U.S. and World History

1836 – The Alamo in San Antonio, Texas, fell to Mexican forces after a 13-day siege. Among the names of those who died were William Travis, Davy Crockett, and James Bowie.

1857 – In its Dred Scott decision, the U.S. Supreme Court held that Scott, a slave, could not sue for his freedom in a federal court. The court, by a 7-2 vote, declared that African-Americans, whether enslaved or free, could not be American citizens and therefore had no standing to sue in federal court, and that the federal government had no power to regulate slavery in the federal territories acquired after the creation of the United States.

1888 – Novelist Louisa May Alcott (Little Women and its sequels, Little Men and Jo’s Boys) died at the age of 55 after suffering a stroke.

1899 – The Imperial Patent Office in Berlin registered Aspirin, the brand name for acetylsalicylic acid, on behalf of the German pharmaceutical company Friedrich Bayer & Co.

1933 – At 1:00 a.m., President Franklin Roosevelt issued Proclamation 2039 ordering the suspension of all banking transactions, effective immediately. He had taken the oath of office only thirty-six hours earlier.
For an entire week, Americans would have no access to banks or banking services. They could not withdraw or transfer their money, nor could they make deposits. The crisis began to subside on March 9, when Congress passed the Emergency Banking Act.
On March 13, only four days after the emergency legislation went into effect, member banks in Federal Reserve cities received permission to reopen. By March 15, banks controlling 90 percent of the country’s banking resources had resumed operations and deposits far exceeded withdrawals. Although some 4,000 banks would remain closed forever and full economic recovery was still years in the future, the worst of the banking crisis seemed to be over.

1943 – Norman Rockwell’s Freedom From Want was published in The Saturday Evening Post. The painting was the third in a series of four oil paintings entitled Four Freedoms by Rockwell. They were inspired by Franklin Roosevelt’s State of The union address, delivered to Congress on January 6, 1941.
All of the people pictured were friends and family of Rockwell in Arlington, VT who were photographed individually and painted into the scene. Rockwell photographed his cook as she presented the turkey on Thanksgiving Day 1942.

1951 – The trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who had been indicted for conspiracy to commit espionage, relating to passing information about the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union, began.

1970 – A bomb being built inside a Greenwich Village townhouse by the radical Weathermen accidentally went off, destroying the house and killing three group members.

1973 – Pearl Buck (won the Pulitzer Prize for her novel The Good Earth) died in Danby, VT of lung cancer at the age of 80.

1975 – Author Robert Groden and comedian/activist Dick Gregory appeared on Good Night America, hosted by Geraldo Rivera, and presented a copy of Abraham Zapruder’s film of President John Kennedy’s assassination. It was the first time that the movie was shown to a national TV audience.

1976 – Max Rosenbloom, former light-heavyweight boxing champion, and later an actor (Each Dawn I Die, Requiem For A Heavyweight) died of Paget’s disease of bone. “Slapsie Maxie” was 68.

1981 – After 19 years, Walter Cronkite signed off for the last time as anchorman of The CBS Evening News.

1987 – A British ferry leaving Zeebrugge, Belgium, capsized, drowning 188 people. The Herald of Free Enterprise carried 543 people, 84 cars and 36 trucks on board as it headed across the English Channel to Dover.
The ferry was designed to allow vehicles to drive on and off the ship quickly and easily. However, it was the unofficial policy of the ship’s crew to leave port with the bow doors open and to close them as the ship was already moving, a practice that allowed a small, but normally inconsequential, amount of water into the ferry. The March 6 trip left port with the doors open and the person assigned to close them was asleep in a bunk. The crew members who were supposed to take over this assignment were unable to close the doors as the ferry pushed out to sea.
The vehicles in the hold were tossed back and forth in the water, and a sudden shift in weight caused the ship to tip. Within minutes, the ferry capsized.

1990 – Ed Yielding and Joseph T. Vida set the transcontinental speed record by flying a SR-71 Blackbird from Los Angeles to Virginia in 64 minutes, averaging 2,124 mph.

1994 – Actress Melina Mercouri (Promise At Dawn, Phaedra and Never On Sunday, which earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress) died from lung cancer at the age of 73.

2005 – Actress Teresa Wright died of a heart attack at the age of 86. She won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress (Mrs. Miniver) and was nominated for Best Actress (Pride Of The Yankees).

2006 – Baseball Hall of Fame outfielder Kirby Puckett died following a massive cerebral hemorrhage. He was 45.

2006 – Dana Reeve, author, actress, activist for disability causes, and the widow of actor Christopher Reeve, died of lung cancer at the age of 44 … just seven months after her husband had passed.

2007 – Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, was convicted of lying and obstructing an investigation into the 2003 leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame’s identity.
Four months later, President George W. Bush commuted Libby’s 30-month prison sentence, calling it “excessive.” The president’s spokesman at the time, Tony Snow, denied accusations that Bush’s decision was political, saying that he “is getting pounded on the right because he didn’t do a full pardon.”

2008 – A suicide bomber killed 68 people in Baghdad on the same day a gunman killed eight students in Jerusalem.

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