ICONS
1852 Uncle Sam cartoon figure made its debut in the New York Lantern weekly.
WAR!
2003 U.S. officials said President Bush might delay a vote on his troubled United Nations resolution or even drop it - and fight Iraq without the international body's backing.
DISASTER
1895 Spanish cruiser Reina Regente sinks off Gibraltar, 402 die.
1928 Hundreds of people died when the San Francisquito Valley in California was inundated with water after the St. Francis Dam burst just before midnight the evening of March 12.
1961 Landslide in USSR, kills 145.
1992 570 die in a Turkish earthquake.
1994 Oil tank/airship crash at Bosporus (huge fire/15+ killed).
ATTEMPTS
1915 Dodgers manager Wilbert Robinson tries to catch a baseball dropped from an airplane, but the pilot substituted a grapefruit.
PATENTS
1887 Chester Greenwood of Maine patents earmuffs.
DEALS
1677 Massachusetts gains title to Maine for $6,000.
CLIMATE
1888 Great Blizzard of 1888 rages.
1993 Blizzard of '93 hits north-east US.
INVENTIONS
1894 J L Johnstone of England invents horse racing starting gate.
ASSASSINATION
1981 Attempt on Pope John Paul II by Mehemet Ali Agca.
NAZIS
1933 Josef Göbbels becomes German minister of Information & Propaganda.
1938 Anschluß-Austria annexed by Nazi Germany.
TRIALS
1998 Sgt. Maj. Gene McKinney, once the Army's top enlisted man, was acquitted at his court-martial of pressuring military women for sex, but was convicted of trying to persuade his chief accuser to lie.
SCIENCE
1781 The planet Uranus was discovered by Sir William Herschel. He thought it was a comet.
1925 A law went into effect in Tennessee prohibiting the teaching of the theory of evolution.
JEWS
1656 Jews are denied the right to build a synagogue in New Amsterdam.
1951 Israel demands DM 6.2 billion compensation from Germany.
MURDER
1964 Bar manager Catherine "Kitty" Genovese, 28, was stabbed to death near her New York home; the case generated controversy over charges that Genovese's neighbors had failed to respond to her cries for help.
RESIGNING
1980 Ford Motor Co. Chairman Henry Ford II announced he was stepping down, the same day a jury in Winamac, Ind., found the company innocent of reckless homicide in the fiery deaths of three young women in a Ford Pinto.
2007 Attorney General Alberto Gonzales admitted mistakes in how the Justice Department handled the dismissal of eight federal prosecutors but said he wouldn't resign.
POLITICALLY CORRECT
1988 yielding to student protests, the board of trustees of Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C., a liberal arts college for the hearing-impaired, chose I. King Jordan to become the school's first deaf president.
TRAGEDY
1996 a gunman burst into an elementary school in Dunblane, Scotland, and opened fire, killing 16 children and one teacher before killing himself.
ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION
2007 President Bush sought to soothe strained ties with Mexico by promising to prod Congress to overhaul tough U.S. immigration policies, but Mexican President Felipe Calderon criticized U.S. plans for a 700-mile border fence.
ABORTION
2003 The Senate voted 64-33 to ban partial birth abortion.
BORN
1733 Joseph Priestly England, clergyman/scientist (discovered oxygen).
1770 Daniel Lambert England, giant (weighed 739 lbs (334 kg) at death).
1908 American billionaire, publisher and diplomat Walter Annenberg (TV Guide) was born in Milwaukee.
BIRTHDAYS
Jazz musician Roy Haynes is 83. Country singer Jan Howard is 78. Songwriter Mike Stoller is 75. Singer-songwriter Neil Sedaka is 69. Actor William H. Macy is 58. Actress Deborah Raffin is 55. Comedian Robin Duke is 54. Actress Glenne Headly is 53. Actress Dana Delany is 52. Rock musician Adam Clayton (U2) is 48. Jazz musician Terence Blanchard is 46. Actor Christopher Collet is 40. Actress Annabeth Gish is 37. Actress Tracy Wells is 37. Rapper Common is 36. Rapper Khujo (Goodie Mob, The Lumberjacks) is 36. Singer Glenn Lewis is 33. Actor Danny Masterson is 32. Actor Emile Hirsch is 23. Singers Nicole and Natalie Albino (Nina Sky) are 22.
DEATH
1901 Benjamin Harrison, the 23rd president of the United States, died in Indianapolis.
1938 Clarence S Darrow Scopes Monkey Trial attorney, dies in Chicago at 80.
Today is March 13, the 73rd day of the year. There are 293 days left in 2008.
compiled by Mondoreb
images:
* sonofthesouth
* allposters
Sources:
* today in history
* Today in History
DBKP.com - Bigger, Better!.
Death by 1000 Papercuts Front Page
