Today is Thursday, March 8, the 67th day of 2018. There are 298 days left in the year.
Today's Highlight in History:
On March 8, 1965, the United States landed its first combat troops in South Vietnam as 3,500 Marines arrived to defend the U.S. air base at Da Nang.
On this date:
In 1618, German astronomer Johannes Kepler devised his third law of planetary motion.
In 1702, England's Queen Anne acceded to the throne upon the death of King William III.
In 1854, U.S. Commodore Matthew C. Perry made his second landing in Japan; within a month, he concluded a treaty with the Japanese.
In 1874, the 13th president of the United States, Millard Fillmore, died in Buffalo, New York, at age 74.
In 1917, Russia's "February Revolution" (referring to the Old Style calendar) began; the result was the abdication of the Russian monarchy in favor of a provisional government, which was overthrown later the same year by the Bolsheviks. The U.S. Senate voted to limit filibusters by adopting the cloture rule.
In 1930, the 27th president of the United States, William Howard Taft, died in Washington at age 72.
In 1948, the Supreme Court, in McCollum v. Board of Education, struck down voluntary religious education classes in Champaign, Illinois, public schools, saying the program violated separation of church and state.
In 1979, technology firm Philips demonstrated a prototype compact disc player during a press conference in Eindhoven, the Netherlands.
In 1983, in a speech to the National Association of Evangelicals convention in Orlando, Florida, President Ronald Reagan referred to the Soviet Union as an "evil empire."
In 1988, 17 soldiers were killed when two Army helicopters from Fort Campbell, Kentucky, collided in mid-flight.
In 1999, baseball Hall of Famer Joe DiMaggio died in Hollywood, Florida, at age 84.
In 2014, Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, a Boeing 777 with 239 people on board, vanished during a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, setting off a massive search. (To date, the fate of the jetliner and its occupants has yet to be determined.)