Category: Today

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.