Today is Sunday, March 7, the 66th day of 2021
There are 299 days left in the year.
Today’s Highlight in History:
On March 7, 1965, a march by civil rights demonstrators was violently broken up at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, by state troopers and a sheriff’s posse in what came to be known as “Bloody Sunday.”
On this date:
In 1875, composer Maurice Ravel was born in Ciboure, France.
In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell received a U.S. patent for his telephone.
In 1911, President William Howard Taft ordered 20,000 troops to patrol the U.S.-Mexico border in response to the Mexican Revolution.
In 1912, Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen arrived in Hobart, Australia, where he dispatched telegrams announcing his success in leading the first expedition to the South Pole the previous December.
In 1926, the first successful trans-Atlantic radio-telephone conversations took place between New York and London.
In 1936, Adolf Hitler ordered his troops to march into the Rhineland, thereby breaking the Treaty of Versailles (vehr-SY’) and the Locarno Pact.
In 1945, during World War II, U.S. forces crossed the Rhine at Remagen, Germany, using the damaged but still usable Ludendorff Bridge.
In 1963, the Pan Am Building (today the MetLife Building) first opened in midtown Manhattan.
In 1975, the U.S. Senate revised its filibuster rule, allowing 60 senators to limit debate in most cases, instead of the previously required two-thirds of senators present.
In 1994, the U.S. Navy issued its first permanent orders assigning women to regular duty on a combat ship [–] in this case, the USS Eisenhower.
In 2001, Ariel Sharon was sworn in as Israel’s prime minister, serving until he suffered a stroke in 2006.
In 2010, the Iraq war thriller “The Hurt Locker” received six Academy Awards including best picture, with Kathryn Bigelow accepting the first directing Oscar awarded to a woman.