Today is Sunday, March 6, the 66th day of 2016. There are 300 days left in the year.
Highlights in history on this date:
1834 – The city of York in Upper Canada is incorporated as Toronto.
1836 – Alamo mission in San Antonio, Texas, falls to Mexican army after 13-day siege in which Davy Crockett and 186 other defenders die.
1853 – Verdi’s opera “La Traviata” premieres in Venice, Italy
1857 – In its Dred Scott decision, the U.S. Supreme Court holds that Scott, a slave, could not sue for his freedom in a federal court.
1922 – United States prohibits export of arms to China.
1936 – The British Supermarine Spitfire MKI takes to the air.
1945 – German city of Cologne falls to U.S. First Army in World War II.
1946 – France recognizes Vietnam as free state within Indochina Federation.
1953 – G.M. Malenkov succeeds the late Joseph Stalin as Premier of Soviet Union.
1957 – Two former British colonies of Gold Coast and Togoland form independent West African nation of Ghana; Israeli troops hand over Gaza Strip to U.N. force.
1962 – United States pledges to defend Thailand against direct Communist aggression without waiting for action by Southeast Asia Treaty Organization.
1965 – U.S. Defense Department announces that 3,500 Marines are being sent to South Vietnam — the first U.S. ground combat troops committed to fighting against Communist guerrillas.
1970 – Alexander Dubcek, former Czech Communist Party boss, is suspended from party.
1975 – Arab terrorist raid on a Tel Aviv hotel leaves 14 dead.
1988 – Thousands of Tibetans demanding independence set fires throughout their capital city of Lhasa.
1991 – Iraqi troops appear to have crushed a rebellion in Basra and are reported to be moving on other southern cities in revolt.
1994 – Somali warlord Mohammed Farah Aidid rejects a peace agreement reached by 12 other faction leaders in Cairo.
1995 – The dollar plummets to 92.70 yen, its lowest level against the yen anywhere in the world since modern exchange rates were established in the late 1940s.
1999 – Ta Mok, the last leader of the murderous Khmer Rouge, is captured by the Cambodian army and flown to the capital for trial.
2003 – An Algerian passenger jet crashes in the Sahara Desert shortly after takeoff, killing 116 people.
2006 – Several cats test positive for the deadly strain of bird flu in Austria and Poland reports its first outbreak of the disease, as the World Health Organization calls bird flu a greater global challenge than any previous infectious disease.
2008 – Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega announces that he is breaking relations with Colombia because of his opposition to the Colombian raid on a guerrilla base in Ecuador.
2010 – Iran’s hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad calls the official version of the Sept. 11, 2011 attacks a “big lie” used by the U.S. as an excuse for battling terror.
2011 – The two opposition parties that triumphed in Ireland’s election, conservative Fine Gael and left-wing Labour, agree to form the country’s next coalition government after compromising on repair of the debt-battered economy.
2012 – The United States, Europe and other world powers announce that bargaining will begin again with Iran over its fiercely disputed nuclear efforts.
2013 – Syria’s accelerating humanitarian crisis hits a grim milestone: the number of U.N.-registered refugees tops 1 million, half of them children.
2014 — U.S. President Barack Obama orders the West’s first sanctions in response to Russia’s military takeover of Crimea, EU more cautious.
2015 — An investigation into what prosecutors call the biggest corruption scandal ever uncovered in Brazil wins Supreme Court approval to expand to dozens of top politicians for alleged ties to a kickback scheme at the state-run energy company, Petrobras.
Today’s Birthdays:
Michelangelo, Italian renaissance artist (1475-1564); Cyrano de Bergerac, French author-duellist (1620-1655); Elizabeth Barrett Browning, English poet (1806-1861); Ed McMahon, U.S. host/announcer (1923–2009); Lorin Maazel, French-born conductor of the NY Philharmonic (1930–2014); Rob Reiner, U.S. director/actor (1947–); Shaquille O’Neal, U.S. basketball player (1972–); Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Colombian novelist (1927–).
Thought For Today:
Le sens commun n’est pas si commun (Common sense is not so common.) — Voltaire, French author and philosopher (1694-1778).
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