TIME TRAVELING, MARCH 20 1760 The great fire of Boston destroys 349 homes and business buildings and nine ships and leaves 220 families homeless. 1792 The Legislative Assembly in Paris approves the use of the guillotine. 1852 Harriet Beecher Stowe publishes the anti-slavery novel “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” 1854 In Ripon, Wis., former members of the Whig Party meet to establish a new party to oppose the spread of slavery into the western territories. The meeting is generally remembered as the founding meeting of the Republican Party. 1865 A plot by stage actor and Confederate supporter John Wilkes Booth to abduct President Abraham Lincoln enroute to a scheduled visit at Soldier’s Home near Washington, D.C., is thwarted when Lincoln changes his plans. 1890 The General Federation of Womans Clubs is founded. 1899 At Sing Sing prison, Martha M. Place, convicted of murdering her stepdaughter, becomes the first woman to be executed in the electric chair. 1922 The “USS Langley,” the U.S. Navys first aircraft carrier, is commissioned. 1933 The first German concentration camp is completed at Dachau. 1952 The U.S. Senate ratifies a peace treaty with Japan. 1965 After Alabama’s anti-integrationist governor, George Wallace, refuses to call up the Alabama National Guard to supervise a planned civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, President Lyndon B. Johnson intervenes and calls up the Guard. Several days later, 50,000 marchers follow Martin Luther King Jr. 54 miles under the watchful eyes of state and federal troops. 1969 Beatle John Lennon and artist Yoko Ono are married in Gibraltar. 1976 Kidnapped newspaper heiress Patricia Hearst is convicted of armed robbery for her role in the hold-up of a San Francisco Bank. 1981 Argentine ex-president Isabel Peron is sentenced to eight years in a convent. 1982 U.S. scientists return from Antarctica with the first land mammal fossils found there. 1984 The U.S. Senate rejects an amendment to permit spoken prayer in public schools. 1987 The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approves AZT, a drug proven to slow the progress of AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome). 1990 The Los Angeles Lakers retire Kareem Abdul-Jabbars #33. 1990 Imelda Marcos, widow of ex-Philippines dictator Ferdinand Marcos, goes on trial for racketeering, embezzlement, and bribery. 1995 At the height of the morning rush hour in Tokyo, 12 people are killed and more than 5,500 others are sickened, some with permanent injuries, when the deadly nerve gas Sarin is released from packages on five separate subway trains by members of the doomsday cult Supreme Truth. 1996 Brothers Erik and Lyle Menendez are found guilty of first-degree murder in the killing of their parents in their Beverly Hills home. 1997 Liggett Group, the maker of Chesterfield cigarettes, settles 22 state lawsuits by admitting the industry marketed cigarettes to teenagers and agreeing to warn on every pack that smoking is addictive.
Posted on: Thu, 20 Mar 2014 08:00:38 +0000
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