Today in History - March 26
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752 Mar 26,
Pope Stephen II died 4 days after his election.
(SS, 3/26/02)(PTA, 1980, p.184)
1027 Mar 26, John XIX crowned
Conrad II the Salier Roman German emperor.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1150 Mar 26, Tichborne family
of Hampshire, England, started tradition of giving a gallon of flour
to each resident to keep deathbed promise.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1258 Mar 26, Floris the
Guardian, count-regent of Holland, died.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1479 Mar 26, Vasili III, great
prince of Moscow (1505-33), son of Ivan III, was born.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1516 Mar 26, Konrad von Gesner,
naturalist (Bibliotheca Universalis), was born in Zurich,
Switzerland.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1517 Mar 26, The famous Flemish
composer Heinrich Issac, died. His music fused Flemish, Italian and
Germanic styles.
(HN, 3/26/99)
1526 Mar 26, King
François I returned Spanish captivity to France.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1534 Mar 26, Lübeck
accepted free Dutch ships into East Sea.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1636 Mar 26, University of
Utrecht held its opening ceremony.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1649 Mar 26, John Winthrop,
Puritan and 1st Gov. of Massachusetts, died. [see Apr 5]
(SS, 3/26/02)
1659 Mar 26, William Wollaston,
English philosopher, was born.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1668 Mar 26, England took
control of Bombay, India.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1692 Mar 26, King Maximilian
was installed as land guardian of South Netherlands.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1753 Mar 26, Benjamin Thompson
(d.1814), Count Rumford, English physicist and diplomat, was born.
He was a Tory spy in the American Revolution and discovered that
heat equaled motion, which led to the 2nd law of thermodynamics.
(WUD, 1994, p.1477)(WSJ, 7/28/98, p.A16)(SS,
3/26/02)
1773 Mar 26, Nathaniel Bowditch
(d.1838), mathematician, astronomer, polyglot, author (Marine
Sextant), was born in Salem, Mass. In 1802 he published “The New
American Practical Navigator.”
(SS, 3/26/02)(AH, 12/02, p.22)
1780 Mar 26, The 1st British
Sunday newspaper appeared as the British Gazette and Sunday Monitor.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1790 Mar 26, US Congress passed
a Naturalization Act. It required a 2-year residency.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1793 Mar 26, Pro-royalist
uprising took place in Vendée region of France.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1797 Mar 26, James Hutton,
geologist, died.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1798 Mar 26, Tunis, under the
rule of Bey Hamuda Pasha, signed a treaty of peace and friendship
with the US following negotiations with William Eaton. The American
Revolutionary War veteran had been recently appointed consul to the
North African kingdom.
(ON, 10/06, p.7)
1799 Mar 26, Napoleon Bonaparte
captured Jaffa, Palestine.
(HN, 3/26/99)
1804 Mar 26, Congress ordered
the removal of Indians east of the Mississippi to Louisiana.
(HN, 3/25/98)
1804 Mar 26, The Louisiana
Purchase was divided into the Territory of Orleans and the District
of Louisiana.
(AP, 3/26/97)(HN, 3/25/98)
1812 Mar 26, Earthquake
destroyed 90% of Caracas; about 20,000 died.
(SS, 3/26/02)(PCh, 1992, p.376)
1819 Mar 26, Louise Otto,
German feminist author, was born.
(HN, 3/25/98)
1821 Mar 26, Franz
Grillparzer's "Das Goldene Vliess" premiered in Vienna.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1824 Mar 26, 1st performance of
Beethoven's "Missa Solemnis."
(SS, 3/26/02)
1827 Mar 26, Ludwig von
Beethoven (56), German composer, died in Vienna. He had been deaf
for the later part of his life, but said on his death bead “I shall
hear in heaven.” It was later determined that he suffered from lead
poisoning. In 1995 Tia DeNora authored “Beethoven and the
Construction of Genius.” In 2000 Russell Martin authored
“Beethoven’s Hair: An Extraordinary Historical Odyssey and a
Scientific Mystery Solved.”
(WSJ, 5/29/96, p.A5)(AP, 3/256/97)(HN,
3/26/99)(SFC, 10/18/00, p.A2)(WSJ, 1/17/02, p.A12)
1831 Mar 26, An interim
government was set up in Raseiniai as a Lithuanian revolt against
Russian rule began. There was a major uprising led by the Polish
nobility in Warsaw against Russian rule. Russian forces began to
march through Lithuania and this led many people of Lithuania to
join in the rebellion against Russian rule. Serf uprisings also
followed. The rebellion was eventually quelled by Russian force.
(H of L, 1931, p.85-86)(LHC, 3/26/03)
1832 Mar 26, Famed western
artist George Catlin began his voyage up the Missouri River aboard
the American Fur Company steamship Yellowstone.
(HN, 3/26/99)
1836 Mar 26, Mexican Colonel
Jose Nicolas de la Portilla received orders from Gen. Santa Anna in
triplicate to execute his Texan prisoners at Goliad.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goliad_Campaign)
1845 Mar 26, Joseph Francis,
New York NY, patented a corrugated sheet-iron lifeboat.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1845 Mar 26, Patent was awarded
for adhesive medicated plaster, precursor of band aid.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1850 Mar 26, Edward Bellamy
(d.1898), writer, was born. His work included the utopian novel
"Looking Backward, 2000-1887," which forecast what America might
look like if people worked together for the common good.
(WSJ, 12/10/99, p.W17)(HN, 3/26/01)
1859 Mar 26, A.E. Houseman
(d.1936), critic, classics scholar and poet (A Shropshire Lad), was
born. A 1997 fictionalized portrait of Alfred Edward Housman, "The
Invention of Love: Memory Play," was written by Tom Stoppard. He is
best known for his work "A Shropshire Lad."
(SFEC, 3/29/98, p.T9)(SFC, 1/15/00, p.B1)(HN,
3/26/01)
1859 Mar 26, 1st sighting of
Vulcan, a planet thought to orbit inside Mercury.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1862 Mar 26, Battle of La
Glorieta Pass, New Mexico Territory (Apache Canyon, Pigeon's Ranch).
(SS, 3/26/02)
1863 Mar 26, Henry Royce,
founder (Rolls-Royce Limited in 1884), was born. [see Mar 27]
(SS, 3/26/02)
1863 Mar 26, Voters in West
Virginia approved the gradual emancipation of slaves.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1868 Mar 26, Fuad I, king of
Egypt (1922-36), was born.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1871 Mar 26, Serafín
Alvarez Quintéro, Spanish dramatist, playwright (El
Flechazo), was born.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1871 Mar 26, Paris Commune was
founded. The Parisians revolted against their government and tried
to secede by electing their own government. The Commune of Paris
refused to obey Adolphe Thiers, the elected president of the
country. Thiers asked the Germans to release thousands of French
prisoners and organized a powerful force to overcome the Commune.
(V.D.-H.K.p.260)(SS, 3/26/02)
1872 Mar 26, Thomas J. Martin
patented a fire extinguisher.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1872 Mar 26, A 7.8 earthquake
shook the Owens Valley, California.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1874 Mar 26, Robert Frost, poet
(d.1963), was born in San Francisco. Robert Lee Frost, American
poet. In a biography of Frost by Jeffrey Myers: “Robert Frost: A
Biography,” the author claims that Frost moved his birthday up a
year to make himself legitimate. A 3-volume biography by Lawrence
Thompson was completed in 1976. Myers reveals that Frost’s lover,
Kay Morrison, was also involved with Lawrence Thompson, but that
that would not be disclosed in the Thompson biography. "Before I
built a wall I'd ask to know What I was walling in or walling out."
[see Mar 26, 1875]
(WUD, 1994, p.571)(HN, 3/25/98)(AP, 3/26/97)(AP,
11/9/98)
1875 Mar 26, Poet Robert Frost
was born in San Francisco. [see Mar 26, 1874]
(AP, 3/26/97)
1875 Mar 26, Syngman Rhee,
President of South Korea (1948-60), was born. [see Apr 26]
(SS, 3/26/02)
1878 Mar 26, Hastings College
of Law was founded in SF. It was named after Serranus Clinton
Hastings, the 1st chief justice of the California Supreme Court.
(SS, 3/26/02)(SFCM, 10/26/03, p.8)
1878 Mar 26, Sabi Game Reserve,
the world's 1st official designated game reserve, opened.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1880 Mar 26, Duncan Hines, US
restaurant guide writer (Out of Kentucky Kitchens), was born.
(HN, 3/25/98)(SS, 3/26/02)
1885 Mar 26, The Eastman Film
Co. of Rochester, N.Y., manufactured the first commercial motion
picture film. George Eastman had perfected a method for bonding
photographic emulsion onto thin strips of celluloid.
(AP, 3/25/98)(HN, 3/25/98)(ON, 11/03, p.5)
1885 Mar 26, Louis Riel's
forces defeated Canadian forces at Duck Lake, Saskatchewan.
(SS, 3/26/02)(ON, 11/07, p.12)
1886 Mar 26, The 1st cremation
in England took place.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1892 Mar 26, Poet Walt Whitman
died in Camden, N.J. In 1997 Gary Schmidgall published the
biography: “Walt Whitman: A Gay Life.” It focused on the poet’s
homosexuality. In 1999 a critical biography: Walt Whitman: The Song
of Himself" by Jerome Loving was published along with "A Whitman
Chronology" by Joann P. Krieg.
(AP, 3/26/97)(SFEC, 9/14/97, BR p.7)(SFC, 3/3/99,
p.E4)(SFEC, 4/4/99, Par p.15)
1895 Mar 26, King Alfonso
planted a pine sapling in Madrid and started Spain's Arbor Day.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1902 Mar 26, Cecil John Rhodes
(b.1853), British imperialist, died at age 48. He was buried in a
tomb in the Matopos Hills, Rhodesia (Zimbabwe). He had co-founded De
Beers Consolidated Mines Ltd., built great railways through southern
Africa. Rhodes (founder of Rhodesia) left $10 million in his will to
provide scholarships to Oxford University in England. The first
scholars were selected in 1903. In 2008 Philip Ziegler authored
“Legacy: Cecil Rhodes, the Rhodes Trust and Rhodes Scholarships.”
(WSJ, 12/9/98, p.A1)(AP, 4/4/97)(SFC, 12/9/98,
p.A25)(Econ, 5/10/08, p.95)
1903 Mar 26, American Hotel
opened in Amsterdam.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1904 Mar 26, Joseph Campbell,
folklorist and writer, was born.
(HN, 3/26/01)
1905 Mar 26, Viktor Emil
Frankl, psychiatrist (Man's Search for Meaning), was born.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1909 Mar 26, August
Strindberg's "Bjalb-jarle-ti" premiered in Stockholm.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1909 Mar 26, Russian troops
invaded Persia to support Muhammad Ali as the Shah in place of the
constitutional government.
(HN, 3/25/98)
1910 Mar 26, US forbade
immigration to criminals, anarchists, paupers and the sick.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1910 Mar 26, William H. Lewis
was appointed Assistant Attorney General of US.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1911 Mar 26, Tennessee Williams
(d.1983), American dramatist, was born in Columbus, Miss. His plays
included "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" and "A Streetcar Name Desire."
(HN, 3/26/01)(AP,
3/26/02)(http://tinyurl.com/s8zm5)
1913 Mar 26, Dayton, Ohio, was
almost destroyed when Scioto, Miami, and Muskingum River reached
flood stage simultaneously.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1913 Mar 26, The Balkan allies
took Adrianople. Bulgaria captured Adrianople, ending the 1st Balkan
War.
(HN, 3/25/98)(SS, 3/26/02)
1914 Mar 26, The birthday of
Tennessee (Thomas Lanier) Williams (1914-1983), American dramatist.
His play “The Glass Menagerie” was inspired by a pre-frontal
lobotomy performed on his sister to cure a case of schizophrenia.
The operation failed and his sister, Rose (1909-1996), was
institutionalized. He left a $10 million estate to support her and
directed that anything left go to support aspiring writers at the
Univ. of the South of Sewanee. He also wrote "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof"
and "A Streetcar Name Desire." [see Mar 11 & 26, 1911]
(AHD, p.1466)(WUD, 1994, p.1634)
1914 Mar 26, William
Westmoreland, U.S. army general and head of all ground forces in
South Vietnam during the Vietnam War, was born in Saxon, SC.
(HN, 3/26/99)(SS, 3/26/02)
1917 Mar 27, The Seattle
Metropolitans became the first US team to win the Stanley Cup as
they defeated the Montreal Canadiens.
(AP, 3/27/97)
1918 Mar 26, On the Western
Front during World War I the Germans took the French towns Noyon,
Roye and Lihons.
(HN, 3/25/98)
1918 Mar 26, Col. Raynal
Bolling (b.1877), architect of American air power in WWI and
resident of Greenwich, Connecticut, was shot dead by a German patrol
in France.
(WSJ, 4/12/08,
p.A1)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raynal_Bolling)
1923 Mar 26, Bob Elliot, radio
comedian, one half of Bob and Ray, was born.
(HN, 3/26/01)
1923 Mar 26, Actress Sarah
Bernhardt (b.1844), born in Paris as Rosine Bernardt, died in Paris.
In 2010 Robert Gottlieb authored “Sarah: The Life of Sarah
Bernhardt.”
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Bernhardt)(Econ, 9/18/10, p.105)
1924 Mar 26, Premiere of
Bernard Shaw's "Saint Joan" in London.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1925 Mar 26, Pierre Boulez,
composer, conductor (Visage Nuptial), was born in Montbrison,
France.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1926 Mar 26, ACD de Graeff was
appointed Governor-General of Dutch East-Indies.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1926 Mar 26, The 1st
lip-reading tournament was held in America.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1926 Mar 26, U.S. oil companies
bought 190,000 tons of kerosene from Russia for $3.2 million.
(HN, 3/25/98)
1927 Mar 26, Alfred Hugenberg
purchased German film company UFA.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1927 Mar 26, Gaumont-British
Film Corporation formed.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1930 Mar 26, Gregory Corso,
beat poet (Happy Birthday of Death, Long Live Man), was born. He
discovered literature in prison.
(HN, 3/26/01)(SS, 3/26/02)
1930 Mar 26, Sandra Day
O'Connor, first woman US Supreme Court Justice (1981- ), was born in
El Paso TX.
(HN, 3/26/01)(SS, 3/26/02)
1930 Mar 26, Congress
appropriated $50,000 for Inter-American highway.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1931 Mar 26, Leonard Nimoy,
actor (Spock-Star Trek, Mission Impossible), was born in Boston, MA.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1931 Mar 26, Iraq and
Trans-Jordan (Transjordan) signed a peace treaty.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1931 Mar 26, New Delhi replaced
Calcutta as capitol of British-India. [see Feb 10]
(SS, 3/26/02)
1933 Mar 26, Vine Deloria, Jr.,
writer, activist, was born.
(HN, 3/26/01)
1934 Mar 26, Alan Arkin, actor
(Catch 22, In-Laws, Simon, Wait Until Dark), was born in NYC.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1934 Mar 26, Driving tests were
introduced in Britain.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1934 Mar 26, Switzerland banned
all slanderous criticism of state institutions in the press and
threatened the suspension of publications if the ban was not heeded.
(HN, 3/25/98)
1936 Mar 26, A 200" telescope
lens was shipped by the Corning Glass Works from New York to Cal
Tech.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1936 Mar 26, Mary Joyce ended a
1,000 mile trip by dog in Alaska.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1936 Mar 26, New Zealand radio
aired a parliamentary debate for the 1st time.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1937 Mar 26, A 6-foot-tall
concrete statue of the cartoon character Popeye was unveiled during
the Second Annual Spinach Festival in Crystal City, Texas.
(AP, 3/26/97)
1937 Mar 26, William H. Hastie
became the first black federal judge in the Virgin Islands.
(HN, 3/25/98)(SS, 3/26/02)
1938 Mar 26, NBC radio
performance of Howard Hanson's 3rd Symphony.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1938 Mar 26, Herman Goering
warned all Jews to leave Austria.
(HN, 3/25/98)
1940 Mar 26, Nancy Pelosi,
(Representative-Democrat-CA), was born.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1941 Mar 26, Clinton Richard
Dawkins, British ethologist, evolutionary biologist and popular
science author, was born. He came to prominence with his 1976 book
“The Selfish Gene,” which popularized the gene-centered view of
evolution and introduced the term meme.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Dawkins)
1942 Mar 26, Erica Jong [Mann],
poet, novelist (Fear of Flying, How to Save Your Own Life), was born
in NYC.
(HN, 3/26/01)(SS, 3/26/02)
1942 Mar 26, 20 tons of
gelignite killed 21 in a stone quarry in Easton, PA.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1942 Mar 26, A German offensive
took place in North-Africa under Colonel-General Rommel.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1943 Mar 26, Elsie S. Ott, US
army nurse, became the 1st woman to receive air medal.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1943 Mar 26, Battle of
Komandorski Islands, Pacific Ocean.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1944 Mar 26, Diana Ross
[Earle], (Supremes, Lady Sings the Blues, Mahogany), was born
Detroit, MI.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1944 Mar 26, 705 British
bombers attacked Essen.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1945 Mar 26, Generals
Eisenhower, Bradley, and Patton attack at Remagen on the Rhine.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1945 Mar 26, US 7th Army
crossed Rhine at Worms.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1945 Mar 26, Japanese
resistance ended on Iwo Jima.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1945 Mar 26, Kamikazes attacked
US battle fleet near Kerama Retto.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1945 Mar 26, Syria declared war
on Germany.
(HN, 3/25/98)
1945 Mar 26, David Lloyd George
(b.1863), former prime minister (1916-1922), died. In 1973 John
Grigg (d.2001 at 77) authored “The Young Lloyd George.” 2 more
volumes of the biography were published in 1978 and 1985.
(WUD, 1994 p.839)(SFC, 1/3/02, p.A16)(SS,
3/26/02)
1947 Mar 26, FBI director J.
Edgar Hoover warned HUAC that communists had launched “a furtive
attack on Hollywood” 12 years earlier.
(SSFC, 6/9/02, p.F2)
1950 Mar 26, Senator Joe
McCarthy named Owen Lattimore, an ex-State Department adviser, as a
Soviet spy.
(HN, 3/25/98)
1951 Mar 26, The United States
Air Force flag design was approved.
(HN, 3/25/98)
1952 Mar 26, F.
Dürrenmatt's "Die Ehe des Herrn Mississippi" premiered in
Munich.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1953 Mar 26, Eisenhower offered
increased aid in Indochina (Vietnam) to France.
(HN, 3/25/98)
1953 Mar 26, Dr. Jonas Salk of
the University of Pittsburgh announced that a vaccine against polio
had been successfully tested in a small group of adults and
children. By April 1955, the vaccine had undergone further testing
and gained federal approval for public use, as shown in this photo
of Salk administering the vaccine at Colfax School in Pittsburgh.
Salk’s polio vaccine was so successful that by 1961 the incidence of
polio had decreased by 95 percent.
(HNPD, 3/26/99)
1954 Mar 26, The U.S. set off
the second H-bomb blast in four weeks in the Marshall Islands at
Bikini Island. The 15-megaton device was 750 times more powerful
than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. The blast contaminated
the neighboring island of Rongelap and nearly 100 people on the
island and other downwind atolls.
(HN, 3/25/98)(SFC, 12/7/99, p.A10)(SS, 3/26/02)
1955 Mar 26, "Ballad of Davy
Crockett" by Fess Parker became the #1 record in US.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1956 Mar 26, Medic Alert
Foundation formed.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1956 Mar 26, Red Buttons
debuted on TV in Studio One.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1958 Mar 26, In the 30th
Academy Awards "The Bridge on the River Kwai" won 7 Awards,
including best picture of 1957; its director, David Lean, and star
Alec Guinness also received Oscars. Joanne Woodward was named best
actress for "The Three Faces of Eve."
(AP, 3/26/08)
1958 Mar 26, The U.S. Army
launched America's third successful satellite, Explorer 3.
(AP, 3/26/97)
1959 Mar 26, Raymond Chandler
(71), American writer, best known for his Philip Marlowe detective
novels, died. He wrote seven Marlowe books that includes "Farewell
My Lovely," "The Long Goodbye" (1953) and "The Big Sleep" (1939). In
1976 Prof. Frank MacShane wrote "The Life of Raymond Chandler." In
1995 he was honored with a 2-volume issues of his works by the
Library of America. A CD-ROM was also made titled after a novel:
Trouble is My Business. In 1997 Tom Hiney wrote "Raymond Chandler: A
Biography." In 2001 Tom Hiney and Frank MacShane edited "The Raymond
Chandler Papers." In 2007 Judith Freeman authored “The Long Embrace:
Raymond Chandler and the Woman He Loved.”
(WSJ, 10/18/95, A-16)(SFC, 7/9/97, p.D5)(SFC,
3/14/98, p.B7)(SFC, 11/18/99, p.C8)(WSJ, 4/23/01, p.A20)(SS,
3/26/02)(SSFC, 11/4/07, p.M1)
1960 Mar 26, Iraq executed 30
after attack on President Kassem.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1961 Mar 26, John F. Kennedy
met with British Premier Macmillan, in Washington to discuss
increased Communist involvement in Laos.
(HN, 3/25/98)
1962 Mar 26, The U.S. Supreme
Court in Baker vs. Carr gave federal courts the power to order
reapportionment of seats in a state legislature, a decision that
eventually led to the doctrine of “one man, one vote.” It arose from
a Tennessee case in which Carr was the state attorney general.
(AP, 3/26/02)(SFC, 8/1/03, p.A27)
1964 Mar 26, The Broadway hit
musical "Funny Girl" premiered with Barbara Streisand as singer
Fanny Brice. Jule Styne and Bob Merrill produced the show, which ran
at Winter Garden Theater in NYC for 1,348 performances
(SS, 3/26/02)(SSFC, 1/18/04, p.A1)
1967 Mar 26, The 21st Tony
Awards were held at the Schubert Theater in NYC. “The Homecoming”
won for Best Play and “Cabaret” won for Best Musical.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/21st_Tony_Awards)
1967 Mar 26, Herbert von
Karajan founded the Salzburg Easter Festival with the idea of
staging his ideal Ring of the Nibelung with his own Berlin
Philharmonic Orchestra.
(WSJ, 4/12/96, p.A-12)
1967 Mar 26, Jim Thompson,
American ex-serviceman, disappeared while on holiday in the Cameron
Highlands of Northern Malaysia. He revived the Thai silk industry
after WW II. He was one of the first to adopt a classic Thai house
to the requirements of modern life, and his home is now a museum in
Bangkok, Thailand.
(Hem, Mar. 95, p.63)(SFEC, 7/16/00, p.T14)
1967 Mar 26, Pope Paul VI
published encyclical Populorum Progressio (On the Development of
Peoples).
(www.ewtn.com/library/ENCYC/P6DEVELO.HTM)
1969 Mar 26, Marcus Welby MD, a
TV movie was shown on ABC-TV. It began a popular series with Robert
Young and ran to 1976.
(www.imdb.com/title/tt0064636/)(WSJ, 1/10/03,
p.A10)
1969 Mar 26, Writer John
Kennedy Toole (b.1937) committed suicide at the age of 32. His
mother helped get his first and only novel, "A Confederacy of
Dunces," published. It went on to win the 1981 Pulitzer Prize.
(HN,
3/26/01)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Kennedy_Toole)
1969 Mar 26, B. Traven
(b.1890), novelist and short-story writer, died. He lived most of
his life incognito in Mexico. His work included "The Treasure of the
Sierra Madre" (1934), "The Death Ship," The Rebellion of the Hanged"
and "The General from the Jungle." In 1976 Michael L. Baumann
authored "B. Traven, An Introduction." In 2000 Michael L. Baumann
authored "Mr. Traven, I Presume."
(SFEC, 10/15/00, BR
p.8)(www.kirjasto.sci.fi/traven.htm)
1969 Mar 26, Nuclear reactor in
Dodewaard, Netherlands, went into use.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1969 Mar 26, Soviet weather
Satellite Meteor 1 was launched.
(HN, 3/25/98)
1970 Mar 26, "Minnie's Boys"
opened at Imperial Theater in NYC for 80 performances.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minnie%27s_Boys)
1970 Mar 26, The US conducted
the Handley nuclear test in Nevada.
(http://tinyurl.com/3urgtw)
1970 Mar 26, Peter Yarrow
(b.1938), of the singing trio Peter, Paul & Mary, pleaded guilty
to taking "immoral liberties" with a minor, referring to an incident
between Mr. Yarrow and a 14-year old. He served 3 months in
jail; 11 years later he was pardoned by President Carter.
(http://theawarenesscenter.org/yarrow_peter.html)
1971 Mar 26, East Pakistan
proclaimed its independence, taking the name Bangladesh. [See Mar
21] This is considered the official Independence day of Bangladesh.
(AP,
3/26/97)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangladesh_Liberation_War)
1972 Mar 26, "Only Fools Are
Sad" closed at Edison Theater in NYC after 144 performances.
(www.ibdb.com/production.php?id=3626)
1972 Mar 26, Evil Knievel broke
his collarbone after successfully clearing 13 cars.
(www.youtube.com/watch?v=9oCif2imBHU)
1973 Mar 26, The US soap opera
"The Young and the Restless" premiered.
(www.imdb.com/title/tt0069658/)
1973 Mar 26, Susan Shaw became
the 1st woman in 171 years in London's Stock exchange.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1973 Mar 26, Noel Coward
(b.1899), English gay playwright, died. He was called "The Master"
and his work included "The Vortex," "Hay Fever," "Private Lives,"
"Brief Encounter" and "Blithe Spirit." In 1970 he was given
knighthood. "Noel Coward: A Biography" by Philip Hoare was published
in 1996. Another biography, "A Talent to Amuse" by Sheridan Morley,
published in 1974, was recommended. In 2007 Barry Day edited “The
Letters of Noel Coward.”
(WSJ, 8/15/96, p.A10)(SFEC, 8/25/96, BR p.9)(WSJ,
11/10/07, p.W8)
1975 Mar 26, The film "Tommy"
premiered in London.
(www.imdb.com/title/tt0073812/combined)
1975 Mar 26, The US ratified a
ban on poison gas established in the Geneva Protocol. Production,
stockpiling and the use of anthrax was outlawed by an int’l. treaty
of chemical and biological weapons. 140 nations adopted the Int'l.
Biological Weapons Convention, but these did not include Russia. The
treaty had no organization, no budget, no sanctions and no
inspections provisions.
(www.fas.org/nuke/control/bwc/text/bwc.htm)(SFC,11/12/97, p.C2)(SFC,
2/20/98, p.A9)(SFC, 2/19/00, p.A14)
1975 Mar 26, Clela Rorex,
Boulder, Colo., county clerk, allowed 6 same-sex couples to wed
after changing the license application to read "person" rather than
"male" and "female."
(SFC, 2/14/04,
p.A1)(www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/3/26/22117/6384)
1976 Mar 26, Paul McCartney and
Wings released "Wings at the Speed of Sound" album.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wings_at_the_Speed_of_Sound)
1976 Mar 26, In 2006 an NSA
transcript from this day indicated that US Sec. of State Henry
Kissinger was informed in the meeting by then-Assistant Secretary
for Latin America William D. Rogers, that if the Argentine military
regime succeeded (March 24 coup), it would make a "considerable
effort to involve the United States — particularly in the financial
field." Kissinger, the NSA's transcript further stated, responded,
"Yes, but that is in our interest."
(AP, 3/24/06)
1977 Mar 26, Rose Bird
(1936-1999) was sworn in as Chief Justice of California. She had
been confirmed on March 12.
(SFEC, 12/5/99, p.A18)
1977 Mar 26, Elvis Costello
released his 1st record "Less Than Zero."
(www.pugetsoundradio.com/forum/b-radiohistory/m-1174918300/)
1979 Mar 26, In the 41st NCAA
Men's Basketball Championship the Michigan State Spartans beat the
Indiana State Sycamores, 75-64, as Magic Johnson outscored Larry
Bird, 24-19; this snapped Indiana State's 33-game win streak. In
2009 Seth Davis authored “When March Went Mad: The Game That
Transformed Basketball.”
(http://espn.go.com/sportscentury/moments/9903.html)(WSJ, 3/20/09,
p.W10)
1979 Mar 26, The Camp David
peace treaty was signed by Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and
Egyptian President Anwar Sadat at the White House. [see Sep 5-17,
1978]
(AP,
3/26/97)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_David_Accords)
1981 Mar 26, A jury in Los
Angeles awarded entertainer Carol Burnett $1.6 million from the
“National Enquirer” for an article she’d charged was libelous. The
award was later reduced, and the two parties settled out of court.
(AP, 3/26/01)
1981 Mar 26, Police and
Albanian demonstrators battled in Kosovo.
(www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/8454/8454.ch01.html)
1982 Mar 26, Paul McCartney and
Stevie Wonder released "Ebony & Ivory" in the UK.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1982 Mar 26, The American soap
opera "Capitol" premiered and ran for 1270 episodes.
{TV, USA}
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitol_(TV_series))
1982 Mar 26, Ground was broken
in Washington D.C. for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial designed by
Maya Lin of Yale. It was dedicated Nov 13.
(NG, May 1985, p.554, 557)(AP, 3/26/97)(HN,
3/25/98)
1983 Mar 26, US performed a
nuclear test at Nevada Test Site.
(www.johnstonsarchive.net/nuclear/tests/USA-ntests3.html)
1983 Mar 26, Anthony Blunt
(b.1907), art historian and one of Britain's most notorious Cold War
spies, died in London. In a memoir published in 2009 he admitted
that spying for Russia was "the biggest mistake of my life." He had
written his memoirs, with the stipulation they should not published
until a quarter of a century after his death.
(AFP,
7/23/09)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Blunt)
1984 Mar 26, US Congress
established the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation to distribute
funds for wildlife and environmental projects.
(SFC, 11/20/99,
p.A8)(www.fws.gov/laws/laws_digest/NATLFW.HTML)
1987 Mar 26, "Fences" by August
Wilson (1945-2005) premiered in NYC.
(www.theatredatabase.com/20th_century/august_wilson_timeline.html)
1987 Mar 26, National
Federation of High Schools adopted college 3 point shot (21 feet).
The FIBA instituted the three-point shot at a distance of 20 feet, 6
inches (6.25 meters) in the international game in 1984.
(www.answerbag.com/c_view/222)
1987 Mar 26, Jessica Hahn, the
former church secretary who admitted to a sexual encounter with
former PTL head Jim Bakker, told reporters she had not tried to
blackmail Bakker, and expressed concern about "innocent bystanders
who have been hurt" by the scandal.
(AP, 3/26/97)
1987 Mar 26, NASA launched
Fltsatcom-6, but it failed after 51 seconds due to lightning.
(http://www.astronautix.com/craft/fltatcom.htm)
1988 Mar 26, Jesse Jackson
stunned fellow Democrats by soundly defeating Michael S. Dukakis in
Michigan's Democratic presidential caucuses.
(AP, 3/25/98)
1989 Mar 26, The first free
elections took place in the Soviet Union. Boris Yeltsin was elected.
Voters in the Soviet Union filled 1,500 of more than 2,000 seats in
the new Congress of People's Deputies, beginning embarrassing
defeats for the Communist Party.
(AP, 3/26/99)(HN, 3/25/98)
1990 Mar 26, "Driving Miss
Daisy" won best picture at the 62nd annual Academy Awards and
captured the best actress prize for Jessica Tandy; Daniel Day-Lewis
was named best actor for "My Left Foot."
(AP, 3/26/00)
1990 Mar 26, Designer Halston
died in San Francisco at age 57.
(AP, 3/26/00)
1991 Mar 26, The Bush
administration indicated it would not aid rebels seeking to
overthrow Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
(AP, 3/26/01)
1991 Mar 26, A divided US
Supreme Court ruled that criminal defendants whose coerced
confessions were improperly used as evidence are not always entitled
to new trials.
(AP, 3/26/01)
1991 Mar 26, Fuel pipe exploded
under 58th street and Lexington Ave, NYC.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1991 Mar 26, Marc Camoletti's
"Don't Dress for Dinner" premiered in London.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1991 Mar 26, The Treaty of
Asuncion established the southern common market: (Mercado Comun del
Sur) Mercosur, between Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and
Uruguay. They were later joined by associate members Chile (1996),
Bolivia (1997), Peru (2001) and Venezuela (2004). Mexico was granted
observer status in 2004.
(www.itcilo.it/english/actrav/telearn/global/ilo/blokit/mercoa.htm)
1992 Mar 26, A judge in
Indianapolis sentenced former heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson
to six years in prison for raping a Miss Black America contestant.
Tyson ended up serving three years.
(AP, 3/26/02)
1993 Mar 26, President Clinton
promised a "full-court press" against Bosnian Serbs to secure their
agreement to a United Nations peace plan endorsed by Bosnian Muslims
and Croats.
(AP, 3/25/98)
1994 Mar 26, The Senate passed
President Clinton's education reform measure, the "Goals 2000" bill,
63-22.
(AP, 3/26/99)
1994 Mar 26, U.N. peacekeepers
in Bosnia-Herzegovina destroyed a Serb bunker following a seven-hour
exchange of fire.
(AP, 3/26/99)
1995 Mar 26, "Defending the
Caveman" opened at Helen Hayes Theater in NYC for 671 performances.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1995 Mar 26, "Moliere Comedies"
closed at Criterion Theater in NYC after 56 performances.
(www.ibdb.com/production.php?id=12594)
1995 Mar 26, In the 15th Golden
Raspberry Awards: Color of Night won.
(http://razzies.com/asp/content/XcNewsPlus.asp?cmd=view&articleid=34)
1995 Mar 26, The National Labor
Relations Board, in an extraordinary Sunday session, voted 3-2 to
seek an injunction against baseball owners as a
seven-and-a-half-month-old strike by players continued.
(AP, 3/26/00)
1995 Mar 26, Former US
diplomat-turned-radio talk show host Alan Keyes entered the race for
the Republican presidential nomination.
(AP, 3/26/00)
1995 Mar 26, Uzbek Pres.
Karimov's period in office is extended by three years, to 2000, in a
referendum.
(AP, 3/30/04)
1996 Mar 26, The closest
approach of the Hyakutake comet, first sighted Jan 31. It was to
come within ten-million miles of the Earth.
(Nat. Hist., 4/96, p.62)
1996 Mar 26, Edmund Muskie,
former senator from Maine, secretary of state and Democratic pres.
candidate in 1972, died after a heart attack two days shy of his
82nd birthday.
(WSJ, 3/27/96, p.A-1)(AP, 3/26/97)
1996 Mar 26 David Packard,
co-founder of Hewlett-Packard Co., died. In a 1988 letter to his
children he declared that the David & Lucille Packard
Foundation’s highest priority must be to reduce world-wide
population growth.
(WSJ, 3/27/96, p.A-1)(WSJ, 3/6/98)
1996 Mar 26, Amid public fears
of mad cow disease, British farmers demanded their government order
the destruction of old cattle, but Prime Minister John Major
refused, and blamed the crisis on his political opponents.
(AP, 3/26/97)
1996 Mar 26, In Cambodia the
Khmer Rouge kidnapped Christopher Howes (37), a mine-clearing expert
from Bristol, England, and Huon Huot, his interpreter. In November
Howes’ employer paid $120,000 for his release. The two men were
killed shortly after their abduction. Their remains were found in
1998. In 2008 a Cambodian court sentenced four former Khmer Rouge
rebels each to up to 20 years in prison for their involvement in the
murders.
(SFC, 11/23/96, p.A11)(SFC, 4/13/98,
p.A14)(http://tinyurl.com/7s7x4)(AP, 10/14/08)
1997 Mar 26, "Annie" opened at
Martin Beck Theater NYC.
(SS, 3/26/02)
1997 Mar 26, Former drug
counselor John G. Bennett Jr. pleaded no contest in Philadelphia to
charges stemming from a $100 million charity fraud. Bennett was
sentenced to 12 years in prison for fraud, tax violations and money
laundering.
(AP, 3/25/07)
1997 Mar 26, The united Farm
Workers Union announced that it would petition the US Environmental
Agency to reinstate a 4-day period when farmworkers would stay out
of strawberry fields after the application of capstan, a cancer
causing fungicide. Its use has increased 7-fold in the last 6 years.
80% of the nation’s strawberry crop is grown in California.
(SFC, 3/27/97, p.A21)
1997 Mar 26, The bodies 39
young men and women (26-72) of the Heaven’s Gate cult were found in
a mansion at Rancho Santa Fe, near San Diego. The techno-religious
group, led by an older man named “Do,” (aka Marshall Herff
Applewhite), had committed mass suicide as the Hale-Bopp comet
approached. They had run a business under the name WW Higher Source
that engaged in WWW page development.
(SFC, 3/27/97, p.A1)(SFC, 3/28/97, p.A1,12)(AP,
3/25/98)
1997 Mar 26, In Belarus Pres.
Lukashenko announced the revival of the Soviet tradition of
“subbotniks,” weekend unpaid mandatory labor.
(SFC, 3/27/97, p.A15)
1997 Mar 26, Bre-X and Freeport
Mining announced that due-diligence testing by Freeport found much
less gold than estimated in the Busang, Indonesia, discovery by the
team of Michael de Guzman (d.3/19/97). The penny stock had been
pumped to $4.5 billion in market value before the hoax crashed.
(WSJ, 4/9/97, p.A10)(WSJ, 6/19/01, p.A18)
1997 Mar 26, Irish terrorists
set off 2 bombs in Wilmslow, England, at a railroad crossing.
(SFC, 3/27/97, p.A14)
1997 Mar 26, In Northern
Ireland a bomb exploded at a police station in Coalisland, 30 miles
west of Belfast.
(SFC, 3/27/97, p.A14)
1997 Mar 26, In Papua New
Guinea Prime Minister Julius Chan resigned due to the public uproar
over plans to use mercenaries in Bougainville.
(SFC, 3/26/97, p.A14)
1997 Mar 26, Manfred Nowak
resigned the job of envoy of the UN for missing persons in the
former Yugoslavia and said that he failed to receive support to
account for the 20,000 missing people of the Bosnian war. He had
begun the job in 1994.
(SFC, 3/27/97, p.A18)
1998 Mar 26, President Clinton
stood with President Nelson Mandela in a racially integrated South
African parliament to salute a country that was "truly free and
democratic at last."
(SFC, 3/21/98, p.A13)(AP, 3/26/99)
1998 Mar 26, The federal
government endorsed a new HIV test that yielded instant results.
(AP, 3/26/03)
1998 Mar 26, In Nevada a new
satellite-based survey of the Yucca Mountain site for storing
radioactive wastes indicated that the Earth’s crust at the site was
stretching 10 times faster than previous studies have shown.
(SFC, 3/27/98, p.A3)
1998 Mar 26, In Greece a 2-day
storm closed the Athens airport and left much of the capital without
electricity. At least one person was killed.
(SFC, 3/27/98, p.A14)
1998 Mar 26, In Japan the
ruling Liberal Democratic Party announced a $124 billion economic
stimulus package.
(SFC, 3/27/98, p.A13)
1998 Mar 26, In Kenya a fire at
a school near Mombasa killed 25 teenage girls in their dormitory.
(WSJ, 3/26/98, p.A1)
1998 Mar 26, In Malaysia riots
flared in 4 detention camps that housed mainly Indonesian illegal
immigrants. The Internal Security Act allowed the detention without
trial of people caught helping illegals. 8 inmates and one policeman
were killed. Over 200 inmates escaped from one camp.
(WSJ, 3/27/98, p.A10)
1998 Mar 26, In Mexico a mob in
Huejutla lynched 2 suspected kidnappers after a judge ordered the 2
men freed on $600 bail. 30 residents were arrested in the lynching.
(SFC, 3/27/98, p.A14)
1998 Mar 26, In the Philippines
Imelda Marcos claimed to have $800 million in foreign banks and
promised to give it all to the poor if she is elected in May.
(SFC, 3/27/98, p.A14)
1998 Mar 26, In Serbia Pres.
Milosevic ordered several hundred additional police to Kosovo. Serbs
protested the killing of a policeman and 2 ethnic Albanians were
killed in a police counterattack.
(SFC, 3/27/98, p.A12)(WSJ, 3/27/98, p.A1)
1998 Mar 26, Three major Swiss
banks pledged to set up a compensation fund in the US for a global
settlement with Holocaust victims.
(SFC, 3/27/98, p.A12)
1999 Mar 26, Hillary Clinton
continued her 12-day African tour with a speech in Tunis at a
women's rights conference.
(SFC, 3/27/99, p.C1)
1999 Mar 26, Right-to-die
advocate Dr. Jack Kevorkian was convicted in Pontiac, Mich., of
second-degree murder for giving Thomas Youk, a patient with Lou
Gehrig's disease, a lethal injection. His action was videotaped and
broadcast on television.
(SFC, 3/27/99, p.A1)(AP,
3/26/00)
1999 Mar 26, The Waste
Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) near Carlsbad, N.M. received its
first shipment of nuclear waste. The facility was completed in 1988.
(SFC, 3/26/99, p.A3)(SFC, 3/27/99, p.A2)
1999 Mar 26, A computer virus
named "Melissa" began infecting computers across the country.
(AP, 3/26/00)
1999 Mar 26, American-led NATO
forces launched a third night of airstrikes against Yugoslavia and 2
MiG-29 fighters were shot down as Serbian troops continued to sweep
ethnic Albanian villages in Kosovo.
(SFC, 3/27/99, p.A1)(AP, 3/26/00)
1999 Mar 26, In Bulgaria some
10,000 people protested NATO strikes; in Greece some 15,000 marched
on the US embassy in protest; in Bosnia some 3,000 Serb youths
turned violent in Banja Luka over the NATO strikes.
(SFC, 3/27/99, p.A11)
1999 Mar 26, The EU declared
that the creation of a Palestine state was the best way to resolve
the Middle East conflict, and the action could not be vetoed by
Israel.
(SFC, 3/27/99, p.A10)
1999 Mar 26, In Jordan security
authorities released more than 20 activists of an illegal Islamic
party who were sentenced to different jail terms over the past year.
The decision to release Al Tahrir Party activists followed a public
amnesty signed by His Majesty King Abdullah last week under which
more than 2,500 prisoners and detainees are expected to be freed.
(www.jordanembassyus.org/033099003.htm)
1999 Mar 26, Serbian forces
rounded up ethnic Albanian villages in Krushe e Vogel, Kosovo. Serb
forces herded 114 men and boys into a barn, including a disabled man
whose wheelchair was used to block one of the exits. The Serbs then
riddled the barn with bullets from automatic weapons before torching
it and all those inside. In 2011 a UN court sentenced former Serbian
police chief Vlastimir Djordjevic to 27 years in prison for
orchestrating the murder of hundreds of ethnic Albanians.
(SSFC, 9/8/02, p.F1)(AP, 2/23/11)
1999 Mar 26, The UN Security
Council defeated a Russian resolution demanding an immediate end to
NATO attacks on Yugoslavia.
(SFC, 3/27/99, p.A11)
1999 Mar 26, In Uganda it was
reported that wheat stem-rust fungus had appeared on a crop. The
fungus killed nearly half the world's crop before the green
revolution of the 1950s. The black rust disease was named Ug99 and
by 2007 had jumped to Yemen. In 2008 it was confirmed in Iran. In
2008 Cornell Univ. received a $26.8 million grant from the Bill and
Melinda Gates Foundation to help combat the new strains of rust
disease.
(WSJ, 3/26/99, p.A1)(WSJ, 4/3/08, p.A16)
2000 Mar 26, In the Academy
Awards ceremony the film "American Beauty" won 5 Oscars, including
best director for Sam Mendes and best actor for Kevin Spacey. Hilary
Swank won best actress for "Boys Don't Cry." Michael Caine won best
supporting actor for his role in "The Cider House Rules." Angelina
Jolie won best supporting actress for her role in "Girl,
Interrupted." The film "Matrix" won r technical categories, and best
score went to "The Red Violin." Pedro Almodovar won the foreign
language film for "All About My Mother."
(SFC, 3/27/00, p.A1)(AP, 3/26/01)
2000 Mar 26, Pres Clinton met
with Pres. Assad of Syria in Geneva but failed to get an agreement
to revive peace talks with Israel.
(WSJ, 3/27/00, p.A1)
2000 Mar 26, The Seattle
Kingdome was blown up in a controlled implosion. The 7.9 acre roof
collapsed in less than 20 seconds.
(WSJ, 5/10/99, p.A21)(SFC, 3/27/00, p.A4)
2000 Mar 26, Pope John Paul II
ended his Holy Land tour with a message of contrition at the Western
Wall in Jerusalem, a visit to Al Aqsa Mosque and a Mass at the
Church of the Holy Sepulcher, the traditional site for the
resurrection of Jesus.
(SFC, 3/27/00, p.A1)(WSJ, 3/27/00, p.A1)
2000 Mar 26, Dr. Alex Comfort,
British author of the 1972 “Joy of Sex,” died at age 80 in
Oxfordshire. Comfort wrote some 50 books that included novels,
poetry, criticism, scientific texts and works on Eastern philosophy.
(SFC, 3/28/00, p.E1)(AP, 3/26/01)
2000 Mar 26, In Chechnya
Russian Col. Yuri Budanov and 3 soldiers seized Elza (Heda)
Kungayeva (18) and strangled her to death following a pummeling and
sexual assault. She was believed to be a rebel sniper. In 2001
Budanov faced a trial and in 2002 he was ruled temporarily insane.
In 2009 Budanov was freed with more than a year left on his murder
sentence.
(SSFC, 3/18/01, p.D5)(SFC, 1/1/03, p.A9)(AP,
1/19/09)
2000 Mar 26, In Colombia Pres.
Pastrana pressured Armando Pomorica, president of the lower house of
Congress, to take responsibility for a corruption scandal.
(WSJ, 3/27/00, p.A1)
2000 Mar 26, Russia elected
Vladimir Putin as its 2nd post-Communist president with 52.5% vote.
(SFC, 3/27/00, p.A1)(AP, 3/26/01)
2001 Mar 26, The Bill Moyers
PBS special “Trade Secrets” focused on the coverup by the American
chemical industry of health problems caused by numerous products
including vinyl chloride and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs).
(SFC, 3/27/01, p.A17)
2001 Mar 26, A US Army plane
crashed in Germany and 2 pilots were killed. In Scotland US Air
Force F15C fighter jets were lost during training. The body of one
pilot, Lt. Col. Kenneth John Hyvonen, and F15 wreckage was found the
next day. Wreckage of the 2nd F15 was found after 2 days. The body
of Capt. Kirk Jones was found Mar 30.
(SFC, 3/27/01, p.F1)(SFC, 3/28/01, p.A10)(SFC,
3/29/01, p.A11)(SFC, 3/31/01, p.A14)
2001 Mar 26, California state
regulators proposed a 40% rate increase to help remedy the state’s
energy crisis.
(SFC, 3/27/01, p.A1)
2001 Mar 26, Regional Comair
pilots went on strike after failing to settle with corporate parent
Delta. The three-month strike began after contract talks with the
regional airline broke off.
(SFC, 3/27/01, p.C4)(AP, 3/26/02)
2001 Mar 26, It was reported
that scientists had detected high-energy neutrinos for the 1st time
in the Antarctic Muon and neutrino Detector Array (Amanda).
(SFC, 3/26/01, p.A6)
2001 Mar 26, In Colombia Juan
Gonzalez, head of the right-wing Calima Front of the United
Self-Defense Forces, was killed with 3 others in a bar shootout.
(SFC, 3/28/01, p.D4)
2001 Mar 26, In Hebron a
Palestinian sniper shot and killed a 10-month-old Jewish girl. A
15-year-old Palestinian boy was shot and wounded in Gaza.
(SFC, 3/27/01, p.F1)
2001 Mar 26, In Kazakstan the
Caspian Pipeline Consortium began pumping crude oil from the Tengiz
field to Novorossiisk, Russia’s Black Sea port. The 990-mile
Tengiz-Novorossisk oil pipeline was owned by Kazakstan, Russia, Oman
and 8 oil companies. Chevron held 15% in the 12-partner consortium.
(WSJ, 2/26/01, p.A14)(SFC, 3/27/01, p.C4)
2001 Mar 26, In Kenya a dorm
fire at the Kyanguli Secondary School in Machakos killed 58 youths.
One of 2 doors was bolted shut and arson was suspected. The toll
soon rose to 64 as more students died from burns.
(SFC, 3/27/01, p.F1)(SFC, 3/30/01, p.D4)
2002 Mar 26, Pres. Bush
nominated Richard Carmona (52), a trauma surgeon from Arizona, as
surgeon-general. Elias Zerhouni, a Johns Hopkins Univ.
administrator, was nominated to the NIH.
(SFC, 3/27/02, p.A3)
2002 Mar 26, The US Supreme
Court upheld regulations that allowed federal housing officials to
evict an entire household if even one member is arrested for drug
violations.
(SFC, 3/27/02, p.A1)
2002 Mar 26, Joseph Berardino,
CEO of Arthur Anderson, resigned over the Enron fallout.
(WSJ, 3/27/02, p.C1)
2002 Mar 26, India passed a
Prevention of Terrorism bill that allowed a 3-month detention of
suspects without charges plus an additional 3 months with court
approval.
(SFC, 3/27/02, p.A6)
2002 Mar 26, Yasser Arafat
declared that he would not attend the Arab league conference in
Beirut due to restrictions imposed by PM Sharon. His Cabinet accused
Israel of trying to "blackmail" the Palestinian leader with tough
conditions for letting him go. Israeli security forces stopped a car
that exploded with 2 men inside.
(SFC, 3/27/02, p.A1)(AP, 3/26/03)
2002 Mar 26, In Serbia 2
Albanian gunmen were killed in what police said was a battle between
rebel factions.
(WSJ, 3/27/02, p.A1)
2003 Mar 26, The Senate
approved a $2.2 trillion budget that provided less than half the
$726 billion in tax cuts President Bush wanted.
(AP, 3/26/04)
2003 Mar 26, In the 8th day of
Operation Iraqi Freedom Baghdad officials said two cruise missiles
hit a residential area, killing 14 people. Iraq said 36 civilians
were killed and 215 wounded in US airstrikes on Baghdad. Some 1,000
US paratroopers jumped into northern Iraq as sandstorms eased.
(AP, 3/26/03)(AP, 3/27/03)(SSFC, 3/30/03, p.W12)
2003 Mar 26, Federal energy
regulators (FERC) validated California claims to 2000-2001
overcharges for energy and said the state is owed $3.3 billion in
refunds from Enron and 5 other energy firms. California called for
$9 billion.
(SFC, 3/27/03, p.A1)
2003 Mar 26, Daniel Patrick
Moynihan (76), former NY Senator (1976-2000) and scholar, died. He
wrote or edited some 18 books. In 2010 Steven Weisman edited his
letters: “Daniel Patrick Moynihan: A Portrait in Letters of an
American Visionary.”
(SFC, 3/27/03, p.A1)(Econ, 9/18/10, p.104)
2003 Mar 26, In Afghanistan
suspected Taliban rebels attacked a government checkpoint and 13
people were killed.
(WSJ, 3/27/03, p.A1)
2003 Mar 26, The Burundian army
attacked a rebel stronghold in a Kibira forest with mortars and
artillery, killing 68 insurgents. Rebels said only 2 fighters were
killed.
(AP, 3/27/03)
2003 Mar 26, India test-fired a
short-range missile capable of carrying a nuclear weapon, and
Pakistan immediately announced it had tested a similar missile.
(AP, 3/26/03)
2003 Mar 26, In India gunmen
fatally shot a senior Hindu nationalist in western Gujarat state.
(AP, 3/26/03)
2003 Mar 26, Pirates with
automatic weapons stormed an Indonesian tanker ship in the Malacca
Strait and escaped with equipment and cash.
(AP, 3/29/03)
2003 Mar 26, NATO officially
signed up 7 eastern European nations to become members: Bulgaria,
Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia.
(AP, 3/27/03)
2003 Mar 26, In Nigeria Ijaw
militants battling soldiers and tribal enemies in the oil-rich delta
region called for a cease-fire after state officials agreed to
support their political demands.
(AP, 3/26/03)
2003 Mar 26, In South Korea a
late night fire in a grade school dormitory killed eight children.
(AP, 3/27/03)
2003 Mar 26, Interpol issued an
international call for the arrest of former Peruvian President
Alberto Fujimori on charges of murder and kidnapping in Peru.
(AP, 3/26/04)
2004 Mar 26, The FDA approved
the 1st HIV test that uses saliva rather than blood. The 20 minute
test, made by OraSure, is able to detect HIV antibodies about 6
weeks after infection.
(SFC, 3/27/04, p.A1)
2004 Mar 26, Phoenix Bishop
Thomas O'Brien was sentenced to four years' probation and 1,000
hours of community service for a deadly hit-and-run that claimed the
life of pedestrian Jim Reed.
(AP, 3/26/05)
2004 Mar 26, Jan Berry (62),
pioneering California rock musician, died in LA. He rode the wave of
the surf music trend in the 1960s as one half of the popular duo Jan
& Dean.
(Reuters, 3/28/04)
2004 Mar 26, Jan Sterling (82),
Hollywood film actress, died.
(SFC, 3/30/04, p.B6)
2004 Mar 26, West of Baghdad,
U.S. Marines and gunmen fought an hour-long battle that left four
Iraqis dead and six wounded. A U.S. Marine and an ABC freelance
cameraman were killed during a bitter, hours-long firefight between
American troops and Iraqi insurgents in the city of Fallujah, while
18 people died in violence elsewhere across Iraq.
(AP, 3/26/04)(AP, 3/27/04)
2004 Mar 26, A Palestinian
militant was killed when an explosion went off in a van he was
driving in a West Bank refugee camp.
(AP, 3/26/04)
2004 Mar 26, The bodies of 8
Pakistani soldiers, executed by Al Qaeda-linked militants, were
found near Wana. They had been taken hostage in fighting near the
Afghan border.
(AP, 3/27/04)
2004 Mar 26, Polish PM Leszek
Miller announced he will step down the day after Poland joins the
European Union on May 1, taking the blame for his government's
collapse in popularity and raising the prospect of early elections.
22 members of Miller’s SLD party had left to form the new left-wing
Polish social Democracy as Miller’s popularity plummeted.
(AP, 3/26/04)(Econ, 4/3/04, p.56)
2004 Mar 26, A Moscow court
banned the religious activities of Jehovah's Witnesses from the
Russian capital in a move that critics called a step back for
democracy and religious freedom. A 1997 religion law enshrines
Orthodox Christianity as the country's predominant religion and
pledges respect for Buddhism, Islam and Judaism, but places
restrictions on other groups.
(AP, 3/27/04)
2005 Mar 26, In Afghanistan 4
US soldiers died when their vehicle struck a land mine.
(AP, 3/26/05)
2005 Mar 26, James Callaghan,
former British prime minister (1976-1979), died on the eve of his
93rd birthday.
(SSFC, 3/27/05, p.A21)(Econ, 4/2/05, p.80)
2005 Mar 26, A twin-engine
commercial Czech-built Let-410 airplane, crashed while taking off
from the tiny Colombian island of Old Providence, killing 8 people,
including a 3-year-old boy, and injuring six other passengers.
(AP, 3/26/05)
2005 Mar 26, In Iraq a car bomb
struck a US military patrol in Baghdad, killing two U.S. soldiers
and injuring two others.
(AP, 3/26/05)
2005 Mar 26, A fire swept
through a sprawling Moscow art market popular with tourists for its
unusual antiques from around the former Soviet Union and sometimes
bargain prices, and news reports said two people were killed.
(AP, 3/26/05)
2005 Mar 26, In Taiwan about a
million people marched through the capital to protest a new Chinese
law that authorizes an attack on the island if it moves toward
formal independence.
(AP, 3/26/05)
2005 Mar 26, German Cardinal
Joseph Ratzinger stood in for Pope John Paul II during the Easter
Vigil Mass at the Vatican. Ratzinger later succeed John Paul,
becoming Pope Benedict XVI.
(AP, 3/26/06)
2006 Mar 26, In Florida Paul
Dana, a 30-year-old rookie in the Indy Racing League, died at
Jackson Memorial Hospital from multiple trauma suffered in the crash
during the final morning practice for the season-opening Toyota Indy
300.
(www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/sports/14193716.htm)
2006 Mar 26, An Afghan court
dismissed a case against Abdul Rahman, who converted from Islam to
Christianity because of a lack of evidence. Officials said he will
be released soon.
(AP, 3/26/06)
2006 Mar 26, In Bangladesh 19
people were injured in clashes between political parties as the
nation marked its 35th Independence Day anniversary under tight
security for fear of Islamic militant attacks.
(AP, 3/26/06)
2006 Mar 26, The Chinese
partner of Time Warner’s consumer products unit said the studio
division plans to open some 200 stores in China over the coming
years as demand for branded merchandise increases in China.
(Reuters, 3/26/06)
2006 Mar 26, Georgian police
stormed a prison in Tbilisi after inmates rioted in an escape
attempt from Ortochala prison, sparking a gun battle that left two
guards and an unknown number of inmates dead.
(AP, 3/27/06)
2006 Mar 26, Iraqi Interior
Ministry officials said authorities arrested Arkan al-Bawi, a police
major from Diyala province, for taking part in death squads. Iraqi
authorities said that US forces raided an Interior Ministry building
and arrested 40 policemen after discovering 17 non-Iraqi prisoners
in the facility.
(Reuters, 3/26/06)(AP, 3/26/06)
2006 Mar 26, Police found 30
more victims of the sectarian slaughter ravaging Iraq, most of them
beheaded, dumped on a village road north of Baghdad. At least 16
Iraqis were killed in a US-backed raid at the Mustafa mosque complex
in a Shiite neighborhood in northeastern Baghdad. At least 69 people
were reported killed in one of the bloodiest days in weeks.
(AP, 3/26/06)(Econ, 4/1/06, p.40)
2006 Mar 26-2006 Mar 27, In
Iraq two days of violence left at least 151 dead.
(AP, 3/28/06)
2006 Mar 26, The UN said it did
not expect Lebanon to disarm Hezbollah guerillas by force but hoped
they would join the Lebanese army.
(AP, 3/26/06)
2006 Mar 26, In Mexico the
bodies of six men, blindfolded, handcuffed and shot to death, were
found packed inside a pickup truck on the side of a highway leading
to the Texas border.
(AP, 3/26/06)
2006 Mar 26, A rights group
said Myanmar's military rulers have launched an offensive against
separatist guerrillas, attacking villages and forcing thousands to
flee in an attempt to quash a five-decade insurgency by Karen ethnic
rebels.
(AP, 3/26/06)
2006 Mar 26, In southwest
Pakistan rebel tribesmen set off a bomb near the home of a senior
government official and launched a separate attack on a military
post, triggering a gunbattle that left two attackers and a soldier
dead.
(AP, 3/26/06)
2006 Mar 26, Hamas pressed Arab
leaders gathering for a summit in Sudan to triple their financial
support to Palestinians and provide it fast, saying its government
will need around $170 million a month, mostly for salaries.
(AP, 3/26/06)
2006 Mar 26, A smoking ban in
enclosed public places took effect in Scotland, although a poll
showed that a fifth of all Scottish smokers planned to ignore the
new law.
(AP, 3/26/06)
2006 Mar 26, Ukrainians cast
ballots in a parliamentary election that could tip this divided
ex-Soviet republic back toward Russia just 16 months after the
Orange Revolution helped put it on a westward course.
(AP, 3/26/06)
2007 Mar 26, The US military
concluded that high-ranking Army officers had made critical errors
in reporting the friendly fire death of Army Ranger Pat Tillman in
Afghanistan, but that there was no criminal wrongdoing in the
shooting of the former NFL star by fellow soldiers. The findings
were rejected by Tillman's family.
(AP, 3/26/08)
2007 Mar 26, An American border
inspector was sentenced to nearly six years in prison for taking
cash and cars from smugglers, allowing them to shuttle illegal
immigrants from Mexico into the United States.
(AP, 3/26/07)
2007 Mar 26, David Hicks, a
31-year-old former kangaroo skinner, entered a surprise guilty plea
at the first session of the tribunals set up after the US Supreme
Court struck down the Pentagon's previous efforts to try Guantanamo
prisoners. Hicks was sentenced to seven years in prison; all but
nine months' prison time was suspended. Hicks was returned to
Australia to serve out his term, and was freed in December.
(AP, 3/27/07)(AP, 3/26/08)
2007 Mar 26, A new study that
suggested that an antioxidant found in blueberries and grapes may
offer protection against colon cancer.
(AFP, 3/26/07)
2007 Mar 26, Intel Corp.
announced it will build a $2.5 billion chip factory in China, giving
the US company a bigger presence in the booming Chinese market and
boosting Beijing's efforts to attract high-tech investment. Intel
also unveiled a prototype chip that uses optical connections to
increase speed. Products using the technology were expected to
appear within 3 years.
(AP, 3/26/07)(WSJ, 3/26/07, p.B6)
2007 Mar 26, Four children and
Pedro Rodriguez (28), their father, were found dead in the family's
home in Frederick, Maryland. The mother Deysi M. Benitez (25) was
missing. Her sister from El Salvador said she had been beaten by her
husband and wanted to separate. Police concluded he had smothered
the girls and killed the boy with a blow to the head, and then
killed himself. The body of his wife, Deysi Benitez (25), an
immigrant from El Salvador, was found Feb 29, 2008, 20 miles from
their home in Frederick.
(AP, 3/28/07)(AP, 4/17/08)
2007 Mar 26, A suicide bomber
in a car attacked a NATO convoy in the southern province of
Kandahar, killing himself but causing no alliance casualties. The US
urged European countries to provide more troops for Afghanistan and
to free them up for combat, as well as to provide further aid to the
war-shattered country.
(AP, 3/26/07)(AP, 3/27/07)
2007 Mar 26, In Britain Taylor
Woodrow and George Wimpey agreed upon a $9.8 billion merger to
create the country’s largest house builder.
(AP, 3/26/07)(Econ, 3/31/07, p.65)
2007 Mar 26, Chile’s President
Michelle Bachelet fired her chief of staff and three other members
of her Cabinet in response to a public transportation crisis that
has badly damaged her government.
(AP, 3/27/07)
2007 Mar 26, Chinese President
Hu Jintao arrived in Russia on his third visit as national leader,
seeking energy deals but also offering Moscow business opportunities
and international cooperation as they expand ties.
(Reuters, 3/26/07)
2007 Mar 26, Egyptians were
slow to vote in a referendum on constitutional amendments that
opponents condemned as a sham and a setback to democratic progress.
Egyptian human rights groups later said that turnout for the
referendum was only five percent, far lower than the 27 percent
reported by the government.
(AP, 3/26/07)(Econ, 3/31/07, p.57)(AP, 4/11/07)
2007 Mar 26, Nicolas Sarkozy
resigned as French interior minister to focus on his presidential
bid, recalling his successes but also challenges, including violence
by poor young minorities.
(AP, 3/26/07)
2007 Mar 26, Guatemala's
interior minister resigned in the wake of a scandal over police
investigators' alleged involvement in the grisly murder of three
Salvadoran politicians last month. Rioting gang members fired dozens
of gunshots, killing three inmates, and took two guards and two food
service workers hostage in a southern Guatemala prison.
(AP, 3/26/07)(AP, 3/27/07)
2007 Mar 26, In India New
Delhi’s High Court imposed new measures aimed at deterring
habitually bad drivers in the capital, including the smoking ban and
a prohibition on using mobile phones while behind the wheel.
(AP, 3/27/07)
2007 Mar 26, Zalmay Khalilzad,
the departing US ambassador, said American and Iraqi officials are
seeking to persuade so-called "reconcilable insurgents" to join
forces against al-Qaida. Iskandariyah authorities imposed an
indefinite curfew after two people were killed and two others
wounded in sectarian clashes sparked by an attack by suspected
Shiite militants on a Sunni mosque. Kirkuk police said two elderly
Chaldean Catholic nuns were stabbed multiple time by two intruders
who raided their home near Kirkuk's Cathedral of the Virgin. The US
military also announced the capture of leaders of a car-bombing ring
blamed for killing hundreds of Iraqis.
(AP, 3/26/07)(AP, 3/27/07)
2007 Mar 26, Israel welcomed
the idea of a regional peace summit and Saudi Arabia suggesting it
would consider changes in a dormant peace initiative to make it more
acceptable to Israel.
(AP, 3/26/07)
2007 Mar 26, An Italian
prosecutor demanded a five-year jail sentence for conservative
former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, who is accused of bribing a
judge.
(AP, 3/26/07)
2007 Mar 26, Japanese PM Shinzo
Abe, under fire for denying that Japan forced women to work as sex
slaves during World War II, offered a fresh apology but refused to
clearly acknowledge Japan's responsibility for running the frontline
brothels.
(AP, 3/26/07)
2007 Mar 26, Lindsay Ann Hawker
(22), a British language teacher, was found naked in a sand-filled
bathtub at an apartment outside Tokyo. She had been beaten and then
suffocated. Police hunted for the prime suspect, a 28-year-old
Japanese male. On Nov 10, 2009, Tatsuya Ichihashi was arrested as
the only suspect in the murder, after he had spent over two years on
the run and altered his appearance with plastic surgery. In 2011
Ichihashi admitted the killing but said it was accidental. On July
21 Ichihashi was sentenced to life in prison.
(AP, 3/29/07)(AFP, 12/2/09)(AFP, 7/4/11)(AFP,
7/21/11)
2007 Mar 26, A report by a
special envoy for UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon recommended
independence for Serbia's breakaway province of Kosovo, supervised
by the international community.
(AP, 3/26/07)
2007 Mar 26, In northern
Nigeria at least 89 people burned to death in Kaduna when a tanker
lorry caught fire as they were stealing fuel from it.
(AFP, 3/28/07)
2007 Mar 26, The leaders of
Northern Ireland's major Protestant and Catholic parties, sitting
side by side for the first time in history, announced a breakthrough
deal to forge a power-sharing administration May 8.
(AP, 3/26/07)
2007 Mar 26, In Pakistan
supporters of opposition parties rallied against President Gen.
Pervez Musharraf's removal of Pakistan's top judge, raising the
stakes in a judicial crisis that threatens to undermine the military
ruler's hold on power. In northwestern Pakistan police challenged a
group of suspected militants at a high school in Tank after hearing
that they wanted to recruit suicide bombers for holy war, sparking a
gunbattle that left six people dead.
(AP, 3/26/07)(WSJ, 3/27/07, p.A1)
2007 Mar 26, Tamil rebels
launched their first airstrike in the nearly quarter-decade conflict
with Sri Lanka's government, using at least one small plane to bomb
an air base outside the capital and killing three airmen.
(AP, 3/26/07)
2008 Mar 26, Motorola Inc said
it would split into two publicly traded entities to separate its
loss-making handset division from its other businesses, sending its
shares up about 5%.
(AP, 3/26/08)
2008 Mar 26, Scientists said
the basic ingredients for life: warmth, water and organic chemicals,
are in place on Saturn's small moon Enceladus, in detailing the
content of huge plumes erupting off its surface.
(Reuters, 3/26/08)
2008 Mar 26, The NASA space
shuttle Endeavour and its crew of seven made a night landing in
Florida following a 16 day mission to the ISS.
(SFC, 3/27/08, p.A3)
2008 Mar 26, In southern
Afghanistan 8 civilians were killed when a bomb-filled car exploded
near a crowded bazaar in Helmand province, in an attack claimed by
the Taliban. A police officer was killed in a roadside bombing in
Helmand. Insurgents attacked a NATO patrol, killing one soldier and
wounding another. Militants fired a rocket at opium poppy
eradication police, killing two policemen and wounding another.
US-led coalition forces killed several Taliban militants after
coming under attack in Helmand province.
(AP, 3/26/08)(AP, 3/27/08)(AP, 3/28/08)
2008 Mar 26, It was reported
that British pig husbandry is in crisis due to exploding global
grain prices. Last month British pig farmers recorded “Stand By Your
Ham” based on the 1968 US country classic “Stand By Your Man” by
Tammy Wynette.
(WSJ, 3/26/08, p.A1)
2008 Mar 26, China announced
the surrender of hundreds of people over anti-government riots among
Tibetans and allowed the first group of foreign journalists to visit
the regional capital since the violence.
(AP, 3/26/08)
2008 Mar 26, In China 24 people
were killed when fireworks that had been trucked to the Gobi Desert
to be destroyed exploded as they were being dumped into a ditch.
(AP, 3/28/08)
2008 Mar 26, Manuel "Sureshot"
Marulanda (78), co-founder and commander of the Revolutionary Armed
Forces of Colombia (FARC), died of a heart attack. On May 24
President Alvaro Uribe announced he is willing to offer rebels who
free hostages "conditional liberty" and passage abroad. Marulanda,
whose real name is Pedro Antonio Marin, and had led the
peasant-based FARC since its founding in 1964. Alfonso Cano
(Guillermo Leon Saenz), the FARC’s chief ideologue, was expected to
replace Marulanda.
(AP, 5/25/08)(Econ, 5/31/08, p.42)(AP, 3/26/09)
2008 Mar 26, In Dubai a massive
explosion at a fireworks factory left two people dead and two
injured. Subsequent fires rapidly spread, sending thick clouds of
black smoke into the sky.
(AP, 3/26/08)
2008 Mar 26, French Pres.
Nicolas Sarkozy vowed to open a new chapter in ties with Britain as
he arrived for a state visit which he hopes will also help repair
his image as a statesman.
(AP, 3/26/08)
2008 Mar 25, Air travel between
Georgia and Russia resumed, more than 17 months after Moscow
suspended flights because of tension between the ex-Soviet
neighbors.
(AP, 3/25/08)
2008 Mar 26, India's Tata
Motors said it had bought British luxury icons Jaguar and Land Rover
from ailing US carmaker Ford Motor Co for 1.15 billion pounds (2.3
billion dollars).
(AP, 3/26/08)
2008 Mar 26, Iraq's prime
minister gave gunmen in the southern oil port of Basra three days to
surrender their weapons and renounce violence as clashes between
security forces and Shiite militia fighters erupted for a second
day. Officials said at least 40 people were killed and 200 wounded
in the fighting in Basra. 3 Americans were seriously injured by
rockets or mortars fired into Baghdad’s Green Zone. A mortar shell
or rocket that apparently fell short struck a minibus in the mainly
Shiite district of Karradah, killing at least 3 passengers and
wounding 9 others. Two rounds also slammed into another area of
Karradah, killing 3 civilians and wounding six. Two other Iraqis
were killed and 4 wounded when another round struck a residential
area in a Shiite neighborhood in western Baghdad. Gunmen killed a
US-allied Sunni fighter and wounded his wife and daughter after
storming his house in Samarra. Several Iraqi civilians were killed
or injured in separate fighting between US troops and suspected
al-Qaida in Iraq insurgents in the northern town of Tikrit. A US
airstrike there left 7 bodies in the rubble of houses and a local
judge who owned one of the houses was among the dead. Two American
soldiers were killed in separate attacks in Baghdad.
(AP, 3/26/08)(AP, 3/27/08)
2008 Mar 26, The Israeli
military captured Omar Jabar, the mastermind of the March 2002
bombing in Netanya, the deadliest suicide bombing of the Palestinian
uprising.
(AP, 3/26/08)
2008 Mar 26, Italian officials
held a crisis meeting after Japan and South Korea banned imports of
mozzarella following the discovery of high dioxin levels in buffalo
milk used to make the famed cheese.
(AP, 3/26/08)
2008 Mar 26, In Mexico a
confrontation in Sinaloa state left four civilians and two soldiers
dead. A military judge later issued an arrest warrant for 5 soldiers
considered as suspects.
(AP, 4/5/08)
2008 Mar 26, TimeRime BV was
founded by Marijn Bom, Jaap Joziasse, Gerard Pastwa and Pico
Wilbrenninck, as a spin-off of the Dutch webdevelopment company
Hoppinger.com.
(www.timerime.com/)
2008 Mar 26, In Norway a
six-story apartment building collapsed in the west coast city of
Aalesund after it was hit by a rock slide, injuring 15 people and
leaving five missing.
(AP, 3/26/08)
2008 Mar 26, Philippine farmers
warned that the country was facing a serious rice supply crisis, as
the government signed a deal to import rice from Vietnam to boost
local reserves at a time of rising prices and shrinking global
stocks.
(AP, 3/26/08)
2008 Mar 26, In the southern
Philippines a passenger boat with 14 people on board capsized,
leaving only one known survivor, a man who swam several hours to
shore. Most of the missing were children.
(AP, 3/28/08)
2008 Mar 26, A roadside blast
in Sri Lanka's restive eastern region killed two policemen while
fighting in the north left at least 19 rebels and one soldier dead.
(AFP, 3/26/08)
2008 Mar 26, The African
Union-UN mission said 5 civilians were killed and more than a dozen
others injured when an international peacekeeping vehicle crashed
into a bus in Darfur.
(AFP, 3/26/08)
2008 Mar 26, Trinidad’s RBTT,
the largest regionally owned bank, agreed to accept a takeover by
the Royal Bank of Canada.
(Econ, 3/29/08, p.50)
2008 Mar 26, Venezuela's
National Assembly opened an investigation into a congressman's
accusations that two of President Hugo Chavez's brothers acquired 17
ranches in recent years.
(AP, 3/26/08)
2009 Mar 26, The Obama
administration unveiled a sweeping overhaul of the financial system
designed to impose greater regulation on major players like hedge
funds. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told lawmakers that the
changes are needed to fix the flaws exposed by the current financial
crisis, the worst to hit the country in seven decades.
(AP, 3/26/09)
2009 Mar 26, The US Internal
Revenue Service announced new steps aimed at getting taxpayers
hiding money in offshore accounts to pay up, promising not to file
criminal charges for those who voluntarily fess up to hiding money
overseas.
(Reuters, 3/26/09)
2009 Mar 26, A New Jersey girl
(14) was accused of child pornography after posting nearly 30
explicit nude pictures of herself on MySpace.com, charges that could
force her to register as a sex offender if convicted.
(AP, 3/27/09)
2009 Mar 26, In Los Angeles US
automaker Tesla Motors unveiled its state-of-the-art five-seat
sedan, billed as the world's first mass-produced, highway-capable
electric car. The San Carlos company said it would likely be built
in Southern California rather than San Jose.
(AFP, 3/26/09)(SFC, 3/27/09, p.C1)
2009 Mar 26, In Brazil
engine pieces from a US plane fell from the sky, hitting 22 houses
and a car but sparing passengers and residents on the ground. Arrow
Cargo's station manager in Manaus, Rai Marinho, said the company
will pay local residents for damages to their property.
(AP, 3/26/09)
2009 Mar 26, The archives from
the London Historical Records, dating back to the 16th century,
began to be made available online. Around 250,000 records were
currently available, with all 77 million uploaded by 2011.
(AP, 3/26/09)
2009 Mar 26, In Ganzi, China, a
predominantly Tibetan prefecture in Sichuan province, Phuntsok
Rabten (27), a Tibetan Buddhist monk of Draggo monastery, was found
dead. He had called for protests against Chinese authorities. He had
fled on a motorcycle after police in a van discovered him
distributing flyers urging Tibetans to leave their farming plots
untended.
(AP, 3/31/09)
2009 Mar 26, Ebtisam Ali Rashid
al Bedwani (b.1982) was sworn in as Dubai’s first woman judge.
(www.gulfnews.com/nation/Government/10298829.html)
2009 Mar 26, French President
Nicolas Sarkozy visited Brazzaville and Kinshasa. During the
Kinshasa trip, given over in large part to regional political
issues, Areva signed an agreement with the government allowing the
company to prospect for and mine uranium.
(AP, 3/27/09)
2009 Mar 26, An official said
France will limit or ban bonuses and stock options for executives at
companies bailed out with taxpayer money, as the government
scrambled to calm public outrage at what some see as the greed that
caused the global financial crisis.
(AP, 3/26/09)
2009 Mar 26, In northern
Guatemala a hitman training camp for Mexico's infamous Gulf cartel
was found, along with 500 grenades. Officials seized six rifles,
three motorcycles and several boxes of ammunition during the
operation. The hitmen were among those carrying out nearly daily
attacks on Guatemalan buses in which the driver is often killed.
(AP, 3/27/09)
2009 Mar 26, In Iraq a car bomb
exploded near a crowded market in a mainly Shiite area of Baghdad,
killing at least 20 people, including 4 women and 4 children, in the
country’s sixth major attack this month. A bomb attached to a car
exploded elsewhere in eastern Baghdad, wounding four people. Gunmen
killed Sheik Abdul-Kareem Saleh, a Sunni Arab cleric, and wounded
his son at Jalula, a town northeast of Baghdad where a suicide
bomber struck a Kurdish funeral this week. A foreign contractor was
shot and killed at a base north of Baghdad. Pfc. Carl T. Stovall III
(25) of Kennesaw, Georgia, was taken into custody soon after the
shooting at the US base in Taji.
(AP, 3/26/09)(AP, 3/27/09)(SFC, 3/27/09,
p.A4)(AP, 4/5/09)
2009 Mar 26, An Israeli
ministry statement said that in a series of tests this week the iron
Dome high-tech system faced rockets of the type fired by Palestinian
and Lebanese militants, and operated successfully.
(AP, 3/27/09)
2009 Mar 26, Israeli police
said they have seized 15 thousand marijuana water pipes in a raid on
a factory in Haifa. Pipes and other drug paraphernalia were banned a
few weeks ago and police are cracking down.
(AP, 3/26/09)
2009 Mar 26, In Kazakhstan a
Soyuz capsule carrying a Russian-American crew and US billionaire
space tourist Charles Simonyi blasted off for the international
space station.
(AP, 3/26/09)
2009 Mar 26, The MT Bow Asir, a
Norwegian tanker with a crew of 27, was hijacked off the coast of
Somalia.
(AP, 3/27/09)(WSJ, 3/27/09, p.A8)
2009 Mar 26, In Pakistan a
suicide bomber killed as many as 11 people at a restaurant near
Tank, in South Waziristan, in an attack targeting opponents of the
Taliban.
(AP, 3/26/09)
2009 Mar 26, In central Russia
a head-on collision between a bus and a truck in Petushki, about 120
kilometers (75 miles) east of Moscow, killed 14 people.
(AP, 3/26/09)
2009 Mar 26, Serbian lawmakers
approved a law against discrimination due to race, religion, gender,
sexual orientation or other factors despite opposition from
conservatives, including the Serbian Orthodox Church, and
nationalists.
(AP, 3/26/09)
2009 Mar 26, Somalia's new
interior minister was wounded by a roadside bomb in an attack that
killed his bodyguard and wounded two others. The moderate Islamist
pledged to seek reconciliation with his attackers, widely believed
to be hardline fighters.
(AP, 3/26/09)
2009 Mar 26, In Sri Lanka more
than 2,100 civilians fled in one day from the northern war zone
where the military is squeezing the Tamil Tiger rebels into a
smaller area as it pushes to end 25 years of civil war. in New York,
John Holmes, the UN's top humanitarian official, said the
international organization estimated 150,000 to 190,000 civilians
were trapped by the fighting and unable to escape, resulting in
dozens of deaths each day.
(AP, 3/27/09)
2009 Mar 26, Regulators in St.
Vincent and the Grenadines took control of an island bank linked to
an alleged Ponzi scheme. A complaint alleged that William Wise of
Raleigh, NC, and Kristi Hoegel of Napa, Ca., orchestrated the scheme
through Millennium Bank and its Geneva-based parent United Trust of
Switzerland SA, as well as US affiliates of both organizations.
(SFC, 3/28/09, p.A2)(http://tinyurl.com/cqedzr)
2009 Mar 26, Sudan's president
Omar al-Bashir visited his third country in four days, this time
touching down in Libya, the latest country to welcome the leader
who's wanted by an international court on war crimes.
(AP, 3/26/09)
2009 Mar 26, In Thailand more
than 20,000 protesters ringed the prime minister's office, demanding
the government resign and deriding its distribution of checks to
millions of low-income workers as a payoff.
(AP, 3/26/09)
2009 Mar 26, The UN's top
human-rights body approved a proposal by Muslims nations urging
passage of laws around the world to protect religion from criticism.
The resolution was sponsored by Pakistan, Belarus and Venezuela.
(AP, 3/26/09)(Econ, 4/4/09, p.17)
2010 Mar 26, Pres. Obama
concluded a new strategic arms reduction treaty in a call with
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.
(AFP, 3/26/10)
2010 Mar 26, The Obama
administration unveiled a revamped Home Affordable Mortgage Program
(HAMP).
(Econ, 4/3/10, p.78)
2010 Mar 26, Hacker Albert
Gonzalez (28), who participated in a cybercrime ring that stole tens
of millions of credit and debit card numbers, was sentenced in US
District Court to 20 years in prison. Gonzalez was living in Miami
at the time of the crimes in the three cases, which occurred over
almost two years before he was arrested in May of 2008 and
subsequently indicted in New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts.
(http://news.yahoo.com/s/pcworld/hackergonzalezsentencedto20yearsforexploits)
2010 Mar 26, In south-central
Kentucky at least 10 people were killed in a fiery crash between a
tractor-trailer and a van after the truck crossed over the median on
an interstate highway.
(AP, 3/26/10)
2010 Mar 26, The head of Abu
Dhabi's sovereign wealth fund, the world's largest, went missing
after his glider crashed in Morocco. Ahmed bin Zayed Al Nahyan's
glider went down in a lake in Morocco. The pilot of the aircraft was
rescued in good condition. The body of al-Nahayan was found on March
30.
(AP, 3/27/10)(AFP, 3/30/10)
2010 Mar 26, In eastern
Afghanistan a gunman attacked a group of German and Afghan aid
workers inspecting a high school under renovation. 2 people died and
a German employed by German humanitarian organization GTZ was among
10 people wounded when assailants opened fire on workers in Khost
city.
(AP, 3/26/10)(AFP, 3/27/10)
2010 Mar 26-2010 Mar 27, In
China hundreds of citizens rampaged in the southern city of Kunming
enraged by rumors that a vendor had been killed by an officer of the
“City Administration and Law Enforcement Bureau,” commonly known by
its Chinese abbreviation chengguan.
(Econ, 4/3/10, p.43)
2010 Mar 26, In Ecuador a
district court judge convicted Emilio Palacio, a newspaper editorial
writer for the newspaper El Universo, of insulting the head of the
government's National Financial Corp. and sentenced him to three
years in prison.
(AP, 3/27/10)
2010 Mar 26, Egyptian police
said they arrested 45 suspected smugglers over the past three days
in an intensified crackdown on the supply line to Gaza by way of
hundreds of cross-border tunnels. Among the suspects was a man
accused of trying to deliver $242,000 in Egyptian pounds and US
dollars to Hamas in Gaza.
(AP, 3/27/10)
2010 Mar 26, Iraq’s election
commission announced that former PM Ayad Allawi edged out chief
rival PM Nouri al-Maliki by two seats, 91-89, in the March 7 vote
for a 325-member parliament.
(AP, 3/27/10)
2010 Mar 26, In Finland Juha
Turunen, a corporate lawyer, was convicted of kidnapping heiress
Minna Nurminen (26) and holding her captive for two weeks in 2009
until her family paid a multimillion euro (dollar) ransom. He had
admitted during the trial that he had kidnapped Nurminen and held
her captive at an apartment in Turku, western Finland. She was
released unharmed and police recovered the ransom money.
(AP, 3/26/10)
2010 Mar 26, Germany and
Switzerland said they have reached a preliminary deal on an
agreement to exchange information on suspected tax cheats, an
important step toward defusing a long-festering irritant in their
relations.
(AP, 3/26/10)
2010 Mar 26, In Honduras radio
journalists Jose Bayardo (52) and Manuel de Jesus Juarez (55) were
riddled with bullets late in the day as they drove on a highway in
the rural province of Olancho. Three other journalists have been
killed in March in Honduras, which is wracked by political divisions
relating to a 2009 coup and common crime fueled by street gangs.
(AP, 3/27/10)
2010 Mar 26, Israel insisted it
would continue construction in contested east Jerusalem, taking an
uncompromising stance against US pressure following a tense visit by
PM Benjamin Netanyahu to Washington. Two Israeli soldiers and two
Palestinian militants were killed in a gunbattle in the Gaza Strip.
Palestinian medics said one civilian was killed and seven were
wounded in the fighting. Militants reported one wounded and one
missing. Israeli soldier withdrew the next day.
(AP, 3/26/10)(AP, 3/27/10)
2010 Mar 26, In northern Mexico
the decapitated body of Heriberto Cerda, the police chief in
Agualeguas, Nuevo Leon state, and the body of his brother were found
inside the chief's patrol truck. Late in the day gunmen opened fired
on a hotel in downtown Ciudad Juarez where federal agents stay,
killing one and wounding two.
(AP, 3/27/10)
2010 Mar 26, Mozambican police
said they have arrested 7 people suspected of trafficking women to
neighboring South Africa to work as prostitutes. The men were
arrested last week through a police sting operation. The women were
on sale for about $670 each.
(AP, 3/26/10)
2010 Mar 26, Asad Qureshi, a
British journalist, went missing while traveling to North Waziristan
with a retired army officer Sultan Amir Tarar (Col. Imam), and
Khalid Khawaja, a prominent Pakistani ex-spy. Khawaja was found
killed by the captors on April 30. On Sep 9 it was reported that
Qureshi and Col. Imam were released.
(AFP,
9/9/10)(http://cpj.org/2010/04/documentary-filmmaker-missing-in-pakistan.php)
2010 Mar 26, A South Korean
naval ship sank leaving 46 marines missing near Baengnyeong Island.
An explosion at the rear of the Cheonan shut down its engine, wiped
out power and caused the ship to sink a little over three hours
later. 58 of the crew of 104 were rescued. A North Korean mine was
later suspected as the cause of the explosion. South Korea's defense
minister confirmed on May 10 that traces of an explosive chemical
substance used to make torpedoes were found in the wreckage of the
naval ship.
(AP, 3/27/10)(AP, 3/29/10)(AP, 5/10/10)
2010 Mar 26, Tens of thousands
of Syrians and Palestinians gathered in a Damascus square in a
government-orchestrated "march of anger" against Israeli settlements
in east Jerusalem.
(AP, 3/26/10)
2010 Mar 26, Togo's government
and the opposition coalition signed a temporary truce committing
both sides to peace, law and order following opposition protests
against presidential election results.
(AP, 3/27/10)
2010 Mar 26, Zimbabwe state
media reported that PM Morgan Tsvangirai has backed President Robert
Mugabe's stance against including gay rights in a new constitution.
President Robert Mugabe said he would only implement terms of an
agreement he signed in 2008 with rival Morgan Tsvangirai if the West
removed sanctions on his allies.
(AFP, 3/26/10)(Reuters, 3/26/10)
2233 Mar 26, James T. Kirk,
science fiction captain of USS Enterprise (Star Trek), was born.
(SS, 3/26/02)
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