Today is Tuesday, March 1, the 61st day of 2015. There are 305 days left in the year.
Highlights in history on this date:
1553 – League of Heidelberg is formed by Catholic and Protestant princes in Germany to prevent election of Philip of Spain as Holy Roman Emperor.
1562 – Some 1,200 French Huguenots are slain at Massacre of Vassy, provoking first War of Religion in France.
1692 – The Salem Witch trial begins in the American colony of Massachusetts.
1767 – King Charles III expels Roman Catholic Jesuits from Spain.
1790 – U.S. Congress authorizes the first census.
1799 – Turks and Russians complete conquest of Ionian Islands in Greece.
1815 – Napoleon Bonaparte lands in France, forcing King Louis XVIII to flee.
1829 – Brig. Gen. Juan Manuel de Rosas is sworn in as governor of Buenos Aires, rules Argentina until 1852.
1870 – War ends between Paraguay and combined forces of Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay.
1896 – Ethiopian forces defeat Italians at Adwa, northern Ethiopia, ending Italy’s quest to create a substantial African colony.
1919 – Korean independence is declared in Seoul and 2 million people rally, leading to brutal Japanese repression.
1932 – The infant son of Charles and Anne Lindbergh is kidnapped from the family home near Hopewell, New Jersey.
1943 – Britain’s Royal Air Force begins systematic bombing of European railway systems in World War II.
1952 – Britain returns the North Sea island of Helgoland, occupied since World War II, to West Germany.
1954 – Puerto Rican nationalists open fire in the U.S. House of Representatives, wounding five congressmen.
1961 – U.S. President John F. Kennedy establishes the Peace Corps.
1966 – Soviet Union lands one-ton spacecraft on planet Venus after three-and-a-half-month flight.
1973 – Palestinian terrorists invade diplomatic reception in Khartoum, Sudan, and capture five diplomats.
1981 – Irish Republican Army member Bobby Sands begins a hunger strike at the Maze Prison in Northern Ireland; he dies 65 days later.
1989 – U.N. General Assembly approves $416 million for U.N.’s one-year plan to free Namibia from 74 years of South African rule.
1992 – Muslims and Croats in Bosnia and Herzegovina vote for independence from Yugoslavia, enraging Serb nationalists.
1993 – Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin closes the occupied Gaza Strip “for a number of days” after a Gaza Palestinian stabs to death two Israelis and
wounds nine others.
1995 – The director of Russia’s only national television network, Vladislav Listyev, is shot and killed as he enters his apartment building.
2003 – Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-described planner and organizer of the September 11, 2001, attacks is captured in Rawalpindi, Pakistan.
2004 – Exiled Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide claims he was forced to leave Haiti by U.S. military forces.
2007 – Japan’s nationalist Prime Minister Shinzo Abe denies Tokyo’s military forced women into sexual slavery during World War II, backtracking from a past government apology.
2010 – Russia’s president says Moscow is ready to consider new sanctions on Iran for its nuclear defiance and the chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency warns that he cannot confirm that all of Tehran’s atomic activities are peaceful.
2013 – U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry wades into the controversy over comments by Turkey’s prime minister equating Zionism to a crime against humanity, rebuking the leader of the NATO ally by saying such remarks complicate efforts to find peace in the Middle East.
2014 – Russian troops take over Crimea and the newly installed Ukrainian government is powerless to react.
2015 – North Korea protests as the United States and South Korea start annual military drills that Pyongyang claims are preparations for a northward invasion.
Today’s Birthdays:
Frederic Chopin, Polish romantic pianist and composer (1810-1849); Theophile Delcasse, French statesman (1852-1923); Giles Lytton Strachey, English author (1880-1932); Yitzhak Rabin, former Israeli prime minister (1922-1995); Harry Belafonte, U.S. singer/actor (1927–); Dirk Benedict, U.S. actor/director (1945–); Ron Howard, U.S. director/actor (1954–); Roger Daltrey, British singer/songwriter (1944–); Javier Bardem, Spanish actor (1969–).
Thought For Today:
If you are able to state a problem, it can be solved — Edwin H. Land, American inventor (1909-1991).
Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
