TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – MARCH 21
630 Heraclius restores the True Cross, which he has recaptured from the Persians.
1349 3,000 Jews killed in Black Death riots in Efurt, Germany
1556 Thomas Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury, is burned at the stake at Oxford after retracting the last of seven recantations that same day.
1617 Pocahontas (Rebecca Rolfe) dies of either small pox or pneumonia while in England with her husband, John Rolfe.
1788 Almost the entire city of New Orleans, Louisiana, is destroyed by fire.
1790 Thomas Jefferson reported to U.S. President George Washington as the new secretary of state.
1806 Lewis and Clark begin their trip home after an 8,000 mile trek of the Mississippi basin and the Pacific Coast.
1851 Emperor Tu Duc orders that Christian priests are to put to death.
1871 Journalist Henry Morton Stanley begins his famous expedition to Africa
1905 Sterilization legislation was passed in the State of Pennsylvania. The governor vetoed the measure.
1906 Ohio passes a law that prohibits hazing by fraternities.
1910 The U.S. Senate grants ex-President Teddy Roosevelt an annual pension of $10,000.
1925 The state of Tennessee enacted the Butler Act. It was a law that made it a crime for a teacher in any state-supported public school to teach any theory that was in contradiction to the Bible’s account of man’s creation.
1928 U.S. President Calvin Coolidge gave the Congressional Medal of Honor to Charles Lindbergh for his first trans-Atlantic flight.
1939 Singer Kate Smith records “God Bless America” for Victor Records.
1951 Secretary of Defense George C. Marshall reports that the U.S. military has doubled to 2.9 million since the start of the Korean War.
1960 Afrikaner police open fire on a group of unarmed black South African demonstrators in the black township of Sharpeville, near Johannesburg, South Africa, killing 69 people and wounding 180 in a hail of submachine-gun fire.
1963 Alcatraz Island, the federal penitentiary in San Francisco Bay, California, closes.
1965 Martin Luther King, Jr., led the start of a civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama.
1971 Two U.S. platoons in Vietnam refuse their orders to advance.
1972 The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that states could not require one year of residency for voting eligibility.
1980 President Jimmy Carter announces to the U.S. Olympic Team that they will not participate in the 1980 Summer Games in Moscow as a boycott against Soviet intervention in Afghanistan.
1984 A Soviet submarine crashes into the USS Kitty Hawk off the coast of Japan.
1985 Police in Langa, South Africa, opened fire on blacks marching to mark the 25th anniversary of the Sharpeville shootings. At least 21 demonstrators were killed.
1994 Bill Gates of Microsoft and Craig McCaw of McCaw Cellular Communications announced a $9 billion plan that would send 840 satellites into orbit to relay information around the globe.
1995 Tokyo police raided the headquarters of Aum Shinrikyo in search of evidence to link the cult to the Sarin gas released on five Tokyo subway trains.
1999 Israel’s Supreme Court rejected the final effort to have American Samuel Sheinbein returned to the U.S. to face murder charges for killing Alfred Tello, Jr. Under a plea bargain Sheinbein was sentenced to 24 years in prison.
2000 The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration had overstepped its regulatory authority when it attempted to restrict the marketing of cigarettes to youngsters.
2002 In Pakistan, Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh was charged with murder for his role in the kidnapping of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pear. Three other Islamic militants that were in custody were also charged along with seven more accomplices that were still at large.
2007 Iran’s supreme leader has warned that his country will be pursuing nuclear activities outside of international law if illegal action is taken against it
2008 As the cost of crude oil continues to increase Airlines in the US and around the world are feeling the impact. At least two airlines have declared bankruptcy and others including United Airlines and Delta Air Lines have announced they are decreasing fleet numbers and jobs.
2009 The U.S. efforts to reduce opium poppy crops in Afghanistan are ‘wasteful and ineffective,’ according to the U.S. envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke. Speaking at the Brussels Forum, he said that the $800 million per annum that the U.S. is spending on counter-narcotics would be put to better use by promoting other crops for the Afghan farmers to grow.
2010 The House of Representatives passes a bill that will overhaul the American health-care system. The bill, called the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, will be sent to President Obama to sign into law.
2014 Russia formally annexes Crimea amid international condemenation
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
