Today
in History ~ March 26
Events
1147 - Jewish community in Cologne fasts to commemorate anti-Jewish violence
1150 - Tichborne family of Hampshire England starts tradition of giving a Gallon of flour to each resident to keep deathbed promise
1780 - 1st British Sunday newspaper appears (Brit Gazette & Sunday Monitor)
1790 - Congress passes Naturalization Act, requires 2-year residency
1793 - Pro-royalist uprising in Vendee region of France
1799 - Napolean captures Jaffa, Palestine
1804 - Congress orders removal of Indians east of Mississippi to Louisiana
1804 - The Louisiana Purchase was divided into the Territory of Orleans and the District of Louisiana.
1812 - Earthquake destroys 90% of Caracas -- about 20,000 die
1824 - 1st performance of Beethoven's "Missa Solemnis"
1845 - Joseph Francis, NYC, patents a corrugated sheet-iron lifeboat
1845 - Patent awarded for adhesive medicated plaster, precusor of bandaid
1863 - Voters in West Virginia approve gradual emancipation of slaves
1871 - Paris Commune founded
1872 - Thomas J Martin patents fire extinguisher
1885 - Eastman Dry Plate and Film Co. of Rochester, N.Y., manufactured the first commercial motion picture film.
1886 - 1st modern cremation in England
1910 - US forbid immigration to criminals, anarchists, paupers & the sick
1913 - Bulgaria captures Adrianople, ending the 1st Balkan War
1916 - Birdman of Alcatraz receives solitary
1924 - Premiere of Bernard Shaw's "Saint Joan," in London
1931 - New Delhi replaces Calcutta as capital of British India
1936 - 200" telescope lens shipped, Corning Glass Works, NY-Cal Tech. The lens of the Hale telescope weighed 20 tons. It was dedicated at Mt. Palomar in 1948 and today, remains one of the most widely used scientific telescopes. Galileo would be seeing more that he ever dreamed.
1937 - Joe DiMaggio takes Ty Cobb's advice & replaces his 40 with 36 oz bat
1938 - NBC radio performance of Howard Hanson's 3rd Symphony
1942 - 1st "Eichmann transport" to Auschwitz & Birkenau Camps
1942 - 1st 700 Jews from Polish Lvov-district reach Belzec
1942 - German offensive in North Africa under Rommel
1943 - Elsie S Ott becomes 1st woman awarded US Air Force Medal
1944 - 705 British bombers attack Essen
1945 - Generals Eisenhower/Bradley/Patton attack at Remagen and cross the Rhine
1945 - Japanese resistance ends on Iwo Jima
1945 - Kamikazes attack US battle fleet near Kerama Retto
1945 - US 7th Army crosses Rhine at Worms
1950 - McCarthy charges that Owen Lattimore is a Soviet spy
1953 - Dr Jonas Salk announces vaccine to prevent polio [myelitis] [H]
1955 - "Ballad of Davy Crockett," becomes the #1 record in US
1958 - 30th Academy Awards-"Bridge over River Kwai," Woodward and Guinness win
1960 - Iraq executes 30 after attack on Pres Kassem
1962 - U.S. Supreme Court gave federal courts the power to order reapportionment of seats in a state legislature, a decision that eventually led to the doctrine of "one man, one vote."
1964 - "Funny Girl" opens at Winter Garden Theater NYC for 1,348 performances
1971 - "Benny Hill Show" tops TV ratings
1971 - "Cannon" with William Conrad premieres on CBS-TV
1971 - East Pakistan proclaimed its independence, taking the name Bangladesh.
1974 - Romanian communist party names party leader Nicolei Ceausescu president
1975 - "Tommy" premieres in London
1975 - The city of Hue in South Vietnam fell to the North Vietnamese army.
1979 - Israel and Egypt signed a peace treaty at the White House, ending 30 years of hostilities. Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat gave President Carter credit for the so-called Camp David agreement.
1981 - Police & Albanian demonstrators battle in Kosovo Yugoslavia
1981 - A jury in Los Angeles awarded entertainer Carol Burnett $1.6 million from the "National Enquirer" for an article she'd charged was libelous. (The award was later reduced, and the two parties settled out of court).
1982 - Ground-breaking ceremonies took place in Washington, D.C., for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
1987 - A torture chamber is uncovered in Philadelphia
[H]
1987 - August Wilson's "Fences," premieres in NYC
1989 - 1st free elections in USSR; 190 M votes cast; Boris Yeltsin wins
1990 - 62nd Academy Awards - "Driving Miss Daisy," D Day-Lewis, Jessica Tandy win
1991 - A divided U.S. Supreme Court ruled that criminal defendants whose coerced confessions were improperly used as evidence are not always entitled to new trials.
1991 - Fuel pipe explodes under 58th street & Lexington Ave, NYC
1991 - The Bush administration indicated it would not aid rebels seeking to overthrow Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
1991 - Mali's dictator was overthrown in violent overnight military coup; 59 people died.
1991 - The Pakistani hijackers of a Singapore Airlines jet were killed by government commandos in Singapore; the passengers and crew members were safe.
1992 - A judge in Indianapolis sentenced former heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson to six years in prison for raping a Miss Black America contestant. (Tyson ended up serving three years.)
1992 - Soviet cosmonaut Serge Krikalev, after spending 313 days in orbit aboard the Mir space station, returned to Earth a citizen of a new country, Russia. While he was in space, the Soviet Union had crumbled.
1993 - A "frustrated" taxpayer blasted his way into the IRS state headquarters in Sacramento, Calif., taking several workers hostage before a police SWAT team killed him.
1993 - A man armed with a small-caliber rifle opened fire along a rural highway outside Seattle, killing one man and wounding six others before police shot and critically wounded him.
1993 - An emergency meeting of Russia's Congress of People's Deputies, called into session by an impeachment-minded parliament, backed away from a bid to unseat President Yeltsin.
1994 - Bonnie Blair skates world record 500 m ladies (38.99 sec)
1996 - Amid public fears of mad cow disease, British farmers demanded their government order the destruction of old cattle, but Prime Minister John Major refused, and blamed the crisis on his political opponents.
1996 - Republican presidential hopeful Bob Dole won the California GOP primary and enough delegates for a first- ballot nomination.
1997 - A fire in a Kenyan secondary school dormitory killed 67 students.
1997 - Former drug counselor John G. Bennett Jr. pleaded no contest in Philadelphia to charges stemming from a $100 million charity fraud.
1997 - The bodies of 39 members of the Heaven's Gate techno-religious cult who'd committed suicide were found inside a mansion in Rancho Santa Fe, Calif.
[H]
1998 - President Clinton became the first U.S. president to visit South Africa.
1999 - Dr. Jack Kevorkian was convicted in Pontiac, Mich., of second-degree murder for giving a patient with Lou Gehrig's disease a lethal injection, an action videotaped and broadcast on television.
2000 - "American Beauty" won five Oscars, including best picture; its leading man, Kevin Spacey, won best actor, while Hilary Swank won best actress for "Boys Don't Cry."
2000, acting Russian President Vladimir Putin was elected Russia's second democratically chosen president.
by a more than 20 percent margin.
2001 - Comair pilots walked off the job, beginning a three-month strike after contract talks with the regional airline broke off.
Birthdays
Today
1479 - Vasili III, great prince of Moscow (1505-33)/son of
Ivan III
1717 - Manuel Jeronimo Romero de Avila, composer
1773 - Nathaniel Bowditch, mathematician/astronomer/author (Marine Sextant)
1819 - Francisco Eduardo da Costa, composer
1840 - George Smith, London England, assyriologist (cuneiform (script))
1859 - A.E. (Alfred Edward) Housman (British poet: A Shropshire Lad, Last Poems,
More Poems, Collected Poems, Manuscript Poems)
1863 - Henry Royce, founder (Rolls-Royce Limited in 1884)
1874 - Robert Frost (Four-time Pulitzer prize-winning poet: Birches, Mending
Wall, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening; read The Gift Outright at
inauguration of John F. Kennedy)
1880 - Duncan Hines (author [Out of Kentucky Kitchens], traveler, cake mix
maker)
1884 - Wilhelm Backhaus, Leipzig Germany, pianist (Rubinstein 1905)
1904 - Joseph Campbell, mythologist (Mythic Image)
1905 - Viktor Emil Frankl, pyschiatrist (Man's Search for Meaning)
1909 - Chips Rafferty (John Goffage) (actor: The Desert Rats, The Sundowners,
Wackiest Ship in the Army, Skullduggery)
1911 - Tennessee (Thomas) Williams (Pulitzer prize-winning playwright: A
Streetcar Named Desire [1948], Cat on a Hot Tin Roof [1955]; The Glass
Menagerie, Night of the Iguana, Summer and Smoke)
1914 - William Westmoreland (U.S. Army General: head of U.S. forces in
Vietnam)
1916 - Sterling Hayden (John Hamilton) (actor: The Asphalt Jungle, Dr.
Strangelove, The Godfather, 9 to 5, The Blue and the Gray)
1919 - Strother Martin (actor: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Cool Hand
Luke, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, McLintock, Rooster Cogburn, Slap Shot,
The Wild Bunch)
1921 - Joe Loco (Jose Esteves, Jr.) (musician)
1923 - Bob Elliot, Boston , comedian (Bob & Ray, Get a Life)
1925 - Pierre Boulez (conductor: Pierre Boulez and his Ensemble
Intercontemporain; played for Frank Zappa)
1929 - Maurice Simon (jazz musician)
1930 - Sandra Day O'Connor, Texas, 1st woman Supreme Court Justice(1981- )
1931 - Leonard Nimoy (actor: Star Trek, Mission Impossible; director: Three Men
and a Baby)
1932 - Dick Nolan (football coach)
1934 - Alan Arkin (actor: Catch-22, The Russians are Coming, The Russians are
Coming; director: Little Murders)
1934 - Gino Cappelletti (football: 1st kicker to kick a field goal in the AFL:
New England Patriots [1960]; AFL Player of Year [1964; Patriot's radio network
commentator)
1937 - Wayne Embry (basketball)
1939 - James Caan (actor: The Godfather, Rabbit Run, Brian's Song, Dick Tracy,
Rollerball, Alien Nation, For the Boys, Misery)
1940 - Braulio Baeza (National Horse Racing Hall of Famer: jockey: 1st to go
over $3 million in purses in one year; leading money winner in 1965, 1966 and
1975; Eclipse award-winner [1972, 1975])
1940 - Rod Lauren (singer)
1941 - Barclay Plager (hockey: twin brother of hockey's Bob Plager)
1941 - Bob Plager (hockey: twin brother of hockey's Barclay Plager)
1942 - Erica Jong (Mann) (writer: Fear of Flying, Becoming Light, How to Save
Your Own Life)
1943 - Robert Woodward, investigative reporter (Watergate, CIA crimes)
1944 - Diana Ross (Diane Earle) (singer: actress: group: The Supremes: I Hear a
Symphony, Come See About Me; solo: Ain't No Mountain High Enough, Theme from
'Mahogany', Love Hangover; actress: Lady Sings the Blues, Mahogany, The
Wiz)
1949 - Vicki Lawrence (Emmy Award-winning actress: The Carol Burnett Show
[1975-76]; Vicki!, Mama's Family; singer: The Night the Lights Went Out in
Georgia)
1950 - Martin Short (actor: Three Amigos, Three Fugitives, Innerspace; comedian:
SCTV Network 90, Saturday Night Live)
1960 - Jennifer Grey (actress: Dirty Dancing, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, The
Cotton Club; Joel Grey's daughter)
1960 - Marcus Allen, NFL running back (LA Raiders, KC Chiefs, Heisman 1981)
1986 - Jessica McClure, baby trapped in Texas well in 1988
Famous
deaths
1350 - Alfonso XI, King of
Castile & Leon, dies
1649 - John Winthrop, Puritan & 1st Governor (Mass), dies
1657 - Jacob van Eyck, Dutch blind flautist/carillonneur, dies at 69
1827 - Ludwig van Beethoven, German composer (Eroica, Fidelio), dies in Vienna.
at 56
1892 - Walt Whitman, poet, dies in Camden, NJ at 72
1902 - Cecil Rhodes, Prime Minister of Cape Colony (1890-96) dies at 48
1918 - Cesar A Cui, Lithuanian fort builder/composer, dies at 83
1923 - Sarah Bernhardt, [Henriette], actress (Qn Elizabeth), dies at 77
1945 - David Lloyd George, British (L) premier (1916-22), dies at 82
1957 - Max Ophuls, [Maximilian Oppenheimer], German/French director, dies
1959 - Raymond T Chandler, US detective writer (Long Goodbye), dies at 71
1969 - B[runo] Traven, writer (Sierra Madre), dies at 87
1973 - Noel Coward, English playwright (Private Letters), dies at 73
1983 - Anthony F Blunt, British art historian/spy for USSR, dies at 75
1990 - International Chrysis, Transvestite actor (Q&A), dies of cancer at 38
1996 - Former Secretary of State Edmund Muskie died in Washington, D.C., two days shy of his 82nd birthday.
2000 - "Joy of Sex" author Alex Comfort died in Oxfordshire, England, at age 80.
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