); George Seferis, Greek poet and diplomat, Nobel literature laureate (1900-1971); Kofi Awoonor, Ghanaian poet (1935-2013); Neil Sedaka, U.S. singer (1939–); William H. Macy, U.S. actor (1950–); Dana Delany, U.S. actress (1956–); Adam Clayton, bassist with rock group U2 (1960–).
Thought For Today:
Die Weltgeschichte ist das Weltgericht (The history of the world is the verdict of the world.) — Friedrich von Schiller, German author (1759-1805).
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