Category: Today

On March 21, 1937, a peaceful Palm Sunday march in Ponce, Puerto Rico, turns deadly when National Guard and Insular Police, under the direct military command of the U.S.-appointed governor of Puerto Rico, General Blanton Winship, open fire on the crowd killing 18 people, including a 7‑year-​old girl. The Puerto Rican Nationalist Party organized the march to commemorate the ending of slavery in Puerto Rico by the governing Spanish National Assembly in 1873 and to protest the imprisonment, by the U.S. government, of Nationalist leader Pedro Albizu Campos on alleged sedition charges.

On March 21, 1960, South African police open fire on a group of unarmed black South African demonstrators, killing 69 and wounding 180 in the Sharpeville Massacre.

On March 20, 1854, former Whig Party members met in Ripon, Wisconsin, to establish a new party, the Republican Party, that would oppose the spread of slavery into the western territories.

On March 20, 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson notified Alabama’s Governor George Wallace that he would use federal authority to call up the Alabama National Guard in order to supervise a planned civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, after violence by state troopers and local police against a group of demonstrators had broken up their March 7 walk from Selma to Montgomery, the state capital city, in what became known as the “Bloody Sunday.”

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On March 18, 1766, the British Parliament repealed the Stamp Act, after four months of major protests in America.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