Category: Today

On March 19, 1734, patriot Thomas McKean was born in Pennsylvania. McKean went on to sign the Declaration of Independence and to serve as president of the state of Delaware, chief justice of Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court and president of the U.S. Congress under the Articles of Confederation.

On March 19, 1920, for the second time, the United States Senate rejected the Treaty of Versailles, negotiated after World War I.

On March 19, 1931, with the state suffering from the economic Great Depression, Nevada’s legislature passed legislation legalizing gambling.

On March 18, 1766, the British Parliament repealed the Stamp Act, after four months of major protests in America.

On March 18, 1837, Grover Cleveland was born in Caldwell, New Jersey. Cleveland would go on to win the popular vote for president three times, and to be elected the 22nd and 24th President of the United States. He opposed high tariffs, inflation, imperialism and subsidies to business, farmers or veterans.

On March 18, 1942, President Franklin Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9102 establishing the War Relocation Authority to specifically abridge the constitutional rights of Japanese Americans by taking them into custody without any criminal charge. Over 120,000 citizens were forcibly relocated into internment camps.

On March 18, 1968, the U.S. Congress repealed the requirement for a gold reserve to back paper money in the U.S.

On March 17, 1992, white South Africans went to the polls to vote on a referendum supporting the reforms negotiated by State President F.W. de Klerk two years earlier, in which de Klerk proposed to end the apartheid that had begun in 1948. The vote was nearly 69 percent in favor, leading to the apartheid being ended.

On March 17, 1776, British forces evacuate Boston, Massachusetts, after George Washington and Henry Knox place artillery in positions overlooking the city, thus ending the 11-month Siege of Boston.

On March 17, 461 A.D., Saint Patrick, the Christian missionary, bishop and apostle of Ireland, died.

On March 16, 1751, James Madison, known as “the father of the Constitution,” was born in Virginia. Madison went on to draft of the Constitution, record of the Constitutional Convention, author many of the Federalist Papers and serve for two terms as the fourth president of the United States.

On March 16, 1968, a platoon of American soldiers, led by Lieutenant William Calley, killed between 200 and 500 unarmed civilians at My Lai, in a search-and-destroy mission near the northern coast of South Vietnam. Villagers were raped, tortured and dozens of people dragged into a ditch, including children, and murdered in mass. The massacre ended when helicopter pilot, Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson, landed his aircraft between the soldiers and the retreating villagers and threatened to open fire unless the soldiers ended their attack.

On March 15, 1783, General George Washington surprised an assembly of army officers in Newburgh, New York. Angry that Congress had not honored its promises on pay as well as on covering costs for food and clothing, officers had circulated an anonymous letter condemning Congress and calling for a revolt. Washington told the officers, “Let me entreat you, gentlemen, on your part, not to take any measures, which viewed in the calm light of reason, will lessen the dignity, and sully the glory you have hitherto maintained; let me request you to rely on the plighted faith of your country, and place a full confidence in the purity of the intentions of Congress.”

On March 15, 1939, during a meeting with Czech President Emil Hacha, Adolph Hitler threatened a bombing raid against the Czech capital to coerce Hacha into offering German troops free passage into Czechoslovakia. The same day, German troops pour into Bohemia and Moravia, violating the Munich Pact signed less than six months earlier by Adolf Hitler, Italian Leader Benito Mussolini, French Premier Edouard Daladier, and British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain.

On March 14, 1879, Albert Einstein was born, the son of a Jewish electrical engineer in Ulm, Germany. Einstein’s theories altered man’s view of the universe, and his work in particle and energy theory helped make possible the atomic bomb.

On March 14, 1883, Karl Marx, considered the father of Communism, died.

On March 14, 1900, the Gold Standard Act was ratified, placing the U.S. on the gold standard.

On March 14, 1948, Tom Coburn, a congressman and later U.S. Senator from Oklahoma, was born.

On March 13, 1868, for the first time in U.S. history, the impeachment trial of an American president began in the U.S. Senate. President Andrew Johnson, reviled by the Republican-dominated Congress for his views on Reconstruction, became the first president to be impeached by the House of Representatives when, in February 1868, the Republican-controlled House charged the Democrat Johnson with 11 articles of impeachment for “high crimes and misdemeanors,” including violating the controversial Tenure of Office Act, passed by Congress over his veto in 1867.

On March 11, 1942, General Douglas MacArthur abandoned the island fortress of Corregidor in the Philippines under orders from President Franklin Roosevelt. Left behind at Corregidor and on the Bataan Peninsula were 90,000 American and Filipino troops, who, lacking food, supplies, and support, would soon succumb to the Japanese offensive. MacArthur issued a statement to the press in which he promised his men and the people of the Philippines, “I shall return.”

On March 11, 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev was selected by the Communist Party as the new general secretary and leader of the Soviet Union, following the death of Konstantin Chernenko the day before. Gorbachev oversaw a radical transformation of society during the next six years, concluding with the break-up of the Soviet Union.

On March 11, 1990, Lithuania became the first Soviet Republic to proclaim its independence from the USSR. The Soviet government responded with an oil embargo and economic blockade against the Baltic republic and, in January 1991, Soviet paratroopers and tanks invaded Vilnius, the Lithuanian capital, beginning a standoff that lasted until September 6, 1991, when the crumbling Soviet Union agreed to grant independence to Lithuania and the other Baltic republics of Estonia and Latvia.

On March 10, 1959, more than 300,000 Tibetans surrounded Norbulinka Palace in Lhasa to prevent China’s occupation forces, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), from taking the Dalai Lama to Beijing, where he had been invited to travel alone (without any military personnel or bodyguards) for “official tea” with PLA leaders. During the standoff, the Dalai Lama was evacuated to India. On March 21, the Chinese began shelling the palace, killing tens of thousands still camped outside. In the PLA crackdown that followed, the Dalai Lama’s guards were executed and Lhasa’s major monasteries destroyed.

On March 9, 1841, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the case, United States v. The Amistad, that captive Africans who had seized control of the ship carrying them across the Atlantic Ocean had been taken into slavery illegally. Abolitionists returned the 35 men and boys and three girls to Africa.