U.S. and World History
1770 – The Boston Massacre took place as British soldiers, taunted by a crowd of colonists, opened fire, killing five people.
1821 – James Monroe became the first President of the United States to be inaugurated on March 5th. The reason? The usual inauguration date of March 4th fell on a Sunday that year and a President cannot be inaugurated on the Sabbath. It’s still the law, even though the Inauguration Day was officially set back to January 20th.
1864 – General John C. Breckinridge took control of Confederate forces in the Appalachian Mountains of western Virginia. The native Kentuckian was a former U.S. senator, U.S. vice president (under James Buchanan) and runner-up to Abraham Lincoln in the 1860 presidential election. Breckinridge took over the obscure Western Department of Virginia, where he managed forces until he was elevated to the Confederacy’s secretary of war in the closing weeks of the Civil War.
1933 – The Nazi Party won 44 percent of the vote in German parliamentary elections, enabling it to join with the Nationalists to gain a slight majority in the Reichstag.
1936 – At the 8th Academy Awards, Mutiny On The Bounty was voted the Oscar for Outstanding Production. Although that film had three actors nominated for Best Actor (Clark Gable, Charles Laughton and Franchot Tone), Victor McLaglen (The Informer) took home the award. Bette Davis (Dangerous) won Best Actress.
1940 – In what would become known as the Katyn Masasacre six high-ranking members of the Soviet politburo, including General Secretary Joseph Stalin, signed an order to execute 25,700 Polish “nationalists and counterrevolutionaries” kept at camps and prisons in occupied western Ukraine and Belarus.
1946 – In one of the most famous orations of the Cold War period, former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill condemned the Soviet Union’s policies in Europe and declared, “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent.” Churchill’s speech – delivered at Westminster College in Fulton, Mo – is considered one of the opening volleys announcing the beginning of the Cold War.
In the Soviet Union, Russian leader Joseph Stalin denounced the speech as “war mongering,” and referred to Churchill’s comments about the “English-speaking world” as imperialist “racism.”
1953 – Days after suffering a massive cerebral hemorrhage, Soviet dictator Josef Stalin died at age 73 after nearly three decades in power. He is remembered to this day as the man who helped save his nation from Nazi domination – and as the mass murderer of the century, having overseen the deaths of 20 million of his own people who died in labor camps, forced collectivization, famine and executions.
1953 – Screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz (Man Of The World, Pride Of The Yankees, Pride Of St. Louis, one of several to contribute to The Wizard Of Oz and won an Academy Award for co-writing Citizen Kane) died of uremic poisoning at the age of 55.
In 1935, while Mankiewicz – a Jew – was a staff writer for MGM, the studio was notified by Joseph Goebbels, then Minister of Education and Propaganda under Adolf Hitler, that films written by Mankiewicz could not be shown in Nazi Germany unless his name was removed from the screen credits.
1956 – The United States Supreme Court upheld a ban on racial segregation in state schools, colleges and universities.
1966 – Just 25 minutes after take-off, BOAC Boeing 707 crashed into Mount Fuji in Japan killing all 124 people on board. Captain Bernard Dobson took the 707 into the air with no problem and then veered a few miles off course to give the passengers a better view of the famed Japanese landmark, Mount Fuji. As the jet approached the mountain, it was caught up in violent turbulence caused by tremendous wind gusts. The rear control surfaces of the plane were torn off and Captain Dobson lost control of the aircraft. As it plunged toward the base of Mount Fuji, the plane literally broke apart.
1977 – The Dial-a-President radio program, featuring President Jimmy Carter and CBS news anchorman Walter Cronkite, aired for the first time. The brainchild of Cronkite and CBS, the show was a test-run to see if the program could be successful. Approximately 9 million calls flooded the CBS radio studio during the two-hour broadcast, and while those numbers indicated the format was a huge success, the program did not air again .
1980 – Actor Jay Silverheels (real name: Harold J. Smith – Key Largo, Lust For Gold, Broken Arrow but best known for playing Tonto, the faithful companion to The Lone Ranger from 1949 to 1957) died from complications of a stroke at the age of 67.
1984 – Actor William Powell (nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor three times: The Thin Man, My Man Godfrey, and Life With Father) died of heart failure at the age of 91.
1990 – Actor Gary Merrill (Twelve O’Clock High, Where The Sidewalk Ends, All About Eve, and former husband of actress Bette Davis) died of lung cancer at the age of 74.
1993 – Olympic sprinter Ben Johnson was banned from athletics for life after failing a drug test for a second time.
1999 – Actor Richard Kiley (won a Tony Award for Best Actor In A Musical twice … Man Of La Mancha and Redhead, and another for Best Actor In A Play … All My Sons, in addition to numerous films and television performances) died of bone marrow disease at the age of 76.
2004 – Martha Stewart was convicted of obstructing justice and lying to the government about why she’d unloaded her Imclone Systems Inc. stock just before the price plummeted.
2006 – At the 78th Academy Awards, Crash was named Best Picture, beating strong opposition such as Brokeback Mountain and Capote.
Philip Seymour Hoffman (Capote) won Best Actor, while Reese Witherspoon (Walk The Line) took home the Oscar for Best Actress. George Clooney (Syriana) won Best Supporting Actor, and Rachel Weisz (The Constant Gardener) was named best Supporting Actress.
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