March 10 in U.S. History

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March 10 is the 69th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar.

There are 296 days remaining until the end of the year.


Days until coming elections:
www.daysuntil.com/Election-Day/index.html


U.S. Debt Clock: www.usdebtclock.org/

1302 Italian poet and politician Dante Alighieri (1265–1321), author of the Divine Comedy, was sentenced to be burned to death for political reasons. He avoided the fate by living in exile, but he never saw his wife again.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dante_Alighieri

1496 Christopher Columbus concluded his second visit to the Western Hemisphere. On March 10,1496 Columbus set out for home from Hispanola, with 225 Europeans and a large number of natives he had enslaved, but with very little gold. This time he did not receive a hero's welcome. His men were bitter that they did not find the wealth they were seeking, they found no cities, no money economy, no metal tools, manufactures or ores.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Columbus#Second_voyage

1521 Charles V (1500–1558), the Holy Roman Emperor, declared that the writings of Martin Luther were to be burned.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_V,_Holy_Roman_Emperor

1528 Martyrdom of Balthasar Hubmaier, 48, German reformer and chief writer for the Anabaptist movement. Arrested in Moravia, Hubmaier was later condemned at Vienna and burned at the stake. Many Anabaptists later came to U.S.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balthasar_Hubmaier

1681 English Quaker William Penn receives charter from Charles II, making him sole proprietor of colonial American territory Pennsylvania
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Penn

Jerusalem Lutheran Church

1734 Lutheran Salzburgers landed and settled in Georgia. Ebenezer, also known as New Ebenezer, is a ghost town in Effingham County, Georgia, United States, along the banks of Ebenezer Creek. It was listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places as Ebenezer Townsite and Jerusalem Lutheran Church in 1974.
It was established in 1734 by 150 Salzburger Protestants who had been expelled from the Archbishopric of Salzburg in present-day Austria by edict (see Salzburg Religious conflict). Ebenezer was moved closer to the Savannah River in 1736, and at its new location many silk mills were opened. The Salzburgers' pastor, the Reverend Johann Martin Boltzius, sought to build "a religious utopia on the Georgia frontier." That idea was very successful for a time, and the economy thrived. Jerusalem Lutheran Church was completed in 1769
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebenezer,_Georgia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salzburg#Religious_conflict

1748 [O.S.] John Newton (1725–1807), the captain of a slave ship, was converted to Christianity during a huge storm at sea. He eventually became an Anglican clergyman, the author of the famous hymn “Amazing Grace” and a zealous abolitionist., and (as the author of "Amazing Grace") a greatly respected hymnwriter as well as joining the anti-slavery movement.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Newton

1762 French Huguenot Jean Calas, who had been wrongly convicted of killing his son, dies after being tortured by authorities; the event inspired Voltaire to begin a campaign for religious tolerance and legal reform.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Calas


1791 John Stone, Concord MA, patents a pile driver, which he called a "driving pile for bridges." Over fifty years later, on June 26, 1847, a steam pile driver was patented in the U.S. by James Naysmyth of Patricroft, England.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pile_driver

The modern United States, with Louisiana Purchase overlay (in green)

1804 Louisiana Purchase: In St. Louis, Missouri, a formal ceremony is conducted to transfer ownership of the Louisiana Territory from France to the United States.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louisiana_Purchase

1814 Napoleon I of France is defeated at the Battle of Laon in France

1831 The French Foreign Legion is established by King Louis Philippe to support his war in Algeria.

1847 First money minted in Hawaii. Hawaii's first coins were issued in 1847. They were copper cents bearing the portrait of King Kamehameha III. The coins proved unpopular due to the poor quality portrait of the king and the misspelling of the denomination. The dollar or dala was the currency of Hawaii between 1847 and 1898. It was equal to the US dollar and was divided into 100 cents or keneta.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawaiian_dollar


1848 The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo is ratified by the United States Senate, ending the Mexican-American War.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Guadalupe_Hidalgo

1849 Abraham Lincoln of Springfield, IL applied for a patent, only US President to do so. Lincoln started work on his invention between sessions of Congress in 1848. On his way home to Illinois his boat became stranded on a sandbar. As William Herndon, Lincoln's law partner, told the story, "The captain ordered the hands to collect all the loose planks, empty barrels and boxes and force them under the sides of the boat. These empty casks were used to buoy it up. After forcing enough of them under the vessel she lifted gradually and at last swung clear of the opposing sand bar."
www.amug.org/~jpaul/mar10.html

1862 US issues first paper money ($5, $10, $20, $50, $100, $500 & $1000). Paper money was first issued in the United States on March 10, 1862, and became legal tender by an act of Congress seven days later. On the brink of bankruptcy and pressed to finance the Civil War, Congress authorized the United States Treasury to issue paper money for the first time in the form of non-interest bearing Treasury Notes called Demand Notes. Demand Notes were replaced by United States Notes. Commonly called "Greenbacks."

1864 Montana vigilantes hang Jack Slade. Local hell-raiser Jack Slade is hanged in one of the more troubling incidents of frontier vigilantism.

Slade stood out even among the many rabble-rousers who inhabited the wild frontier-mining town of Virginia City, Montana. When he was sober, townspeople liked and respected Slade, though there were unconfirmed rumors he had once been a thief and murderer. When drunk, however, Slade had a habit of firing his guns in bars and making idle threats. Though Slade's rowdiness did not injure anyone, Virginia City leaders anxious to create a more peaceable community began to lose patience. They began giving more weight to the claims that he was a potentially dangerous man.

The year before, many of Virginia City's leading citizens had formed a semisecret "vigilance committee" to combat the depredations of a road agent named Henry Plummer. Plummer and his gang had robbed and killed in the area, confident that the meager law enforcement in the region could not stop them. Determined to reassert order, the Virginia City vigilantes began capturing and hanging the men in Plummer's gang. As a warning to other criminals, the vigilantes left a scrap of paper on the hanged corpses with the cryptic numbers "3-7-77." The meaning of the numbers is unclear, though some claim it referred to the dimensions of a grave: 3 feet wide, 7 feet long, 77 inches deep.

In the first two months of 1864, the Montana vigilantes hanged 24 men, including Plummer. Most historians agree that these hangings, while technically illegal, punished only genuinely guilty men. However, the vigilantes' decision to hang Jack Slade seems less justified. Finally fed up with his drunken rampages and wild threats, on this day in 1864 a group of vigilantes took Slade into custody and told him he would be hanged. Slade, who had committed no serious crime in Virginia City, pleaded for his life, or at least a chance to say goodbye to his beloved wife. Before Slade's wife arrived, the vigilantes hanged him.

Not long after the questionable execution of Slade, legitimate courts and prisons began to function in Virginia City. Though sporadic vigilante "justice" continued until 1867, it increasingly attracted public concern. In March 1867, miners in one Montana mining district posted a notice in the local newspaper that they would hang five vigilantes for every one man hanged by vigilantes. Thereafter, vigilante action faded away.
www.history.com/this-day-in-history/montana-vigilantes-hang-jack-slade



1864 American Civil War: The Red River Campaign begins as Union troops reach Alexandria, Louisiana.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_River_Campaign

Ulysses S. Grant

1864 Lincoln signs Ulysses S. Grant's commission to command the U.S. Army

On this day in 1864, President Abraham Lincoln signs a brief document officially promoting then-Major General Ulysses S. Grant to the rank of lieutenant general of the U.S. Army, tasking the future president with the job of leading all Union troops against the Confederate Army.

The rank of lieutenant general had not officially been used since 1798; at that time, President John Adams assigned the post to former President George Washington, in anticipation of a possible French invasion of the United States. One of Grant s predecessors in the Civil War, Winfield Scott, had briefly earned the rank, but the appointment was only temporary?really, use of the rank had been suspended after George Washington s death in 1799.

In 1862, Lincoln asked Congress to revive the rank of lieutenant general in order to distinguish between the general in charge of all Union forces and other generals of equal rank who served under him in the field. Congress also wanted to reinstate the rank of lieutenant general, but only if Lincoln gave the rank to Grant. Lincoln had other ideas.

Lincoln preferred to promote then-Commanding General Henry Wagner Halleck to lead the Union Army, which had been plagued by a string of ineffective leaders and terrible losses in battle. He was reluctant to promote Grant and risk boosting the general s popularity; at the time Washington was abuzz with rumors that many northern senators were considering nominating Grant instead of Lincoln at the 1864 Republican National Convention. After Grant publicly dismissed the idea of running for the presidency, Lincoln submitted to Congress choice and agreed to give Grant the revived rank. As lieutenant general of the U.S. Army, Grant was answerable only to Lincoln. Well-respected by troops and civilians, Grant earned Lincoln s trust and went on to force the South s surrender in 1865.

Although Grant enjoyed a distinguished career in the military, he later wrote that he never consciously chose the life of a soldier. As a student at West Point, he "never expected to graduate," let alone lead the entire U.S. Army in a desperate but ultimately successful struggle to preserve the Union.

In 1869, Grant became the 18th president of the United States.
www.history.com/this-day-in-history/lincoln-signs-ulysses-s-grants-commission-to-command-the-us-army


1862 US issues first paper money ($5, $10, $20, $50, $100, $500 & $1000)

1874 Purdue University (Indiana) admits its 1st student
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purdue_University

1876 Alexander Graham Bell makes the first successful telephone call by saying "Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you." In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell made what was, in effect, the first telephone call. His assistant, Thomas Watson, located in an adjoining room in Boston, heard Bell's voice over the experimental device say to him, "Mr. Watson, come here. I want you." This was Bell's first successful experiment with the telephone, which is recorded in the March 10 entry of his Lab Notebook. That same day, an ebullient Bell wrote his father of his "great success" and speculated that "the day is coming when telegraph [phone] wires will be laid on to houses just like water and gas - and friends converse with each other without leaving home." Bell had received the first telephone patent three days before. Later that year, Bell succeeded in making a phone call over outdoor lines.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone

1877 The first Protestant Church in Japan was founded during the Meiji Restoration.


1880 The Salvation Army was founded in the United States. The Salvation Army was founded by William and Catherine Booth in London in 1865 as an Evangelical movement called the Christian Revival Association. n 1878, the name was changed to The Salvation Army. On March 10, 1880, Commissioner George Scott Railton and seven young women arrived in the USA and began operations. The Salvation Army's main converts were at first alcoholics, drug addicts, prostitutes and other "undesirables" of society.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvation_Army#United_States

1891 Almon Strowger, an undertaker in Topeka, Kansas, patents the Strowger switch, a device which led to the automation of telephone circuit switching. In 1891, Almon B. Strowger was issued a U.S. patent for his electromechanical switch to automate a telephone exchange. Strowger did not invent the idea of automatic switching ( it was first invented in 1879 by Connolly and McTigthe) but Strowger was the first to put it to effective use. His selector used electromagnets and pawls to move a wiper (with contacts on the end) vertically and around a bank of many other contacts, able to make a connection with any one of them.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strowger_switch


1893 New Mexico State University cancels its first graduation ceremony, its only graduate Sam Steele was robbed & killed the night before

1896 After Bob Fitzsimmons KOs much larger Jim Corbett to win world HW championship he says, "The bigger they are, the harder they fall"
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Fitzsimmons


1900 An eighteen-year-old Chinnian became the first person baptized through the Missouri Synod mission effort in Ambur, India.

1902 A United States court of appeals rules that Thomas Edison did not invent the movie camera


1903 Harry C. Gammeter of Cleveland, OH patented the multigraph duplicating machine. In 1903, Harry C. Gammeter, a typewriter salesman of Cleveland, Ohio patented the multigraph "duplicating machine." It was the first successful machine in the U.S. to simplify the printing processes, so that a layman could print from type. The machine had two drums. The printing drum carried type to give the actual impression on paper. A supply drum carried the type when not in actual use, mounted on the same axis so type could pass between them, sliding and retained in longitudinal channels.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duplicating_machines

1906 The Courrières mine disaster, Europe's worst ever, kills 1099 miners in Northern France.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Courri%C3%A8res_mine_disaster

1908 First ascent of Mount Erebus, Antarctica. The craters of Mount Erebus were first visited in March 1908 by members of Shackleton's expedition, who initially noted the "vast abyss" filled with great masses of steam that rose in a column 150 to 300 meters high. During a brief clearing, they observed the crater and noted the steam explosions issuing from three well-defined openings at the bottom of the high cauldron. The party also observed around the summit area "lumps of lava, large feldspar crystals, from one to three inches in length, and fragments of pumice; both feldspar' and pumice were in many cases coated with sulfur."
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Erebus


1913 William Knox rolled the first perfect 300 game in tournament competition ABC Tournament history in Toledo, OH.

1922 KLZ-AM in Denver CO begins radio transmissions
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KLZ-AM

1922, Mahatma Gandhi is arrested in India, tried for sedition, and sentenced to six years in prison, although he is released after two years of the sentence, being released in February 1924 after an operation for appendicitis
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahatma_Gandhi


1933 Nevada becomes 1st US state to regulate narcotics

1933 An earthquake in Long Beach, California kills 115 people and causes an estimated $40 million dollars in damage. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Beach_earthquake_of_1933




1935 Nelson Eddy recorded "Ah! Sweet Mystery of Life" for Victor Records. "Ah! Sweet Mystery of Life" came from the film, "Naughty Marietta". Later, Eddy recorded the classic tune with Jeanette MacDonald
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nelson_Eddy

1937 An audience of 21,000 jitterbuggers jammed the Paramount Theatre in NYC. A young clarinetist whom they would crown, 'King of Swing' performed at the Paramount on this night. The popular musician was Benny Goodman.

1937 English historian Arnold J. Toynbee wrote: 'In this really very brief period of less than 2,000 years Christianity has, in fact, produced greater spiritual effects in the world than have been produced in a comparable space of time by any other spiritual movement that we know of in history.'
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnold_J._Toynbee

1940 1st US opera telecast, W2XBS, New York NY, I Pagliacci


1941 Larry MacPhail, Dodger GM predicts all players will wear batting helmets

1945 Patton's 3rd Army makes contact with Hodge's 1st Army

1945 US troops lands on Mindanao

1945 The Army Air Force firebombs Tokyo, and the resulting firestorm kills more than 100,000 people, mostly civilians. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Tokyo_in_World_War_II


1948 First civilian to exceed speed of sound-Herb H Hoover, Edwards AFB California

1949 Nazi wartime broadcaster Mildred E. Gillars, a.k.a. "Axis Sally," was convicted in Washington, D.C. of treason. As Axis Sally, she conducted propaganda broadcasts for the Nazis during World War II beamed to American troops overseas and Americans at home. She played sentimental recordings and wondered aloud to the GIs what their girls back home were doing. Her broadcasts also were aimed at raising the prestige of the German Army. She was sentenced to 10 to 30 years and was paroled in 1961. (She served 12 years in prison.)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mildred_Gillars


1949 Detroit Tiger pitcher Art Houtteman is critically injured in an auto accident but recovers to win 15 games in 1949
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_Houtteman

1951 FBI director J Edgar Hoover declines post of baseball commissioner




1951 "Be My Love" by Mario Lanza topped the charts. Dubbed by Arturo Toscannini "the greatest voice of the 20th century," Mario Lanza was one of America's most successful singers and movie stars in the years immediately following World War Tow. After making his first -- and final -- appearance on the professional opera stage in 1948 in the New Orleans Opera's production of Madame Butterfly, Lanza made his MGM debut the following year in The Midnight Kiss, scoring a hit with the soundtrack's "Celeste Aida." The Toast of New Orleans followed, launching his first million-selling hit, "Be My Love."
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mario_Lanza

1952 Fulgencio Batista leads a successful coup in Cuba and appoints himself as the "provisional president".
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulgencio_Batista




1956 "Lisbon Antigua" by Nelson Riddle topped the charts. Nelson Riddle was one of the most admired and versatile arranger/composers of the post-war era, with major radio, television, film, and recording successes to his credit. Riddle was known as one of the best arranger for singers, and backed many of Capitol's vocalists, including Margaret Whiting, Dean Martin, Peggy Lee, and Frank Sinatra. His biggest hits, though, were lighter pieces. Riddle's own recordings from this period aimed for the same audience as Jackie Gleason, and other "mood music" artists. Riddle had a knack for making his point through understatement that eluded Gleason. The first, "Lisbon Antigua," was brought to his attention by the sister of Nat "King" Cole's manager, and came out at the height of the wave of European covers.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nelson_Riddle


1956 Peter Twiss sets new world air record 1,132 mph (1,823 kph)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Twiss


1959 Tennessee Williams' "Sweet Bird of Youth" premieres in New York NY
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennessee_Williams

1959 Tibetan uprising: Fearing an abduction attempt by China, 300,000 Tibetans surround the Dalai Lama's palace to prevent his removal.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1959_Tibetan_uprising

1959 Dorothy Comiskey Rigney, sells 54% of White Sox to Bill Veeck. Dorothy Comiskey Rigney, granddaughter of the Old Roman, sold her 54 percent ownership in the White Sox to Bill Veeck's syndicate for $2.7 million. Brother Chuck fails in his attempt to match or improve the bid. Comiskey control of the franchise ends after 60 years.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Sox




1962 "Hey! Baby" by Bruce Channel topped the charts. Channel wrote "Hey! Baby" around 1959 with his friend Margaret Cobb. He had already been performing the tune for a couple of years before recording it amidst a series of demos for Fort Worth producer Major Bill Smith. First released locally on Smith's label, it was picked up for national distribution by Smash.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Channel


1962 Due to it's no black policy, Phillies leave Jack Tar Harrison Hotel & move to Rocky Point Motel, 20 miles outside Clearwater FL

1963 Pete Rose debuts with hits in his two first at bats in spring training. In Tampa, non-roster player Pete Rose made his first appearance with the Reds, doubling twice in two at bats against the White Sox. Rose enters in the 9th inning, and hits in the 11th and 14th, scoring the game's only run.

1963 Wilt Chamberlain of NBA San Francisco Warriors scores 70 points vs Syracuse. Sportswriter Leonard Koppett stated: "Wilt shattered virtually every scoring record in his first few years in the league. In the process of doing that, he rendered statistics irrelevant. So when Wilt scored 70 points in a game, no one paid attention." Chamberlain scored 50 or more points 118 times in his career.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilt_Chamberlain


1964 US reconnaissance plane shot down over East Germany.


1966 5 time Horse of the Year, Kelso, retires
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelso_(horse)


1966 Military Prime Minister of South Vietnam Nguyen Cao Ky sacked rival General Nguyen Chanh Thi, precipitating large-scale civil and military dissension in parts of the nation.

1966 North Vietnamese capture US Green Beret Camp at Ashau Valley

1965 Walter Matthau and Art Carney opened in "The Odd Couple", one of Neil Simon’s greatest theatrical triumphs

1968 Vietnam War: Battle of Lima Site 85, concluding the 11th with largest single ground combat loss of United States Air Force members (12) during that war.

1969 In Memphis, Tennessee, James Earl Ray pleads guilty to assassinating Martin Luther King Jr. He would later retract his guilty plea.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Earl_Ray

1970 Vietnam War: Captain Ernest Medina is charged with My Lai war crimes.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_10




1970 Barbra Streisand records "The Singer" & "I Can Do It"
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbra_Streisand


1971 Senate approves amendment lowering voting age to 18. In 1971, the 26th Amendment granting 18- to 20-year-olds the right to vote swept through Congress and the states faster than any previous constitutional amendment. The driving force behind the measure came in large part from the country's youth who raised troubling questions about the legitimacy of a representative government that asked 18- to 20-year-olds to fight and die in the Vietnam War but denied them the right to vote on war-related issues.

1972 1st black US political convention opens (Gary IN)




1973 "Killing Me Softly with His Song" by Roberta Flack topped the charts. "Killing Me Softly with His Song" is about Don McLean, a singer/songwriter famous for his hit "American Pie." Flack worked on this in the studio for 3 months, playing around with various chord structures until she got it just right. It won Grammys in 1974 for Record Of The Year, Song Of The Year, and Best Female Pop Vocal.


1975 Vietnam War: Ho Chi Minh Campaign - North Vietnamese troops attack Ban Me Thuot, South Vietnam, on their way to capturing Saigon on the final push for victory over South Vietnam.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ban_Me_Thuot

1975 "Rocky Horror Picture Show" opens at Belasco Theater NYC for 45 performances
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocky_Horror_Picture_Show

The scheme of Uranus's ring-moon system. Solid lines denote rings; dashed lines denote orbits of moons.

1977 Rings of Uranus: Astronomers discover rings around Uranus. In 1977, the rings of Uranus were discovered from earth by stellar occultation experiments made when Uranus passed in front of a star and it was noticed that there were dips in the brightness of the star before and after it passed behind the body of Uranus. This data suggested that Uranus was surrounded by at least five rings. Four more rings were suggested by subsequent occultation measurements from the Earth, and two additional ones were found by space probe Voyager 2, bringing the total to 11. Direct observations of the rings from earth had not been possible, because the rings are lost in the planet's glare as seen through terrestrial optical telescopes.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rings_of_Uranus




1979 "I Will Survive" by Gloria Gaynor topped the charts


1980 Madeira School headmistress Jean Harris shoots and kills Scarsdale diet doctor Herman Tarnower
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Harris

1980 Willard Scott becomes the weather forecaster on the Today Show
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willard_Scott

Above the round domes of La Silla Observatory, three astronomical objects in the Solar System — Jupiter (top), Venus (lower left), and Mercury (lower right).

1982 A syzygy: occurred when all nine planets aligned on the same side of the Sun. The planets are spread out over 98 degrees on this date. The four major planets, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, span an arc of some 73 degrees. all 9 planets aligned on same side of Sun. In 1982, a syzygy occurred when all nine planets aligned on the same side of the Sun. The planets are spread out over 98 degrees on this date. The four major planets, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, span an arc of some 73 degrees.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syzygy_(astronomy)


1982 President Reagan proclaims economic sanctions against Libya because of their support of terrorist groups.

1982 Travis Jackson & Happy Chandler elected to Hall of Fame

1983 Walter Alston, Dodgers manager, elected to Hall of Fame

1983 Exclusive economic zone established by the United States




1984 "Jump" by Van Halen topped the charts. "Jump" was Van Halen's first #1 hit, and their only #1 with David Lee Roth as lead singer. As early as 1981, Eddie Van Halen had written the keyboard part that would eventually become this song. David Lee Roth didn't like the idea of Eddie playing keyboards, and it wasn't until Eddie had built his own recording studio that he recorded the song with Ted Templeman during a late night recording session. When hearing the song, the band decided to include it on the 1984 album - something that is rumored to have contributed to Roth's departure a year later.


1985 Dallas Maverick coach Dick Motta is 4th NBA coach to win 700 games

1987 Vatican formal opposition to test-tube fertilization & embryo transfer

1988 Prior to the 50th anniversary of the Anschluss, Austrian President Kurt Waldheim apologized on his country's behalf for atrocities committed by Austrian Nazis

1990 World Ladies Figure Skating Championship in Halifax won by Jill Trenary (USA)

1995 Car bomb explodes in Karachi at Shiite mosque, 17+ killed

1995 Dow-Jones hits record 4035.64

1996 22nd People's Choice Awards: Apollo 13, Tom Hanks win

1996 NYC Mayor Guiliani visits Israel


1997 The WB premieres its first hit show On this day in 1997, the fledgling Warner Brothers (WB) television network airs the inaugural episode of what will become its first bona-fide hit show, Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Buffy’s creator, Joss Whedon, developed the series from an original script he had written for the big screen a number of years earlier. The 1992 movie, starring Kristy Swanson and directed by Fran Rubel Kuzui, had disappointed Whedon by turning his edgy story with its powerful female heroine into too much of a silly comedy. When he was approached about creating a television series based on his original script, Whedon jumped at the chance. For the TV series, he went with the concept of “high school as a horror movie” and re-created his darker version of Buffy. The result was a blend of drama, romance, comedy, action and horror unique on network television. Whedon served as an executive producer throughout the show’s run and was heavily involved in its writing; he also directed a number of episodes.

Sarah Michelle Gellar, a Daytime Emmy Award winner for her work on the soap opera All My Children, took on the lead role of Buffy Summers, the perky cheerleader who is also her generation’s Chosen One, the only person on Earth with the power to defeat vampires. In the Buffy universe, Sunnydale High School in Sunnydale, California, sits atop a “Hellmouth,” an entrance point for evil demons, and Buffy’s constant battling of undead ghouls served as a supernatural allegory for surviving the real-life challenges of high school and adolescence.

Though ratings peaked during the second and third seasons, the show was consistently well reviewed by critics throughout its six-and-a-half-year run. As one of the edgiest offerings amid a growing WB line-up that included Dawson’s Creek, 7th Heaven and Felicity, Buffy’s success helped establish the network as a staple among teenage and young adult TV viewers. After 2001, Buffy moved to the WB’s competitor, United Paramount Network (UPN). Gellar decided not to renew her contract after the seventh season, and the show aired its final episode in May 2003.

With Buffy Summers hailed by fans and critics as a feminist hero, Gellar made the transition to the big screen with roles in films such as Scream 2, I Know What You Did Last Summer, Cruel Intentions and Scooby Doo. Other breakout stars of the show were Alyson Hannigan, later known for the American Pie movies and the CBS sitcom How I Met Your Mother, and Seth Green, who left the show after less than three seasons to pursue big-screen stardom, appearing in the Austin Powers movie franchise. A Buffy spin-off on the WB, Angel, starred David Boreanaz. Though the show didn’t spark the same amount of frenzied enthusiasm as Buffy, it attracted a small but devoted fan base.
www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-wb-premieres-its-first-hit-show


2000 The NASDAQ Composite stock market index peaks at 5132.52, signaling the beginning of the end of the dot-com boom.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dot-com_bubble

2004 Teenage sniper Lee Boyd Malvo, Muslim, was sentenced in Chesapeake, Va., to life in prison for an October 2002 killing spree in the Washington D.C. area that left 10 people dead.

Conceptual image depicting the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter in an elliptical low-planet orbit around Mars

2006 The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter arrives at Mars.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Reconnaissance_Orbiter

2006 Officials confirmed that Tom Fox, an American who was among four Christian activists kidnapped by practitioners of that "religion of peace" in Iraq, had been found slain



2006 Cuba plays in World Baseball Classic. On March 10, 2006, the Cuban national baseball team plays Puerto Rico in the first round of the inaugural World Baseball Classic. While the Puerto Rican team was made up of major league All-Stars, the Cuban team was largely unknown to the world. Puerto Rico beat Cuba 12-2 that day, but the Cuban team would soon have its revenge.

Baseball has long been a favorite national pastime in Cuba. American sailors brought the game into port cities in the 19th century and its popularity soon spread. Professional leagues had sprung up by the 1870s and by the 20th century both Negro Leaguers and major leaguers spent their winters playing amongst Cuban professionals in the Cuban Baseball Leagues.

Professional baseball in Cuba was abolished in 1960, when Cuban President Fidel Castro instituted state-run athletic programs modeled after those in the communist Soviet Union. That same year, the United States placed a trade embargo against Cuba after Castro aligned himself with the Soviets, ratcheting up tensions in the Cold War. In spite of the trade embargo, the United States continued to allow Cuban émigrés to play baseball in America. The Cuban National League, however, does not accept players from other countries into its system, unlike winter leagues in the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Puerto Rico, Mexico and elsewhere.

Cuban baseball, then, had been largely isolated from the rest of the world since 1960, though the Cubans proved their mettle on the few occasions that Cuba agreed to allow their national team to play against outside teams. In 1999, Cuba played twice against the Baltimore Orioles of the American League, losing the first game 3 -2 in Havana, but winning 12 -6 at Camden Yards in Baltimore. (Fidel Castro watched the victory from his seat between Orioles owner Peter Angelos and Major League Baseball commissioner Bud Selig.) Cuba has also dominated play in the Summer Olympics, winning the gold medal in 1992, 1996 and 2004 and winning the silver in 2000.

In the 2006 World Baseball Classic, few thought Cuba--one of the only teams without a major league player on its roster-- had a realistic chance against the All-Star lineups fielded by the United States, Dominican Republic, Venezuela and Puerto Rico. While the combined annual salaries of the players on those four teams totaled $471 million, Cuban players made just $10 to $15 per month working mandatory day jobs and playing baseball at night.

Five days after being trounced by the Puerto Ricans, Cuba bounced back with immaculate play. They beat Puerto Rico 4-3 to move into the semifinals against a powerful and heavily favored Dominican team that featured major league MVPs Albert Pujols, Vladimir Guerrero and Miguel Tejada and superstars David Ortiz and Adrian Beltre. The Cubans prevailed 3-1. In the final, however, Cuba lost to Japan--led by star pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka and Seattle Mariner
outfielder Ichiro Suzuki--which played the same style of game as the Cubans, relying on good hustle, situational hitting, strong pitching and team defense.
www.history.com/this-day-in-history/cuba-plays-in-world-baseball-classic

2007 Captured terrorist Khalid Sheik Mohammed, long suspected of masterminding the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, confessed to planning them and said he played a role in about 30 other attacks and plots.

2007 A federal court threw out a District of Columbia ban on keeping handguns in private homes as unconstitutional

2011 Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican, signed a bill ending or sharply restricting bargaining rights for most government workers in the state

2013 The president of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, accused the Taliban and the U.S. of working in concert to convince Afghans that violence would worsen if most foreign troops left --- an allegation the top American commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Joseph Dunford, rejected as "categorically false."



Births

1745 John Gunby, American soldier, "one of the most gallant officers of the Maryland Line under Gen. Smallwood".[ (d. 1807)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gunby[/url

1809 William David Porter , Commander (Union Navy), died in 1864
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_David_Porter

1810 John McCloskey (d October 10, 1885) American prelate of the Roman Catholic Church. He was Archbishop of New York from 1864 until his death in 1885, having previously served as Bishop of Albany (1847–64). In 1875, he became the first American cardinal.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_McCloskey

1818 George Wythe Randolph , Secretary of War (Confederacy), died in 1867
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Wythe_Randolph

1824 Major General Thomas J Churchill, Confederate Army/Fought at Wilson's Creek, Red River
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_James_Churchill

1832 William Henry Penrose, Brigadier General (Union volunteers), died in 1903
www.arlingtoncemetery.net/whpenrose.htm




1839 Dudley Buck (d October 6, 1909) American composer, organist, and writer on music. He published several books, most notably the Dictionary of Musical Terms and Influence of the Organ in History, which was published in New York in 1882. He is best known today for his organ composition, Concert Variations on the Star-Spangled Banner, Op. 23.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dudley_Buck

1839 Christian Streit White (d January 28, 1917) American military officer, lawyer, court clerk, pisciculturist, and politician in the U.S. states of Virginia and West Virginia.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Streit_White

1842 Ina Donna Coolbrith, US, poet laureate of California
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ina_Donna_Coolbrith

1846 Edward Baker Lincoln, son of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln (d. 1850)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Baker_Lincoln

1848 William Thompson, American archer (d. 1918)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Thompson_(archer)


1861 Emily Pauline Johnson (also known in Mohawk as Tekahionwake –pronounced: dageh-eeon-wageh, literally: 'double-life') (10 March 1861 – 7 March 1913), commonly known as E. Pauline Johnson or just Pauline Johnson, Canadian writer and performer popular in the late 19th century. Johnson was notable for her poems and performances that celebrated her Aboriginal heritage; her father was a hereditary Mohawk chief of mixed ancestry. She also drew from English influences, as her mother was an English immigrant. One such poem is the frequently anthologized "The Song My Paddle Sings".

Johnson's poetry was published in Canada, the United States and Great Britain. Johnson was one of a generation of widely read writers who began to define a Canadian literature. While her literary reputation declined after her death, since the later 20th century, there has been renewed interest in her life and works. A complete collection of her known poetry was published in 2002.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._Pauline_Johnson

1867 Lillian D Wald, US, nurse; social worker; public health official; teacher; author; editor; publisher; activist for peace, women's, children's and civil rights; and the founder of American community nursing.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lillian_D_Wald

1880 Broncho Billy Anderson, American actor (d. 1971)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broncho_Billy_Anderson


1861 Max John Frederick Albrecht, president of Concordia College (Milwaukee, Wisconsin), at Gross-Polzen, Pomerania (d. 21 October 1943).
cyclopedia.lcms.org/display.asp?t1=A&word=ALBRECHT.MAXJOHNFREDERICK


1884 Jesse Bartley Milam (1884–1949) the first Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation appointed by a U.S. President since tribal government had been dissolved before Oklahoma Statehood in 1907. He was appointed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1941, who reappointed him in 1942 and 1943; he was reappointed by President Harry S. Truman in 1948. He died while in office in 1949.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._B._Milam

1891 Sam Jaffe, New York NY, actor (Gunga Din, Dr Zorba-Ben Casey)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Jaffe_(actor)


1892 Gregory La Cava, American director (d. 1952), My Man Godfrey and Stage Door
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregory_La_Cava




1903 Bix Beiderbecke, American musician With Louis Armstrong, one of the two most influential jazz soloists of the 1920s. (d. 1931)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bix_Beiderbecke

1908 Carl Albert, American, lawyer and a Democratic politician from Oklahoma, .US speaker of house (1971-77) Albert represented a southeastern Oklahoma Congressional district as a Democrat for 30 years, starting in 1947. He is best known for his service as Speaker of the United States House of Representatives from 1971 to 1977. At 5 feet 4 inches tall, Albert was often affectionately known as the "Little Giant from Little Dixie", and held the highest political office of any Oklahoman in American history.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Albert

1917 Frank Perconte, American sergeant, former non-commissioned officer during World War II with Easy Company, 2nd Battalion, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division in the United States Army. He was portrayed by James Madio in the HBO/BBC miniseries Band of Brothers.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Perconte


1918 Heywood Hale Broun, journalist
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heywood_Hale_Broun
www.youtube.com/results?search_query=heywood+hale+broun




1920 or 1923 [Kenneth C]Jethro Burns Conasauga TN, mandolinist/country singer (Homer & Jethro)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jethro_Burns


1927 Robert Kearns. inventor who won suits against auto giants. Kearns who patented a design for a type of windshield wiper and later won multi-million dollar judgments against Chrysler and Ford for using his concept without permission, is born in Gary, Indiana. Kearns’ invention, the intermittent windshield wiper, enabled wipers to move at timed intervals, rather than constantly swiping back and forth. Intermittent wipers aided drivers in light rain or mist and today are a standard feature of most cars. Kearns’ real-life David versus Goliath story about taking on the auto giants was made into a movie titled “Flash of Genius” that opened in 2008 and starred Greg Kinnear.

Kearns was raised near Detroit, Michigan, and later worked as a professor of engineering at Wayne State University. He first patented his wiper design in 1967 and tried to license his invention to various automakers but failed to make a deal with any of them. Then, in 1960, Ford debuted the first intermittent wiper; other car companies eventually followed suit. In the late 1970s, Kearns sued Ford for patent infringement and went on to take legal action against more than two dozen other automakers.

The ensuing legal battles lasted more than a decade and consumed Kearns, who often acted as his own attorney. Kearns’ quest cost him his marriage and also may have contributed to a nervous breakdown he suffered. In 1990, a jury ruled that Ford was guilty of non-deliberate patent infringement and Kearns was later awarded some $10 million. He also went on to win a $20 million judgment against Chrsyler. Kearns’ lawsuits against other automakers were dismissed for technical reasons.

Kearns died at the age of 77 from cancer on February 9, 2005, in Maryland.
www.history.com/this-day-in-history/inventor-who-won-suits-against-auto-giants-is-born
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Kearns


1928 James Earl Ray, American assassin ,convicted of the assassination of American civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee, having pled guilty, forgoing a jury trial.(d. 1998)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Earl_Ray

1935 Gary Owens, announcer (Laugh-in)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Owens

1937 Joe Viterelli, Italian American actor most famous for his role as "Jelly" in the 1999 comedy film Analyze This and its 2002 sequel Analyze That. Other roles invariably displayed him as a mobster, e.g. in The Firm, See Spot Run, Mickey Blue Eyes and Heaven's Prisoners, among many other films.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Viterelli

1940 Chuck Norris, born, American actor, martial artist and political commentator, devout Christian and politically conservative. He has written several books on Christianity and donated to a number of Republican candidates and causes.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_Norris


1940 Dean Torrence, born, American singer (Jan and Dean)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dean_Torrence




1946 Jim Valvano, American basketball coach (d. 1993)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Valvano




1957 Jim White, American folk singer-songwriter, music can be loosely described as alternative country, but veers off in different, sometimes experimental directions with occasional nods to Tom Waits and the literary narratives of Flannery O'Connor, Cormac McCarthy, and Harry Crews.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_White_(musician)

1957 Osama bin Laden, Islamist and leader of al-Qaeda
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osama_bin_Laden


1958 Sharon Stone, American actress
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharon_Stone

1958 Steve Howe, American baseball player, career was plagued by alcohol and cocaine abuse (d. 2006)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Howe_(baseball_player)




1961 Mitch Gaylord, American gymnast
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitch_Gaylord




1977 Shannon Miller, American gymnast and Olympic gold medalist
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shannon_Miller



1979 David Holt (Osage) American attorney, businessman and Republican politician who is the 36th and current Mayor of Oklahoma City. He is the youngest mayor of Oklahoma City since 1923, the youngest current mayor of a U.S. city over 500,000 and Oklahoma City's first Native American mayor. He also served as the majority whip of the Oklahoma State Senate.
Holt is the author of Big League City: Oklahoma City's Rise to the NBA (2012). In 2014, Holt was named a "Rising Star" in politics by Chuck Todd of NBC News. In 2017, Holt was named "OKCityan of the Year." In 2017, Holt announced he would be a candidate to become the next Mayor of Oklahoma City in 2018.[4] On February 13, 2018, he was elected to be the next Mayor of Oklahoma City and was sworn on April 10.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Holt_(politician)




1983 Carrie Marie Underwood, American country singer and songwriter from Checotah, Oklahoma.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrie_Underwood





Deaths


1792 The Right Honourable John Stuart, 3rd earl of Bute,

On this day in 1792, John Stuart, 3rd earl of Bute and advisor to the British king, George III[, dies in London.

Although most Americans have never heard his name, Lord Bute played a significant role in the politics of the British empire that spawned the American Revolution. A wealthy Scottish noble, educated at the prestigious Eton College and University of Leiden, Bute became Prince George's tutor in 1755. He also befriended George s mother, Augusta of Saxe-Gotha, the dowager princess of Wales. This relationship, although never proven to be sexual, resulted in a tremendous scandal when it was written about by radical English pamphleteer John Wilkes. Wilkes abhorred Bute and named his newspaper North Briton, a synonym for Scot, as a direct reference, and insult, to Bute s Scottish origins.

Prince George became King George III in 1760, while Britain was in the midst of the Seven Years War with France. The king, along with Bute, who was now his advisor, worried that the tremendous expense of the war in North America and around the world would drive Britain to bankruptcy. William Pitt, whose military strategy and political finesse had transformed the American branch of the war, known as the French and Indian War, from disaster to triumph, argued for a preemptive strike against Spain in 1761 to prevent them from aligning with France. The king, with Bute s guidance, not only rejected Pitt s idea, but forced him to resign. In January 1762, Spain joined the war on the side of France, as Pitt predicted. Despite a resounding victory in North America, the king followed Bute s advice to end the war on other fronts as quickly as possible, returning substantial portions of land. (They might even have returned Canada, if the French had asked for it.) Lambasted by the British press for his poor decision-making, most famously in John Wilkes 45th edition of the North Briton, Bute finally lost the king's trust and resigned upon the signing of the Treaty of Paris in February 1763.

The squabbling between Bute, Pitt and Wilkes had a lasting impact on Anglo-American politics. In 1763, the new first lord of the treasury (or prime minister), George Grenville, attempted to prosecute Wilkes for questioning the king s integrity in North Briton No. 45. Meanwhile, Grenville began a program of taxation in the American colonies to help refill Britain s coffers, drained by the expenses of the Seven Years War. Wilkes arrest and eventual banishment to France made him a martyr for liberty in the eyes of many Britons at home as well as in those of the American colonists as they strained under the taxes and other costly measures imposed by Grenville s ministrywww.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-right-honourable-john-stuart-3rd-earl-of-bute-dies


1812 Christian Streit, Lutheran Revolutionary War chaplain, (b. 7 June 1749 near New Germantown, New Jersey, of Swiss extraction).
www.zoominfo.com/p/Christian-Streit/18030356
cyclopedia.lcms.org/display.asp?t1=S&word=STREIT.CHRISTIAN

1865 William H. C. Whiting Confederate General William Henry Chase Whiting dies in prison from wounds suffered during the fall of Fort Fisher, North Carolina.

Born in 1824 in Biloxi, Mississippi, Whiting was educated in Boston and at Georgetown College in Washington, where he graduated first in his class at age 16. He then entered the U.S. Military Academy, where in 1845 he again topped his graduating class. Whiting joined the Corps of Engineers and designed coastal fortifications in the West and South, including the defenses for the Cape Fear River in North Carolina. During this project, he got married and settled in Wilmington, North Carolina.

When the war began, Whiting offered his services to the new Confederate States of America. He was at Fort Sumter when the Union garrison surrendered at the start of the war. He returned to Wilmington in the summer of 1861 to supervise the construction of defenses for the city, and then moved to northern Virginia as chief engineer for the Confederate army forming there. Whiting was responsible for moving troops from the Shenandoah Valley to Manassas in time for the First Battle of Bull Run on July 21. His work was a vital component of the Confederate rout of Union troops there.

Whiting was given command of a division, and his leadership during the Seven Days' battles in June 1862 earned him the praise of the top Confederate leaders. In November 1862, he was given command of the District of Wilmington, allowing him to return to his North Carolina home. He set about strengthening the city's defenses and constructing Fort Fisher at the Cape Fear River's mouth. Partly due to his efforts, Wilmington was one of the most important blockade running ports for the Confederates throughout the war. Whiting spent the rest of the war in Wilmington, with the exception of a few months in 1864 spent shoring up the defenses around Petersburg, Virginia.

Whiting's Fort Fisher was a formidable barrier to the Union capture of Wilmington. General Benjamin Butler led a Yankee force against Fort Fisher in December 1864, but the garrison fended off the attack. The next month, General Alfred Terry launched another assault; this time, Fort Fisher fell to the Yankees. Whiting was badly wounded and captured during the attack. He was able to write his report of the battle three days later, but his health failed when he was shipped to New York and confined in prison at Governor's Island. William H. C. Whiting died on March 10 at age 40.
www.history.com/this-day-in-history/william-h-c-whiting-dies

1898 George F. Mueller (b. 1805), English philanthropist and evangelist.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_M%C3%BCller

1905 James R. Murray (b. 7 March 1841), American music editor and hymn writer
www.cyberhymnal.org/bio/m/u/murray_jr.htm

1913 Harriet Tubman, known as the “Moses of her people” for her work rescuing slaves and guiding them north on what was dubbed the Underground Railroad, (b. ca. 1822).

1948 Zelda Fitzgerald, , American novelist, wife of F. Scott Fitzgerald, icon of the 1920s—dubbed by her husband "the first American Flapper". (b. 1900)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zelda_Fitzgerald

1973 Eugene 'Bull' Connor,, American segregationist (b. 1897)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bull_Connor

1985 Konstantin Chernenko party leader/President of USSR (1984-85), 73
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konstantin_Chernenko

1998 Lloyd Bridges, , American actor, four children: the actors Beau Bridges and Jeff Bridges; a daughter, Lucinda Louise Bridges; and another son, Garrett Myles Bridges (born between Beau and Jeff), who died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome on August 3, 1948. (b. 1913)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lloyd_Bridges


1999 Valentino Mazzia, American forensic anesthesiologist, pioneer in the forensic analysis of deaths occurring during surgical procedures. He testified in many criminal cases about the use and presence of anesthesia products in cases of death. (b. 1922)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valentino_Mazzia

2008 Richard Fran Biegenwald, American serial killer committed his crimes in Monmouth County, New Jersey. Between 1958 and 1983, Biegenwald killed at least nine people, and he is suspected in at least two other murders. (b. 1940)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Fran_Biegenwald



Holidays and observances

Christian Feast Day:

Anastasia the Patrician
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anastasia_the_Patrician

Marie-Eugénie de Jésus
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie-Eug%C3%A9nie_de_J%C3%A9sus

Himelin
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Himelin


John Ogilvie
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_John_Ogilvie

Macharius

Pope Simplicius

Roman Catholic : Commemoration of the 40 Holy Martyrs of Sebaste, Armenia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forty_Martyrs_of_Sebaste


March 10 (Eastern Orthodox liturgics)

Saints

Martyr Codratus (Quadratus), and with him Martyrs Cyprian, Dionysius, Anectus, Paul, Crescens, and Dionysius (another), at Corinth (251)

Martyrs Victorinus, Victor, Nicephorus, Claudius, Diodorus, Serapion, Papias, and others, at Corinth (251 or 258)

Martyrs Codratus, Saturninus, and Rufinus, of Nicomedia (250-259) (see also: March 7)

Martyr Marcian, by scourging.

Saint Anastasia the Patrician, of Alexandria (567)

Saint George Arselaites (6th century)

Venerable Agathon, ascetic at the Monastery of St Symeon near Aleppo in Syria, reposed in peace.


Pre-Schism Western Saints

Martyr Victor, in North Africa under Decius.

Saint Silvester (Sylvester), a companion of St Palladius in enlightening Ireland (c. 420)

Saint Simplicius, Pope of Rome (468-483), who upheld the decisions of the Council of Chalcedon against Monophysitism, and dealt with the Arian King Odoacer after the Fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 (483)

Saint Droctoveus (Drotté), a disciple of St Germanus of Paris (c. 580)

Saint Kessog (Mackessog), an Irish missionary of the mid-sixth century active in the Lennox area and southern Perthshire (c. 560)

Saint Sedna (Sétna), Bishop of Ossory in Ireland and a friend of St Luanus (c. 570)

Saint Attalus (Attala), Abbot of Bobbio Abbey (626)

Saint Himelin, an Irish or Scottish priest who, returning from a pilgrimage to Rome, fell ill when passing through Vissenaken (c. 750)

Saint Emilian (Eminian), born in Ireland, he became a monk and then Abbot of Lagny (Abbaye Saint-Pierre de Lagny) in France (675)

Saint Failbhe the Little (Fáilbe mac Pípáin), Abbot of Iona in Scotland, where he reposed at the age of eighty (754)


Post-Schism Orthodox Saints

Venerable John of Khakhuli Monastery, Georgia, called Chrysostom, reposed on Mt. Athos (10th-11th century)

New Martyr Michael of Agrapha (Michael (Maurudisos) of Soluneia), at Thessalonica (1544 or 1547) (see also: March 21)

Saint Paul of Taganrog (Pavel of Taganrog) (1879)

Saint Alexander (Badanin), Priest, of Vologda (1913)



New Martyrs and Confessors

New Hieromartyr Demetrius Legeydo, Priest (1938)


Other commemorations

Commemoration of the Desert-dwellers of the Roslavl Forests near Bryansk.





Jewish World Review email

www.lutheranhistory.org/history/tih0310.htm

www.lcms.org/

www.amug.org/~jpaul/mar10.html

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_10

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_10_(Eastern_Orthodox_liturgics)

www.scopesys.com/cgi-bin/today2.cgi

[akaCG]

"1940 Chuck Norris, born, ..."

That's completely wrong. Chuck Norris wasn't "born". Chuck Norris just warped time and space in order to make room for himself.

[Evon]

Mar 9, 2010 22:28:11 GMT -5 akaCG said:

"1940 Chuck Norris, born, ..."

That's completely wrong. Chuck Norris wasn't "born". Chuck Norris just warped time and space in order to make room for himself.

I just skimmed the site and it didn't have any Chuch Norris jokes.

[akaCG]

Mar 9, 2010 22:54:36 GMT -5 Evon said:

Mar 9, 2010 22:28:11 GMT -5 akaCG said:

"1940 Chuck Norris, born, ..."

That's completely wrong. Chuck Norris wasn't "born". Chuck Norris just warped time and space in order to make room for himself.

I just skimmed the site and it didn't have any Chuch Norris jokes.

There are no such things as Chuck Norris jokes. There are only Chuck Norris facts.

[Evon]

Mar 9, 2010 23:07:31 GMT -5 akaCG said:

Dec 31, 1969 22:31:21 GMT -5 Evon said:

I just skimmed the site and it didn't have any Chuch Norris jokes.

There are no such things as Chuck Norris jokes. There are only Chuck Norris facts.

LOL I love a good laugh!



I still remember how his teeth upstaged everyone on the dais with Huckabee's victory gathering after the Republican Caucus victory in 2008.

[akaCG]

"1903 Bix Beiderbecke, born, American musician With Louis Armstrong, one of the two most influential jazz soloists of the 1920s. (d. 1931)"

[akaCG]

"I still remember how his teeth upstaged everyone on the dais with Huckabee's victory gathering after the Republican Caucus victory in 2008."

Chuck Norris never goes to the dentist because his teeth are unbreakable. His enemies never go to the dentist because they have no teeth.

[Evon]

Mar 9, 2010 23:24:18 GMT -5 akaCG said:

"I still remember how his teeth upstaged everyone on the dais with Huckabee's victory gathering after the Republican Caucus victory in 2008."

Chuck Norris never goes to the dentist because his teeth are unbreakable. His enemies never go to the dentist because they have no teeth.

Do you have a book of Chuck Norris "facts" or something?

[akaCG]

Mar 9, 2010 23:40:40 GMT -5 Evon said:

Mar 9, 2010 23:24:18 GMT -5 akaCG said:

"I still remember how his teeth upstaged everyone on the dais with Huckabee's victory gathering after the Republican Caucus victory in 2008."

Chuck Norris never goes to the dentist because his teeth are unbreakable. His enemies never go to the dentist because they have no teeth.

Do you have a book of Chuck Norris "facts" or something?

Doesn't everyone?

[pesca]

Chuck Norris was not born, the earth appeared before him.

[duckula]

When Chuck Norris visits Europe on vacation, France surrenders.

[Evon]

1792 The Right Honourable John Stuart, 3rd earl of Bute, dies

On this day in 1792, John Stuart, 3rd earl of Bute and advisor to the British king, George III, dies in London.

Although most Americans have never heard his name, Lord Bute played a significant role in the politics of the British empire that spawned the American Revolution. A wealthy Scottish noble, educated at the prestigious Eton College and University of Leiden, Bute became Prince George s tutor in 1755. He also befriended George s mother, Augusta of Saxe-Gotha, the dowager princess of Wales. This relationship, although never proven to be sexual, resulted in a tremendous scandal when it was written about by radical English pamphleteer John Wilkes. Wilkes abhorred Bute and named his newspaper North Briton, a synonym for Scot, as a direct reference, and insult, to Bute s Scottish origins.

Prince George became King George III in 1760, while Britain was in the midst of the Seven Years War with France. The king, along with Bute, who was now his advisor, worried that the tremendous expense of the war in North America and around the world would drive Britain to bankruptcy. William Pitt, whose military strategy and political finesse had transformed the American branch of the war, known as the French and Indian War, from disaster to triumph, argued for a preemptive strike against Spain in 1761 to prevent them from aligning with France. The king, with Bute s guidance, not only rejected Pitt s idea, but forced him to resign. In January 1762, Spain joined the war on the side of France, as Pitt predicted. Despite a resounding victory in North America, the king followed Bute s advice to end the war on other fronts as quickly as possible, returning substantial portions of land. (They might even have returned Canada, if the French had asked for it.) Lambasted by the British press for his poor decision-making, most famously in John Wilkes 45th edition of the North Briton, Bute finally lost the king's trust and resigned upon the signing of the Treaty of Paris in February 1763.

The squabbling between Bute, Pitt and Wilkes had a lasting impact on Anglo-American politics. In 1763, the new first lord of the treasury (or prime minister), George Grenville, attempted to prosecute Wilkes for questioning the king s integrity in North Briton No. 45. Meanwhile, Grenville began a program of taxation in the American colonies to help refill Britain s coffers, drained by the expenses of the Seven Years War. Wilkes arrest and eventual banishment to France made him a martyr for liberty in the eyes of many Britons at home as well as in those of the American colonists as they strained under the taxes and other costly measures imposed by Grenville s ministrywww.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-right-honourable-john-stuart-3rd-earl-of-bute-dies



1864 Lincoln signs Ulysses S. Grant's commission to command the U.S. Army

On this day in 1864, President Abraham Lincoln signs a brief document officially promoting then-Major General Ulysses S. Grant to the rank of lieutenant general of the U.S. Army, tasking the future president with the job of leading all Union troops against the Confederate Army.

The rank of lieutenant general had not officially been used since 1798; at that time, President John Adams assigned the post to former President George Washington, in anticipation of a possible French invasion of the United States. One of Grant s predecessors in the Civil War, Winfield Scott, had briefly earned the rank, but the appointment was only temporary?really, use of the rank had been suspended after George Washington s death in 1799.

In 1862, Lincoln asked Congress to revive the rank of lieutenant general in order to distinguish between the general in charge of all Union forces and other generals of equal rank who served under him in the field. Congress also wanted to reinstate the rank of lieutenant general, but only if Lincoln gave the rank to Grant. Lincoln had other ideas.

Lincoln preferred to promote then-Commanding General Henry Wagner Halleck to lead the Union Army, which had been plagued by a string of ineffective leaders and terrible losses in battle. He was reluctant to promote Grant and risk boosting the general s popularity; at the time Washington was abuzz with rumors that many northern senators were considering nominating Grant instead of Lincoln at the 1864 Republican National Convention. After Grant publicly dismissed the idea of running for the presidency, Lincoln submitted to Congress choice and agreed to give Grant the revived rank. As lieutenant general of the U.S. Army, Grant was answerable only to Lincoln. Well-respected by troops and civilians, Grant earned Lincoln s trust and went on to force the South s surrender in 1865.

Although Grant enjoyed a distinguished career in the military, he later wrote that he never consciously chose the life of a soldier. As a student at West Point, he "never expected to graduate," let alone lead the entire U.S. Army in a desperate but ultimately successful struggle to preserve the Union.

In 1869, Grant became the 18th president of the United States.
www.history.com/this-day-in-history/lincoln-signs-ulysses-s-grants-commission-to-command-the-us-army



1864 Montana vigilantes hang Jack Slade
Local hell-raiser Jack Slade is hanged in one of the more troubling incidents of frontier vigilantism.

Slade stood out even among the many rabble-rousers who inhabited the wild frontier-mining town of Virginia City, Montana. When he was sober, townspeople liked and respected Slade, though there were unconfirmed rumors he had once been a thief and murderer. When drunk, however, Slade had a habit of firing his guns in bars and making idle threats. Though Slade's rowdiness did not injure anyone, Virginia City leaders anxious to create a more peaceable community began to lose patience. They began giving more weight to the claims that he was a potentially dangerous man.

The year before, many of Virginia City's leading citizens had formed a semisecret "vigilance committee" to combat the depredations of a road agent named Henry Plummer. Plummer and his gang had robbed and killed in the area, confident that the meager law enforcement in the region could not stop them. Determined to reassert order, the Virginia City vigilantes began capturing and hanging the men in Plummer's gang. As a warning to other criminals, the vigilantes left a scrap of paper on the hanged corpses with the cryptic numbers "3-7-77." The meaning of the numbers is unclear, though some claim it referred to the dimensions of a grave: 3 feet wide, 7 feet long, 77 inches deep.

In the first two months of 1864, the Montana vigilantes hanged 24 men, including Plummer. Most historians agree that these hangings, while technically illegal, punished only genuinely guilty men. However, the vigilantes' decision to hang Jack Slade seems less justified. Finally fed up with his drunken rampages and wild threats, on this day in 1864 a group of vigilantes took Slade into custody and told him he would be hanged. Slade, who had committed no serious crime in Virginia City, pleaded for his life, or at least a chance to say goodbye to his beloved wife. Before Slade's wife arrived, the vigilantes hanged him.

Not long after the questionable execution of Slade, legitimate courts and prisons began to function in Virginia City. Though sporadic vigilante "justice" continued until 1867, it increasingly attracted public concern. In March 1867, miners in one Montana mining district posted a notice in the local newspaper that they would hang five vigilantes for every one man hanged by vigilantes. Thereafter, vigilante action faded away.
www.history.com/this-day-in-history/montana-vigilantes-hang-jack-slade



1865 William H. C. Whiting dies
Confederate General William Henry Chase Whiting dies in prison from wounds suffered during the fall of Fort Fisher, North Carolina.

Born in 1824 in Biloxi, Mississippi, Whiting was educated in Boston and at Georgetown College in Washington, where he graduated first in his class at age 16. He then entered the U.S. Military Academy, where in 1845 he again topped his graduating class. Whiting joined the Corps of Engineers and designed coastal fortifications in the West and South, including the defenses for the Cape Fear River in North Carolina. During this project, he got married and settled in Wilmington, North Carolina.

When the war began, Whiting offered his services to the new Confederate States of America. He was at Fort Sumter when the Union garrison surrendered at the start of the war. He returned to Wilmington in the summer of 1861 to supervise the construction of defenses for the city, and then moved to northern Virginia as chief engineer for the Confederate army forming there. Whiting was responsible for moving troops from the Shenandoah Valley to Manassas in time for the First Battle of Bull Run on July 21. His work was a vital component of the Confederate rout of Union troops there.

Whiting was given command of a division, and his leadership during the Seven Days' battles in June 1862 earned him the praise of the top Confederate leaders. In November 1862, he was given command of the District of Wilmington, allowing him to return to his North Carolina home. He set about strengthening the city's defenses and constructing Fort Fisher at the Cape Fear River's mouth. Partly due to his efforts, Wilmington was one of the most important blockade running ports for the Confederates throughout the war. Whiting spent the rest of the war in Wilmington, with the exception of a few months in 1864 spent shoring up the defenses around Petersburg, Virginia.

Whiting's Fort Fisher was a formidable barrier to the Union capture of Wilmington. General Benjamin Butler led a Yankee force against Fort Fisher in December 1864, but the garrison fended off the attack. The next month, General Alfred Terry launched another assault; this time, Fort Fisher fell to the Yankees. Whiting was badly wounded and captured during the attack. He was able to write his report of the battle three days later, but his health failed when he was shipped to New York and confined in prison at Governor's Island. William H. C. Whiting died on March 10 at age 40.
www.history.com/this-day-in-history/william-h-c-whiting-dies



1876 Speech transmitted by telephone

On this day, the first discernible speech is transmitted over a telephone system when inventor Alexander Graham Bell summons his assistant in another room by saying, "Mr. Watson, come here; I want you." Bell had received a comprehensive telephone patent just three days before.

Alexander Graham Bell, born in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1847, was the son of Alexander Melville Bell, a leading authority in public speaking and speech correction. The young Bell was trained to take over the family business, and while still a teenager he became a voice teacher and began to experiment in sound. In 1870, his family moved to Ontario, Canada, and in 1871 Bell went to Boston to demonstrate his father's method of teaching speech to the deaf. The next year, he opened his own school in Boston for training teachers of the deaf and in 1873 became professor of vocal physiology at Boston University.

In his free time, Bell experimented with sound waves and became convinced that it would be possible to transmit speech over a telegraph-like system. He enlisted the aid of a gifted mechanic, Thomas Watson, and together the two spent countless nights trying to convert Bell's ideas into practical form. In 1875, while working on his multiple harmonic telegraph, Bell developed the basic ideas for the telephone. He designed a device to transmit speech vibrations electrically between two receivers and in June 1875 tested his invention. No intelligible words were transmitted, but sounds resembling human speech were heard at the receiving end.

On February 14, 1876, he filed a U.S. patent application for his telephone. Just a few hours later, another American inventor, Elisha Gray, filed a caveat with the U.S. Patent Office about his intent to seek a similar patent on a telephone transmitter and receiver. Bell filed first, so on March 7 he was awarded U.S. patent 174,465, which granted him ownership over both his telephone instruments and the concept of a telephone system.

Three days later, on March 10, Bell successfully tested his telephone for the first time in his Boston home. In May, he publicly demonstrated the invention before the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in Boston, and in June at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. In October, he successfully tested his telephone over a two-mile distance between Boston and Cambridgeport.

In 1877, he formed the Bell Telephone Company with two investors, and the first commercial applications of the telephone took place. Within a few months, the first of hundreds of legal challenges to Bell's telephone patent began. The U.S. Supreme Court eventually upheld Bell's claims, and the Bell Telephone Company enjoyed a monopoly on the telephone until the expiration of the patent in 1894. After 1878, however, the legal battles were out of Alexander Graham Bell's hands because he sold his company to a group of financiers. The company, which after 1899 was led by the parent American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T), eventually grew into the largest corporation in the world.

Alexander Graham Bell continued his experiments in communication, inventing the photophone, which transmitted speech by light rays, and the graphophone, which recorded sound. He continued to work with the deaf, including the educator Helen Keller, and used the royalties from his inventions to finance several organizations dedicated to the oral education of the deaf. He later served as president of the National Geographic Society. Beginning in 1895, he experimented with the possibility of flight and built giant man-carrying kites and a hydrofoil craft. He died in 1922 at his summer home and laboratory on Cape Breton Island, Canada.
www.history.com/this-day-in-history/speech-transmitted-by-telephone


1927 Inventor who won suits against auto giants is born

Robert Kearns, who patented a design for a type of windshield wiper and later won multi-million dollar judgments against Chrysler and Ford for using his concept without permission, is born on March 10, 1927, in Gary, Indiana. Kearns’ invention, the intermittent windshield wiper, enabled wipers to move at timed intervals, rather than constantly swiping back and forth. Intermittent wipers aided drivers in light rain or mist and today are a standard feature of most cars. Kearns’ real-life David versus Goliath story about taking on the auto giants was made into a movie titled “Flash of Genius” that opened in 2008 and starred Greg Kinnear.

Kearns was raised near Detroit, Michigan, and later worked as a professor of engineering at Wayne State University. He first patented his wiper design in 1967 and tried to license his invention to various automakers but failed to make a deal with any of them. Then, in 1960, Ford debuted the first intermittent wiper; other car companies eventually followed suit. In the late 1970s, Kearns sued Ford for patent infringement and went on to take legal action against more than two dozen other automakers.

The ensuing legal battles lasted more than a decade and consumed Kearns, who often acted as his own attorney. Kearns’ quest cost him his marriage and also may have contributed to a nervous breakdown he suffered. In 1990, a jury ruled that Ford was guilty of non-deliberate patent infringement and Kearns was later awarded some $10 million. He also went on to win a $20 million judgment against Chrsyler. Kearns’ lawsuits against other automakers were dismissed for technical reasons.

Kearns died at the age of 77 from cancer on February 9, 2005, in Maryland.
www.history.com/this-day-in-history/inventor-who-won-suits-against-auto-giants-is-born



1959 Rebellion in Tibet

On this day in 1959, Tibetans band together in revolt, surrounding the summer palace of the Dalai Lama in defiance of Chinese occupation forces.

China's occupation of Tibet began nearly a decade before, in October 1950, when troops from its People's Liberation Army (PLA) invaded the country, barely one year after the Communists gained full control of mainland China. The Tibetan government gave into Chinese pressure the following year, signing a treaty that ensured the power of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, the country's spiritual leader, over Tibet's domestic affairs. Resistance to the Chinese occupation built steadily over the next several years, including a revolt in several areas of eastern Tibet in 1956. By December 1958, rebellion was simmering in Lhasa, the capital, and the PLA command threatened to bomb the city if order was not maintained.

The March 1959 uprising in Lhasa was triggered by fears of a plot to kidnap the Dalai Lama and take him to Beijing. When Chinese military officers invited His Holiness to visit the PLA headquarters for a theatrical performance and official tea, he was told he must come alone, and that no Tibetan military bodyguards or personnel would be allowed past the edges of the military camp. On March 10, 300,000 loyal Tibetans surrounded Norbulinka Palace, preventing the Dalai Lama from accepting the PLA's invitation. By March 17, Chinese artillery was aimed at the palace, and the Dalai Lama was evacuated to neighboring India. Fighting broke out in Lhasa two days later, with Tibetan rebels hopelessly outnumbered and outgunned. Early on March 21, the Chinese began shelling Norbulinka, slaughtering tens of thousands of men, women and children still camped outside. In the aftermath, the PLA cracked down on Tibetan resistance, executing the Dalai Lama’s guards and destroying Lhasa's major monasteries along with thousands of their inhabitants.

China's stranglehold on Tibet and its brutal suppression of separatist activity has continued in the decades following the unsuccessful uprising. Tens of thousands of Tibetans followed their leader to India, where the Dalai Lama has long maintained a government-in-exile in the foothills of the Himalayas.
www.history.com/this-day-in-history/3/10



1969 Ray pleads guilty to King assassination

James Earl Ray pleads guilty to the assassination of African American civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. and is sentenced to 99 years in prison.

On April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tennessee, King was fatally wounded by a sniper's bullet while standing on the balcony outside his second-story room at the Motel Lorraine. That evening, a Remington .30-06 hunting rifle was found on the sidewalk beside a rooming house one block from the Lorraine Motel. Over the next several weeks, the rifle, eyewitness reports, and fingerprints on the weapon all implicated a single suspect: escaped convict James Earl Ray. A two-bit criminal, Ray escaped a Missouri prison in April 1967 while serving a sentence for a holdup. In May 1968, a massive manhunt for Ray began. The FBI eventually determined that he had obtained a Canadian passport under a false identity, which at the time was relatively easy.

On June 8, Scotland Yard investigators arrested Ray at a London airport. Ray was trying to fly to Belgium, with the eventual goal, he later admitted, of reaching Rhodesia. Rhodesia, now called Zimbabwe, was at the time ruled by an oppressive and internationally condemned white minority government. Extradited to the United States, Ray stood before a Memphis judge in March 1969 and pleaded guilty to King's murder in order to avoid the electric chair. He was sentenced to 99 years in prison.

Three days later, he attempted to withdraw his guilty plea, claiming that he was innocent of King's assassination and had been set up as a patsy in a larger conspiracy. He claimed that in 1967 a mysterious man named "Raoul" had approached him and recruited him into a gunrunning enterprise. On April 4, 1968, however, he realized that he was to be the fall guy for the King assassination and fled for Canada. Ray's motion was denied, as were his dozens of other requests for a trial over the next 29 years.

During the 1990s, the widow and children of Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke publicly in support of Ray and his claims, calling him innocent and speculating about an assassination conspiracy involving the U.S. government and military. U.S. authorities were, in conspiracists' minds, implicated circumstantially. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover obsessed over King, who he thought was under communist influence. For the last six years of his life, King underwent constant wiretapping and harassment by the FBI. Before his death Dr. King was also monitored by U.S. military intelligence, who may have been called to watch over King after he publicly denounced the Vietnam War in 1967. Furthermore, by calling for radical economic reforms in 1968, including guaranteed annual incomes for all, King was making few new friends in the Cold War-era U.S. government.

Over the years, the assassination has been reexamined by the House Select Committee on Assassinations, the Shelby County, Tennessee, district attorney's office, and three times by the U.S. Justice Department. All of these investigations have ended with the same conclusion: James Earl Ray killed Martin Luther King. The House committee acknowledged that a low-level conspiracy might have existed, involving one or more accomplices to Ray, but uncovered no evidence to definitively prove this theory. In addition to the mountain of evidence against him, such as his fingerprints on the murder weapon and admitted presence at the rooming house on April 4, Ray had a definite motive in assassinating King: hatred. According to his family and friends, he was an outspoken racist who told them of his intent to kill Martin Luther King. He died in 1998.www.history.com/this-day-in-history/ray-pleads-guilty-to-king-assassination



1970 Army captain charged with My Lai war crimes

The U.S. Army accuses Capt. Ernest Medina and four other soldiers of committing crimes at My Lai in March 1968. The charges ranged from premeditated murder to rape and the "maiming" of a suspect under interrogation. Medina was the company commander of Lt. William Calley and other soldiers charged with murder and numerous crimes at My Lai 4 in Song My village.

The My Lai massacre became the most publicized war atrocity committed by U.S. troops in Vietnam. Allegedly, a platoon had slaughtered between 200 and 500 unarmed villagers at My Lai 4, a cluster of hamlets in the coastal lowlands of I Corps Tactical Zone. This was a heavily mined region where Viet Cong guerrillas were firmly entrenched and numerous members of the participating platoon had been killed or maimed during the preceding month.

The company had been conducting a search-and-destroy mission. In search of the 48th Viet Cong (VC) Local Force Battalion, the unit entered My Lai but found only women, children, and old men. Frustrated by unanswered losses due to snipers and mines, the soldiers took out their anger on the villagers. During the attack, several old men were bayoneted, some women and children praying outside the local temple were shot in the back of the head, and at least one girl was raped before being killed. Many villagers were systematically rounded up and led to a nearby ditch where they were executed.

Reportedly, the killing was only stopped when Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson, an aero-scout helicopter pilot, landed his helicopter between the Americans and the fleeing South Vietnamese, confronting the soldiers and blocking them from further action against the villagers. The incident was subsequently covered up, but eventually came to light a year later. An Army board of inquiry headed by Lt. Gen. William Peers investigated the massacre and produced a list of 30 people who knew of the atrocity. Only 14, including Calley and Medina, were eventually charged with crimes. All eventually had their charges dismissed or were acquitted by courts-martial except Calley, who was found guilty of murdering 22 civilians. He was sentenced to life imprisonment, but his sentence was reduced to 20 years by the Court of Military Appeals and further reduced later to 10 years by the Secretary of the Army. Proclaimed by much of the public as a "scapegoat," Calley was paroled in 1974 after having
served about three years.
www.history.com/this-day-in-history/army-captain-charged-with-my-lai-war-crimes



1993 Dr. David Gunn is murdered by anti-abortion activist

Dr. David Gunn is shot and killed during an anti-abortion protest at the Pensacola Women's Medical Services clinic. Dr. Gunn performed abortions at several clinics in Florida and Alabama and was getting out of his car in the clinic's parking lot when Michael Griffin shouted, "Don't kill any more babies!" and shot the doctor three times in the back. Griffin immediately surrendered to a nearby police officer.

Griffin had attended a prayer service and protest organization meeting three days earlier and was apparently waiting for Dr. Gunn, the father of two, to appear on the morning of the shooting. Rescue America, the group holding the protest, did not exactly strongly condemn the murder of Dr. Gunn. "While Gunn's death is unfortunate, it's also true that quite a number of babies' lives will be saved," said national director Don Treshman after the slaying.

The murder of Dr. Gunn was part of a larger emphasis on violence by anti-abortion activists in the early 1990s. Death threats, vandalism and arson at abortion clinics increased dramatically. Rachelle Shelly Shannon began corresponding with Griffin while he was in prison. The man who she called "the awesomest greatest hero of our time" did nothing to dissuade her from then going out and attempting to kill a doctor in Wichita, Kansas. Her shots wounded, but did not kill, and Shannon was arrested and convicted.

Paul Hill, an activist who went on the Phil Donahue Show and called Dr. Gunn's murder a "justifiable homicide," attended Shannon's trial and then got into the act himself. He killed Dr. John Britton and James Barrett in Pensacola, Florida in July 1994. Hill was sentenced to death but never expressed remorse for his crime.

In response to this terrorism, both states and the federal government passed new laws protecting abortion clinics. Pro-choice advocates also successfully sued anti-abortion groups under broad racketeering laws. However, the threat of violence against doctors who provide abortion services has severely limited the number of doctors who practice in the field.

[/i]www.history.com/this-day-in-history/dr-david-gunn-is-murdered-by-anti-abortion-activist


1997 The WB premieres its first hit show

On this day in 1997, the fledgling Warner Brothers (WB) television network airs the inaugural episode of what will become its first bona-fide hit show, Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Buffy’s creator, Joss Whedon, developed the series from an original script he had written for the big screen a number of years earlier. The 1992 movie, starring Kristy Swanson and directed by Fran Rubel Kuzui, had disappointed Whedon by turning his edgy story with its powerful female heroine into too much of a silly comedy. When he was approached about creating a television series based on his original script, Whedon jumped at the chance. For the TV series, he went with the concept of “high school as a horror movie” and re-created his darker version of Buffy. The result was a blend of drama, romance, comedy, action and horror unique on network television. Whedon served as an executive producer throughout the show’s run and was heavily involved in its writing; he also directed a number of episodes.

Sarah Michelle Gellar, a Daytime Emmy Award winner for her work on the soap opera All My Children, took on the lead role of Buffy Summers, the perky cheerleader who is also her generation’s Chosen One, the only person on Earth with the power to defeat vampires. In the Buffy universe, Sunnydale High School in Sunnydale, California, sits atop a “Hellmouth,” an entrance point for evil demons, and Buffy’s constant battling of undead ghouls served as a supernatural allegory for surviving the real-life challenges of high school and adolescence.

Though ratings peaked during the second and third seasons, the show was consistently well reviewed by critics throughout its six-and-a-half-year run. As one of the edgiest offerings amid a growing WB line-up that included Dawson’s Creek, 7th Heaven and Felicity, Buffy’s success helped establish the network as a staple among teenage and young adult TV viewers. After 2001, Buffy moved to the WB’s competitor, United Paramount Network (UPN). Gellar decided not to renew her contract after the seventh season, and the show aired its final episode in May 2003.

With Buffy Summers hailed by fans and critics as a feminist hero, Gellar made the transition to the big screen with roles in films such as Scream 2, I Know What You Did Last Summer, Cruel Intentions and Scooby Doo. Other breakout stars of the show were Alyson Hannigan, later known for the American Pie movies and the CBS sitcom How I Met Your Mother, and Seth Green, who left the show after less than three seasons to pursue big-screen stardom, appearing in the Austin Powers movie franchise. A Buffy spin-off on the WB, Angel, starred David Boreanaz. Though the show didn’t spark the same amount of frenzied enthusiasm as Buffy, it attracted a small but devoted fan base.
www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-wb-premieres-its-first-hit-show


2006 Cuba plays in World Baseball Classic

On March 10, 2006, the Cuban national baseball team plays Puerto Rico in the first round of the inaugural World Baseball Classic. While the Puerto Rican team was made up of major league All-Stars, the Cuban team was largely unknown to the world. Puerto Rico beat Cuba 12-2 that day, but the Cuban team would soon have its revenge.

Baseball has long been a favorite national pastime in Cuba. American sailors brought the game into port cities in the 19th century and its popularity soon spread. Professional leagues had sprung up by the 1870s and by the 20th century both Negro Leaguers and major leaguers spent their winters playing amongst Cuban professionals in the Cuban Baseball Leagues.

Professional baseball in Cuba was abolished in 1960, when Cuban President Fidel Castro instituted state-run athletic programs modeled after those in the communist Soviet Union. That same year, the United States placed a trade embargo against Cuba after Castro aligned himself with the Soviets, ratcheting up tensions in the Cold War. In spite of the trade embargo, the United States continued to allow Cuban émigrés to play baseball in America. The Cuban National League, however, does not accept players from other countries into its system, unlike winter leagues in the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Puerto Rico, Mexico and elsewhere.

Cuban baseball, then, had been largely isolated from the rest of the world since 1960, though the Cubans proved their mettle on the few occasions that Cuba agreed to allow their national team to play against outside teams. In 1999, Cuba played twice against the Baltimore Orioles of the American League, losing the first game 3 -2 in Havana, but winning 12 -6 at Camden Yards in Baltimore. (Fidel Castro watched the victory from his seat between Orioles owner Peter Angelos and Major League Baseball commissioner Bud Selig.) Cuba has also dominated play in the Summer Olympics, winning the gold medal in 1992, 1996 and 2004 and winning the silver in 2000.

In the 2006 World Baseball Classic, few thought Cuba--one of the only teams without a major league player on its roster-- had a realistic chance against the All-Star lineups fielded by the United States, Dominican Republic, Venezuela and Puerto Rico. While the combined annual salaries of the players on those four teams totaled $471 million, Cuban players made just $10 to $15 per month working mandatory day jobs and playing baseball at night.

Five days after being trounced by the Puerto Ricans, Cuba bounced back with immaculate play. They beat Puerto Rico 4-3 to move into the semifinals against a powerful and heavily favored Dominican team that featured major league MVPs Albert Pujols, Vladimir Guerrero and Miguel Tejada and superstars David Ortiz and Adrian Beltre. The Cubans prevailed 3-1. In the final, however, Cuba lost to Japan--led by star pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka and Seattle Mariner
outfielder Ichiro Suzuki--which played the same style of game as the Cubans, relying on good hustle, situational hitting, strong pitching and team defense.
www.history.com/this-day-in-history/cuba-plays-in-world-baseball-classic

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