[ T O D A Y I N H I S T O R Y ] • 1664, New Jersey becomes a colony of England • 1864, Ulysses S. Grant became commander in chief of the Union armies in the Civil War • 1894, in Vicksburg, Mississippi, Coca-Cola is sold in bottles for the first time • 1912, the Girl Guides (later renamed the Girl Scouts of the USA) are founded in the United States • 1918, Moscow becomes the capital of Russia again after Saint-Petersburg held this status for 215 years • 1930, Indian political and spiritual leader Mohandas K. Gandhi began a 200-mile march to protest a British tax on salt • 1933, Franklin D. Roosevelt addresses the nation for the first time as President of the United States. This was also the first of his fireside chats • 1938, the Anschluss took place as German troops entered Austria • 1947, President Truman established what became known as the Truman Doctrine to help Greece and Turkey resist Communism • 1951, Dennis the Menace, created by cartoonist Hank Ketcham, made its syndicated debut in 16 newspapers • 1964, New Hampshire becomes the first state to sell lottery tickets in the modern era • 1980, a Chicago jury found John Wayne Gacy Jr. guilty of the murders of 33 men and boys. (The next day, Gacy was sentenced to death; after years on death row, he was executed in May 1994.) • 1993 -- The Blizzard of 1993 -- Snow would begin to fall across the eastern portion of the US with tornadoes, thunder snow storms, high winds and record low temperatures. The storm would last another 30 hours before it left the US. ALSO: More than 250 people were killed when a wave of bombings rocked Mumbai • 1998, the government reported the rate of new cancer cases among Americans had inched down for the first time, meaning about 70,000 fewer people than expected were diagnosed between 1992 and 1995 • 1999, former Warsaw Pact members the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland join NATO. • 2000, in an unprecedented moment in the history of the church, Pope John Paul II asked the Almightys forgiveness for the sins of Roman Catholics through the ages, including wrongs inflicted on Jews, women and minorities • 2002, Houston homemaker Andrea Yates was convicted of murder in the drowning deaths of her five children in the family bathtub. (Yates was later retried and found not guilty by reason of insanity.) ALSO: Homeland security chief Tom Ridge announced that America was at yellow alert as he unveiled a color-coded system for terror warnings. AND: The U.N. Security Council approved a U.S.-sponsored resolution endorsing a Palestinian state for the first time. AND: The space shuttle Columbia returned to Earth, ending the Hubble Space Telescope repair mission • 2003, Elizabeth Smart, 15, who had been kidnapped from her Salt Lake City home on June 2002, was found in the custody of a panhandler and his wife in nearby Sandy, Utah. ALSO: Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic was assassinated • 2007, masked Palestinians kidnapped BBC reporter Alan Johnston at gunpoint in Gaza City. (He was released several months later.) • 2008, New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer resigned after being caught up in a high-priced prostitution scandal. He was succeeded by Lt. Gov. David Paterson, New Yorks first African-American (and legally blind) governor • 2009, disgraced financier Bernard Madoff pleaded guilty in New York to pulling off perhaps the biggest swindle in Wall Street history. ALSO: The Iraqi journalist whod thrown shoes at President George W. Bush received a three-year sentence. (Muntadhar al-Zeidi ended up serving nine months.) AND: Insurance broker Willis Group Holdings announced that Chicagos Sears Tower would be renamed Willis Tower • 2012, after days of violence, Palestinian and Israeli authorities agreed to a truce, an agreement reached with the help of Egyptian mediators
Posted on: Wed, 12 Mar 2014 17:25:36 +0000