This Day In History – March -31
Today is the 91st day of 2020. There are 275 days left in the year.
TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT
1995: Tejano singing star Selena, 23, is shot to death in Corpus Christi, Texas, by founder of her fan club. Yolanda Saldivar is later convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison.
OTHER EVENTS
1917: United States takes possession of the Virgin Islands from Denmark.
1923: First US dance marathon, held in New York City, ends with Alma Cummings setting a world record of 27 hours on her feet.
1933: US Congress authorises the Civilian Conservation Corps, providing vocational training and jobs for unemployed young Americans.
1936: Britain and France pledge to support Poland if it is invaded.
1943: The Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Oklahoma opens on Broadway in New York City.
1966: Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd’s Nationalist Party wins election in South Africa.
1968: US President Lyndon Johnson stuns Americans by announcing he would not seek re-election.
1990: Thousands riot against new “poll tax” in central London, leaving 75 civilians and 58 police injured.
1994: South African President F W de Klerk declares a state of emergency and orders army into the Zulu stronghold of Natal.
1998: UN Security Council imposes an arms embargo on Yugoslavia to press the Government to grant concessions to ethnic Albanians in troubled Kosovo province.
2000: Japan’s Mount Usu volcano erupts forcing 16,000 people to evacuate the country’s northernmost island.
2006: Three strong earthquakes and several aftershocks reduce villages to rubble in western Iran, killing at least 70 people and injuring about 1,200 others.
2007: A US military tribunal sentences Australian David Hicks to nine months in prison after he pleaded guilty to supporting terrorism — in the first conviction at a US war-crimes trial since World War II.
2008: Chinese President Hu Jintao presides over the re-lighting of the Olympic torch in the host city, Beijing, signalling the start of an around-the-world torch relay that already has become a magnet for protesters.
2011: Italy ships more than 2,000 migrants to detention camps on its mainland, relieving pressure on a tiny island off Sicily which has been overwhelmed by a relentless stream of boats full of illegal arrivals from North African shores.
2014: North and South Korea fire hundreds of artillery shells into each other’s waters in a flare-up of animosity.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS
Rene Descartes, French philosopher (1596-1650); Franz Joseph Haydn, Austrian composer (1732-1809); Nicolai Gogol, Russian author (1809-1852); R W von Bunsen, German chemist (1811-1899); Shirley Jones, US actress (1934- ); Christopher Walken, US actor (1943- ); Ewan McGregor, British actor (1971- )
— AP
