The Almanac
Today is Tuesday, March 21, the 80th day of 2017 with 285 to follow.
The moon is waning. Morning stars are Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune and
Venus. Evening stars are Mercury, Venus, Uranus and Mars. Those born on
this date are under the sign of Aries. They include composer Johann
Sebastian Bach in 1685; Mexican revolutionary and president Benito
Juarez in 1806; Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky in 1839; theatrical
impresario Florenz Ziegfeld in 1867; British theatrical director Peter
Brook in 1925 (age 92); actor James Coco in 1930; actor Al Freeman Jr.
in 1934; actor Timothy Dalton in 1946 (age 71); musician Eddie Money in
1949 (age 68); actor Gary Oldman in 1958 (age 59); actor Matthew
Broderick in 1962 (age 55); actor Rosie O'Donnell in 1962 (age 55);
actor Scott Eastwood in 1986 (age 31). On this date in history: In
1413, Henry V was crowned king of England. In 1617, Pocahontas died in
England at about age 22. Three years earlier, she converted to
Christianity, took the name Rebecca and married Englishman John Rolfe.
In 1790, Thomas Jefferson of Virginia became the first U.S. secretary
of state. In 1857, 100,000 people were killed in an earthquake in
Tokyo. In 1918, U.S. and German soldiers fought the World War I battle
of the Somme in France. In 1945, 7,000 Allied planes dropped more than
12,000 tons of explosives on Germany during a single World War II
daytime bombing raid. In 1952, Cleveland disc jockey Alan Freed
organized the first rock 'n' roll concert -- the Moondog Coronation
Ball. In 1962, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev pledged that Russia
would cooperate with the United States in the peaceful exploration of
space. In 1963, the U.S. prison on San Francisco Bay's Alcatraz Island
was closed. In 1965, more than 300 civil rights demonstrators, led by
Martin Luther King Jr. and protected by Army and federalized National
Guard troops, began a four-day march from Selma to Montgomery, Ala., to
demand federal protection of voting rights. This was the main
Selma-Montgomery march. Two previous attempts had stopped in Selma --
one blocked by state troopers on March 7 ( Bloody Sunday ); the other
halted voluntarily on March 9. In 1984, a nuclear-powered Soviet
submarine collided with the U.S. aircraft carrier, the USS Kitty Hawk,
in the Sea of Japan but no significant damage was reported. In 1985,
Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev chaired his first regular Politburo
meeting since taking power and renewed his call for detente with the
West. Meanwhile, President Ronald Reagan stated that it was 'high time'
for a U.S. -Soviet summit and that he was ready to meet with Gorbachev.
In 1999, Bertrand Piccard and Brian Jones landed near Cairo after
becoming the first people to circle the globe by balloon. In 2002, Pope
John Paul II, referring to the sexual abuse scandal that had shaken the
Roman Catholic clergy, wrote that a dark shadow of suspicion had fallen
over all priests because of the behavior of those who had succumbed to
the most grievous forms of evil. In 2005, a 17-year-old boy at the Red
Lake Indian Reservation in Minnesota killed nine people, injured
several others and then killed himself. In 2010, the first eruption of
a volcano in southern Iceland since the 1820s forced the evacuation of
450 people, but there were no reports of injuries or major property
damage. In 2011, surgeons at a Boston hospital said they had performed
the first full-face transplant in the United States on a Texas man
burned in a 2008 electrical accident. In 2013, the United States was
the top destination for people who want to leave their home countries
and move somewhere else permanently, a Gallup poll found. In 2014, Jack
Fleck, a former municipal course pro whose U.S. Open playoff win over
Ben Hogan in 1955 was considered one of golf's biggest upsets, died at
the age of 92 in Fort Smith, Arkansas. A thought for the day: Someday
you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again. -- C.S.
Lewis .
