TODAY HISTORY LESSON: MARCH 21
0630 Heraclius restores the True Cross, which he has recaptured from the Persians.
1349 Between 100 and 3,000 Jews are killed in Black Death riots in Erfurt, 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 Fire destroyed 856 buildings in New Orleans LA
1851 Emperor Tu Duc orders that Christian priests are to put to death.
1866 Congress authorizes national soldiers’ homes
1891 A Hatfield marries a McCoy, ends long feud in West Virginia; it started with an accusation of pig-stealing & lasted 20 years
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.
1935 Persia officially renamed Iran
1939 Singer Kate Smith records “God Bless America” for Victor Records.
1943 A plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler by suicide bomb fails
1947 President Truman signs Executive Order 9835 requiring all federal employees to have allegiance to the United States
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 Police fired on demonstrators in Sharpeville, South Africa, after which the African National Congress was banned. 25 years later, a march marking the anniversary was also disrupted by police fire.
1963 Alcatraz Island, the federal penitentiary in San Francisco Bay, California, closes.
1965 Martin Luther King Jr begins march from Selma to Montgomery AL
1966 Supreme Court reverses Massachusetts ruling that “Fanny Hill” is obscene
1970 Earth Day is celebrated for the first time
1971 Two U.S. platoons in Vietnam refuse their orders to advance.
1972 US Supreme Court rules states can’t require 1-year residency to vote
1975 Ethiopia abolishes its monarchy after 3,000 years
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.
1985 South African Police kill at least 21 black people commemorating a similar mass shooting 25 years before
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.
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.
2006 Jack Dorsey sends the world’s first Twitter message, or tweet
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 condemnation
2016 It was reported that the Kepler space telescope had captured the visible light of a “shock breakout” when the star KSN 2011a exploded. It was the first time an exploding star’s brilliant flash shockwave had been captured.
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
