Today is Thursday, March 2, the 61st day of 2017. There are 304 days left in the year.
Today's Highlights in History:
On March 2, 1867, Howard University, a historically black school of higher learning in Washington, D.C., was founded as it received a congressional charter. Congress passed, over President Andrew Johnson's veto, the first of four Reconstruction Acts, providing for "the more efficient Government of the Rebel States" by dividing the South into five military-run districts.
On this date:
In 1793, the first president of the Republic of Texas, Sam Houston, was born near Lexington, Virginia.
In 1836, the Republic of Texas formally declared its independence from Mexico.
In 1877, Republican Rutherford B. Hayes was declared the winner of the 1876 presidential election over Democrat Samuel J. Tilden, even though Tilden had won the popular vote.
In 1917, Puerto Ricans were granted U.S. citizenship as President Woodrow Wilson signed the Jones-Shafroth Act. Actor, producer, director and bandleader Desi Arnaz was born in Santiago de Cuba.
In 1939, Roman Catholic Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli (puh-CHEL'-ee) was elected pope on his 63rd birthday; he took the name Pius XII. The Massachusetts legislature voted to ratify the Bill of Rights, 147 years after the first 10 amendments to the U.S. Constitution had gone into effect. (Georgia and Connecticut soon followed.)
In 1942, the original Stage Door Canteen, a wartime club for U.S. servicemen, officially opened its doors in New York's theater district.
In 1955, nine months before Rosa Parks' famous act of defiance, Claudette Colvin, a black high school student in Montgomery, Alabama, was arrested after refusing to give up her seat on a public bus to a white passenger.
In 1965, the movie version of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical "The Sound of Music," starring Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer, had its world premiere in New York.
In 1977, the U.S. House of Representatives adopted a strict code of ethics.
In 1989, representatives from the 12 European Community nations agreed to ban all production of CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons), the synthetic compounds blamed for destroying the Earth's ozone layer, by the end of the 20th century.
In 1992, actress Sandy Dennis died in Westport, Connecticut, at age 54.
In 2005, the number of U.S. military deaths in the Iraq war reached at least 1,500, according to an Associated Press count. The woman who'd accused NBA star Kobe Bryant of rape settled her lawsuit against him, ending the case.
