Today is Sunday, March 27, the 87th day of 2016. There are 279 days left in the year.
Highlights in history on this date:
1512 – Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de Leon sights Florida.
1703 – Russia’s Czar Peter the Great founds city of St. Petersburg.
1713 – Spain agrees in Utrecht, Netherlands, to cede Gibraltar and Menorca to Britain.
1794 – U.S. President George Washington and Congress authorize creation of the U.S. Navy.
1802 – Peace of Amiens between Britain and France creates a short pause in the Napoleonic Wars.
1836 – The first Mormon temple is dedicated in Kirtland, Ohio.
1865 – Independent British colony of Kaffaria is incorporated with Cape Colony in South Africa.
1899 – Italian Guglielmo Marconi sends the first radio signals across the English Channel.
1933 – Japan announces plans to pull out of League of Nations.
1941 – Yugoslavia’s Prince Paul is deposed in coup following pact with Germany’s Adolf Hitler.
1958 – Nikita Khrushchev becomes the Soviet premier in addition to First Secretary of the Communist Party
1964 – U.N. peace force under Indian General Gyani takes over in Cyprus; Earthquake in Alaska kills 114 people.
1968 – Yuri Gagarin, Soviet cosmonaut who flew world’s first manned space mission, is killed in crash of training plane.
1970 – Severe earthquake strikes western Turkey, killing at least 1,087 and leaving 90,000 homeless.
1976 – South Africa withdraws its military forces from Angola.
1989 – Ethnic unrest shakes Yugoslav province of Kosovo, killing two police officers and injuring at least eight other people.
1991 – Commandos storm a jetliner in Singapore with 120 passengers aboard, killing four Pakistani hijackers after a nine-hour standoff.
1992 – As fighting rages for a third day in the town of Bosanski Brod, Bosnian leaders appeal to the United Nations for a peacekeeping force.
1995 – South African President Nelson Mandela fires his estranged wife, Winnie, from the government.
1998 -U.S. Food and Drug Administration approves the drug Viagra, made by Pfizer, saying it helped about two-thirds of impotent men improve their sexual function.
2000 – Fighting off a last-minute Communist surge, Vladimir Putin scores a convincing victory in presidential elections after promising to end years of political chaos and restore Russia as a global power.
2006 – The discredited U.N. Human Rights Commission holds its last meeting before being replaced by a new body, ending a 60-year history in which some of the world’s worst offenders often used their membership to protect one another from condemnation.
2009 – President Barack Obama launches fresh effort to defeat al-Qaida terrorists in both Pakistan and Afghanistan, sending in more troops and civilian advisers.
2010 – Europe’s best known landmarks — including the Eiffel Tower, Big Ben and Rome’s Colosseum — fall dark, following Sydney’s Opera House and Beijing’s Forbidden City in joining a global climate change protest, as lights are switched off across the world to mark the Earth Hour event.
2011 – International air raids target Moammar Gadhafi’s hometown of Sirte for the first time as rebels quickly close in on the regime stronghold, a formidable obstacle that must be overcome for government opponents to reach the capital, Tripoli.
2013 – U.S. bars purchasing information technology from any company linked to China in first real swipe at Beijing over its alleged hacking activities.
2014 – The world rushes to help Ukraine, with the International Monetary Fund pledging up to $18 billion, the U.N. condemning the vote that drove Crimea into Russian hands and the U.S. Congress backing even harsher sanctions against Moscow.
2015 — Amanda Knox, who maintained that she and her former Italian boyfriend were innocent in her British roommate’s murder though multiple trials and nearly four years in jail, is vindicated when Italy’s highest court throws out their convictions once and for all.
Today’s Birthdays:
William von Roentgen, German physicist (1845-1923); Frederick Henry Royce, English auto engineer (1863-1933); Gloria Swanson, U.S. film actress (1898-1983); Michael York, English actor (1942–); Quentin Tarantino, U.S. film director (1963–); Mariah Carey, U.S. pop singer (1970–).
Thought For Today:
Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us — Bill Watterson, American cartoonist (1958 –).
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