There are 286 days left in the year.
Spring arrives at 11:33 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time.
Today’s Highlight in History:
On March 20, 1996, a jury in Los Angeles convicted Erik and Lyle Menendez of first-degree murder in the shotgun slayings of their wealthy parents. (They were sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.)
On this date:
In 1413, England’s King Henry IV died; he was succeeded by Henry V.
In 1815, Napoleon Bonaparte returned to Paris after escaping his exile on Elba, beginning his “Hundred Days” rule.
In 1852, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s influential novel about slavery, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” was first published in book form after being serialized.
In 1854, the Republican Party of the United States was founded by slavery opponents at a schoolhouse in Ripon (RIH’-puhn), Wisconsin.
In 1922, the decommissioned USS Jupiter, converted into the first U.S. Navy aircraft carrier, was recommissioned as the USS Langley.
In 1952, the U.S. Senate ratified, 66-10, a Security Treaty with Japan.
In 1969, John Lennon married Yoko Ono in Gibraltar.
In 1976, kidnapped newspaper heiress Patricia Hearst was convicted of armed robbery for her part in a San Francisco bank holdup carried out by the Symbionese Liberation Army. (Hearst was sentenced to seven years in prison; she was released after serving 22 months, and was pardoned in 2001 by President Bill Clinton.)
In 1995, in Tokyo, 12 people were killed, more than 5,500 others sickened when packages containing the deadly chemical sarin were leaked on five separate subway trains by Aum Shinrikyo (ohm shin-ree-kyoh) cult members.
In 2014, President Barack Obama ordered economic sanctions against nearly two dozen members of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s inner circle and a major bank that provided them support, raising the stakes in an East-West showdown over Ukraine.
In 2018, in a phone call to Vladimir Putin, President Donald Trump offered congratulations on Putin’s reelection victory; a senior official said Trump had been warned in briefing materials that he should not congratulate Putin.
In 2020, the governor of Illinois ordered residents to remain in their homes except for essential needs, joining similar efforts in California and New York to limit the spread of the coronavirus. Stocks tumbled again on Wall Street, ending their worst week since the 2008 financial crisis; the Dow fell more than 900 points to end the week with a 17% loss.
