Today is Wednesday, March 23, the 83rd day of 2016. There are 283 days left in the year.
Highlights in history on this date:
1568 – Treaty of Longjumean ends Second War of Religion in France.
1743 – George Frideric Handel’s oratorio “Messiah” has its London premiere.
1775 – Patrick Henry calls for America’s independence from Britain, telling the Virginia Provincial Convention, “Give me liberty, or give me death!”
1792 – Joseph Haydn’s Symphony No. 94 in G Major, also known as the “Surprise Symphony,” is performed publicly for the first time, in London.
1801 – Russia’s Czar Paul I is assassinated by Russian aristocrats and succeeded by Alexander I.
1806 – Explorers Lewis and Clark, having reached the U.S. Pacific coast, begin their journey back east.
1848 – First organized band of settlers lands at Dunedin, New Zealand.
1861 – Italy institutes its first government under Count Camillo di Cavour.
1918 – Lithuania proclaims its independence.
1919 – Benito Mussolini founds fascist movement in Italy.
1933 – German Reichstag grants Adolf Hitler dictatorial powers until April 1937.
1935 – Soviet Union sells its interest in Chinese Eastern railway to Japan.
1942 – Program of moving Japanese-Americans from their homes on U.S. West Coast to inland detention centers during World War II begins.
1956 – Pakistan becomes an independent republic within the British Commonwealth.
1962 – French government uses fighter planes and tanks in attempt to end insurrection by European rightists in Algeria.
1978 – U.S. Senate raises the mandatory retirement age to 70.
1988 – Contra guerrillas sign a cease-fire agreement with the Sandinista government in Nicaragua.
1989 – Police clash with thousands of ethnic Albanian demonstrators in Kosovo province, Yugoslavia.
1990 – Soviet government orders Western diplomats to leave and restricts entry of foreigners into Lithuania.
1992 – Tens of thousands of jubilant Albanians celebrate a crushing election victory by the Democratic party, marking the end of Communist power.
1994 – Luis Donaldo Colosio, presidential candidate of Mexico’s governing party, is assassinated in Tijuana.
1998 – President Boris Yeltsin fires his prime minister and the entire Cabinet in Russia’s biggest government shake-up since the breakup of the Soviet Union.
1999 – Gunmen open fire on the car of Vice President Luis Argana of Paraguay, killing him and throwing the young democracy into turmoil.
2001 – The Mir space station returns to Earth, ending its 15-year odyssey with a fiery plunge into the South Pacific.
2003 – Slovenia votes to support its 2004 induction into the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
2004 – Former chief weapons inspector Hans Blix says U.N. inspectors would have been able to determine that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction had the United States and Britain allowed more time for them to work before going to war.
2005 – Marxist rebels in southern Colombia ambush a military convoy with explosives and gunfire, killing 10 Colombian Marines.
2010 – In a major triumph for his presidency, Barack Obama signs a massive, nearly $1 trillion health care overhaul that will for the first time cement insurance coverage as the right of every U.S. citizen.
2011 – Egypt’s public prosecutor makes an unprecedented sweep against the top security brass, charging the former interior minister and other officials with aiding in the killing and the attempted killing of hundreds of protesters during the uprising that ousted President Hosni Mubarak.
2012 – Tens of thousands of Syrians brave tear gas and gunfire to protest across the country, vowing to storm the capital Damascus to oust President Bashar Assad.
2014 – Turkish fighter jets shoot down a Syrian warplane after it violates the country’s airspace in a move likely to ramp up tensions between the two countries already deeply at odds over Syria’s civil war.
2015 – Researchers have found fossil remains of a previously unknown species of a crocodile-like “super salamander” that roamed the Earth more than 200 million years ago.
Today’s Birthdays:
Erich Fromm, German-born U.S. psychoanalyst (1900-1980); Joan Crawford, U.S. actress (1908-1977); Akira Kurosawa, Japanese film director (1910-1998); Wernher von Braun, German-born rocket expert (1912-1977); Ric Ocasek, British rock singer/producer (1949–); Chaka Khan, U.S. singer (1953–); Keri Russell, U.S. actress (1976–).
Thought For Today:
In human relations, kindness and lies are worth a thousand truths — Graham Greene (1904-1991).
Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
