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 Today's
highlight in history:
On March 13, 1933, banks began to reopen after a "holiday" declared by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
On this date:
In 1781, the planet Uranus was discovered by Sir William Herschel.
In 1884, Congress officially adopted Eastern Standard Time for the District of Columbia.
In 1901, Benjamin Harrison, the 23rd president of the United States, died in Indianapolis.
In 1908, American billionaire, publisher and diplomat Walter Annenberg was born in Milwaukee.
In 1925, a law went into effect in Tennessee prohibiting the teaching of the theory of evolution.
In 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.
In 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.
In 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.
In 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.
In 1996, a gunman burst into an elementary school in Dunblane, Scotland, and opened fire, killing 16 children and one teacher before killing himself.
Ten years ago: 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. U.S. Rep. Joseph P. Kennedy II, D-Mass., announced he would not seek a seventh term.
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Five years ago: Forced into a diplomatic retreat, 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. The Senate voted 64-33 to ban a procedure that critics called partial birth abortion. Norwegian Robert Sorlie won the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog race in nine days, 15 hours, 47 minutes.
One year ago: Attorney General Alberto Gonzales admitted mistakes in how the Justice Department handled the dismissal of eight federal prosecutors but said he wouldn't resign. 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. Lance Mackey won the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, in nine days, five hours, eight minutes.
Today's 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.
Thought for today: "We fear things in proportion to our ignorance of them."
-- Livy, Roman historian (64 or 59 B.C.-A.D. 17)
[Associated Press]
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