March 25, Today in history 1306 Robert the Bruce was crowned the King of Scots. 1634 English colonists sent by Lord Baltimore arrived in present-day Maryland. 1776 Gen. George Washington, commander of the Continental Army, was awarded the first Congressional Gold Medal by the Continental Congress. 1865 during the Civil War, Confederate forces attacked Fort Stedman in Virginia but were forced to withdraw because of counterattacking Union troops. 1894 Jacob S. Coxey began leading an army of unemployed from Massillon (MA-sih-luhn), Ohio, to Washington D.C., to demand help from the federal government. 1911 146 people, mostly young female immigrants, were killed when fire broke out at the Triangle Shirtwaist Co. in New York. 1924 the Second Hellenic Republic was proclaimed in Greece. 1947 a coal mine explosion in Centralia, Ill., claimed 111 lives. 1954 RCA announced it had begun producing color television sets at its plant in Bloomington, Ind. (The sets, with 12½-inch picture tubes, cost $1,000 each — roughly $8,700 in todays dollars.) 1964 an acre of Runnymede in Surrey, England, was set aside by the British government as the site of a memorial to honor the late U.S. President John F. Kennedy. 1975 King Faisal (FY-suhl) of Saudi Arabia was shot to death by a nephew with a history of mental illness. (The nephew was beheaded in June 1975.) 1988 in New York Citys so-called Preppie Killer case, Robert Chambers Jr. pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter in the death of 18-year-old Jennifer Levin. (Chambers received a sentence of 5 to 15 years in prison; he was released in 2003.) 1990 87 people, most of them Honduran and Dominican immigrants, were killed when fire raced through an illegal social club in New York City. Ten years ago: The Senate joined the House in passing the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, making it a separate offense to harm a fetus during a violent federal crime. The United States vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning Israels assassination of Hamas leader Ahmed Yassin (AKH-mehd yah-SEEN). Russian Evgeni Plushenko won his third world figure skating title, defeating French rival Brian Joubert in Dortmund, Germany. Five years ago: Pirates seized the Panama-registered, Greek-owned Nipayia with 18 Filipino crew members and a Russian captain off the Somali coastline. (The ship and crew were released in May 2009.) John Hope Franklin, a towering scholar of African-American studies, died in Durham, N.C. at age 94. Dan Seals, half of the pop duo England Dan and John Ford Coley, later a top country singer (You Still Move Me), died in Nashville at age 61. One year ago: U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Afghan President Hamid Karzai made a show of unusual unity between their two nations as the U.S. military ceded control of its last detention facility in Afghanistan, ending a long-standing irritant in relations. Anthony Lewis, 85, a prize-winning columnist for The New York Times whod championed liberal causes for three decades, died in Cambridge, Mass.
Posted on: Tue, 25 Mar 2014 09:15:22 +0000
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