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 Today's
highlight in history:
On March 14, 1794, Eli Whitney received a patent for his cotton gin, an invention that revolutionized America's cotton industry.
On this date:
In 1883, German political philosopher Karl Marx died in London.
In 1900, Congress ratified the Gold Standard Act.
In 1907, President Theodore Roosevelt signed an executive order designed to prevent Japanese laborers from immigrating to the United States as part of a "gentlemen's agreement" with Japan.
In 1923, President Harding became the first chief executive to file an income tax return.
In 1939, the republic of Czechoslovakia was dissolved, opening the way for Nazi occupation of Czech areas and the separation of Slovakia.
In 1951, during the Korean War, United Nations forces recaptured Seoul.
In 1964, a jury in Dallas found Jack Ruby guilty of murdering Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused assassin of President Kennedy.
In 1967, the body of President Kennedy was moved from a temporary grave to a permanent memorial site at Arlington National Cemetery.
In 1980, a Polish airliner crashed while making an emergency landing near Warsaw, killing all 87 people aboard, including 22 members of a U.S. amateur boxing team.
In 1991, a British court overturned the convictions of the "Birmingham Six," who had spent 16 years in prison for an Irish Republican Army bombing, and ordered them released.
Ten years ago: India's Congress party picked Sonia Gandhi, the Italian-born widow of assassinated prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, as its new president. An earthquake killed at least five people and left some 10,000 homeless in southeastern Iran.
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Five years ago: Actor Robert Blake was released from jail on $1.5 million bail, 11 months after he was arrested on charges of murdering his wife, Bonny Lee Bakley. (Blake was later acquitted at trial.) Christopher Boyce, whose Cold War spying was immortalized on film in "The Falcon and the Snowman," was released from a halfway house in San Francisco after a quarter-century in prison.
One year ago: The Pentagon released the transcript of a military hearing in which Khalid Sheikh Mohammed said he "was responsible for the 9/11 operation from A to Z." President Bush, speaking from Mexico, said he was troubled by the Justice Department's misleading explanations to Congress of why it fired eight U.S. attorneys, but said the firings were "entirely appropriate."
Today's birthdays: Former astronaut Frank Borman is 80. Singer Phil Phillips is 77. Actor Michael Caine is 75. Composer-conductor Quincy Jones is 75. Former astronaut Eugene Cernan is 74. Actor Raymond J. Barry is 69. Movie director Wolfgang Petersen is 67. Country singer Michael Martin Murphey is 63. Rock musician Walt Parazaider (Chicago) is 63. Actor Steve Kanaly is 62. Comedian Billy Crystal is 60. Country singer Jann Browne is 54. Actor Adrian Zmed is 54. Prince Albert II, the ruler of Monaco, is 50. Actress Tamara Tunie is 49. Actress Penny Johnson Jerald is 47. Producer-director-writer Kevin Williamson is 43. Actor Gary Anthony Williams is 42. Actress Megan Follows is 40. Rock musician Michael Bland is 39. Country singer Kristian Bush is 38. Rock musician Derrick (Jimmie's Chicken Shack) is 36. Actor Jake Fogelnest is 29. Actor Chris Klein is 29. Actress Kate Maberly is 26. Singer-musician Taylor Hanson (Hanson) is 25. Actor Jamie Bell is 22.
Thought for today: "The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them; that's the essence of inhumanity."
-- George Bernard Shaw, Irish playwright (1856-1950)
[Associated Press]
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This
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