Today is Sunday, March 1, the 61st day of 2020. There are 305 days left in the year.
Today’s Highlight in History:
On March 1, 1974, seven people, including former Nixon White House aides H.R. Haldeman and John D. Ehrlichman, former Attorney General John Mitchell and former assistant Attorney General Robert Mardian, were indicted on charges of conspiring to obstruct justice in connection with the Watergate break-in. (These four defendants were convicted in Jan. 1975, although Mardian’s conviction was later reversed.)
On this date:
In 1781, the Continental Congress declared the Articles of Confederation to be in force, following ratification by Maryland.
In 1790, President George Washington signed a measure authorizing the first United States Census. (Census Day was Aug. 2, 1790.)
In 1893, inventor Nikola Tesla first publicly demonstrated radio during a meeting of the National Electric Light Association in St. Louis by transmitting electromagnetic energy without wires.
In 1914, National Baseball Hall of Fame announcer Harry Caray was born in St. Louis, Mo.
In 1932, Charles A. Lindbergh Jr., the 20-month-old son of Charles and Anne Lindbergh, was kidnapped from the family home near Hopewell, New Jersey. (Remains identified as those of the child were found the following May.)
In 1954, four Puerto Rican nationalists opened fire from the spectators’ gallery of the U.S. House of Representatives, wounding five members of Congress. The United States detonated a dry-fuel hydrogen bomb, codenamed Castle Bravo, at Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands.
In 1957, “The Cat in the Hat” by Dr. Seuss was released to bookstores by Random House.
In 1961, President John F. Kennedy signed an executive order establishing the Peace Corps.
In 1966, the Soviet space probe Venera 3 impacted the surface of Venus, becoming the first spacecraft to reach another planet; however, Venera was unable to transmit any data, its communications system having failed.
In 1971, a bomb went off inside a men’s room at the U.S. Capitol; the radical group Weather Underground claimed responsibility for the pre-dawn blast.
In 1981, Irish Republican Army member Bobby Sands began a hunger strike at the Maze Prison in Northern Ireland; he died 65 days later.
In 1996, President Bill Clinton slapped economic sanctions on Colombia, concluding that Colombian authorities had not fully cooperated with the U.S. war on drugs. The Food and Drug Administration approved a powerful new AIDS drug, saying ritonavir could prolong slightly the lives of severely ill patients.
