Today in History - March 31
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1084 Mar 31,
Anti-pope Clemens crowned German emperor Hendrik IV.
(MC, 3/31/02)
1282 Mar 31, The great massacre
of the French in Sicily, "The Sicilian Vespers," came to an end.
[see Aug 31,1303]
(HN, 3/31/99)
1389 Mar 31, Everhard
Tserclaes, sheriff of Brussels, was murdered.
(MC, 3/31/02)
1492 Mar 31, King Ferdinand and
Queen Isabella of Spain issued an edict expelling Jews from Spanish
soil, except those willing to convert to Christianity. In 2002
Claudia Roden authored “The Ornament of the World,” a collection of
stories of Sephardic Jews in Spain from 750 to 1492. A Jewish text
later known as the Sarajevo Haggadah was carried by a refugee to
Italy and later to Bosnia. [see Mar 30]
(AP, 3/30/97)(WSJ, 4/26/02, p.W12)(SSFC, 12/8/02,
p.F9)
1499 Mar 31, Pius IV
(Gianangelo de' Medici), Italian lawyer, pope (1559-65), was born.
(MC, 3/31/02)
1547 Mar 31, Francis I, King of
France (1515-1547), died and was succeeded by his son Henry II, who
was dominated by his mistress, Diane de Poitiers, during his 12 year
reign.
(TL-MB, 1988, p.17)(HN, 3/31/99)
1578 Mar 31, Juan de Escobedo,
secretary of Spanish land guardian Don Juan, was murdered.
(MC, 3/31/02)
1596 Mar 31, Rene Descartes
(d.1650), French philosopher, was born in La Haye, France. He
proposed a numerical index that represented fundamental notions. He
made consciousness the defining feature of the self. Descartes died
in Sweden. In 1997 Paul Strathern published: “Descartes in 90
Minutes,” and Keith Devlin published “Goodbye Descartes: The End of
Logic and the Search for a New Cosmology of the Mind.” In 1998 the
French biography by Genevieve Rodis-Lewis was translated to English:
“Descartes: His Life and Thought.”
(V.D.-H.K.p.203)(Wired, 8/96, p.86)(WSJ, 3/18/97,
p.A20)(AP, 3/30/97) (WSJ, 7/23/98, p.A14)(WSJ, 8/21/98, p.W13)
1621 Mar 31, Andrew Marvell,
English poet and politician, was born.
(HN, 3/31/01)
1631 Mar 31, John Donne
(b.1572), British metaphysical poet, died in London. In 2006 John
Stubbs authored “Donne: The Reformed Soul.”
(www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/donne/donnebio.htm)(Econ, 9/9/06, p.79)
1657 Mar 31, English Humble
Petition offered Lord Protector Cromwell the crown.
(MC, 3/31/02)
1732 Mar 31, Joseph Haydn
(d.1809), Austrian composer who helped develop the classical style,
was born. In his career he composed 104 symphonies, 82 string
quartets and 60 piano sonatas. He also wrote some 175 baritone
pieces for his patron, the Hungarian prince Nickolaus Esterhazy, who
played the complex stringed instrument. The Canadian scholar David
Schroeder wrote: "Haydn and the Enlightenment."
(CFA, '96,Vol 179, p.42)(WUD, 1994, p.651)(WSJ,
8/26/97, p.A14)(HN, 3/31/98)
1745 Mar 31, Jews were expelled
from Prague.
(MC, 3/31/02)
1747 Mar 31, Johann Abraham
Peter Schulz, German composer (Moon has Risen), was born.
(MC, 3/31/02)
1776 Mar 31, Abigail Adams
wrote to her husband John that women were "determined to foment a
rebellion" if the new Declaration of Independence failed to
guarantee their rights.
(HN, 3/31/98)
1776 Mar 31, Captain Juan
Bautista de Anza and a crew that included such names as Castro,
Peralta, Bernal, Moraga, Alviso and Berryessa, among others, arrived
at the eastern side of the San Francisco Bay on a 5-day expedition
to explore the area.
(SFC, 12/5/11, p.A1)
1777 Mar 31, A young Abigail
Adams encouraged her husband John to give women voting privileges in
the new American government. She wrote to her husband on March 31,
1777, while he was a delegate to the Constitutional Convention: “I
desire you would remember the ladies and be more generous to them
than were your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the
hands of husbands. Remember all men would be tyrants if they
could. If particular care and attention are not paid to the ladies
we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves
bound to obey any laws in which we have no voice or representation.”
Twenty years later her husband was a candidate in America’s first
real election.
(HNPD, 3/30/00)
1779 Mar 31, Russia and Turkey
signed a treaty by which they promised to take no military action in
the Crimea.
(HN, 3/31/99)
1790 Mar 31, In Paris, France,
Maximilien Robespierre was elected president of the Jacobin Club.
(HN, 3/31/99)
1796 Mar 31, Johann Wolfgang
von Goethe's "Egmont," premiered in Weimar.
(MC, 3/31/02)
1808 Mar 31, French created the
Kingdom of Westphalia and ordered Jews to adopt family names.
(MC, 3/31/02)
1809 Mar 31, Edward Fitzgerald,
American writer, was born. He is famous for writing "Rubaiyat of
Omar Khayyam."
(HN, 3/31/99)
1809 Mar 31, Nikolai V. Gogol
(d.1852), Ukrainian-born Russian writer, was born (NS) in
Sorochyntsi, Poltava Governorate (later Ukraine). Some sources give
April 1 as his birthday. His work included the play “The Inspector
General” (1836) and the novels “Taras Bulba” (1835) and “Dead
Souls” (1842).
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Gogol)(WSJ,
4/14/09, p.D7)
1809 Mar 31, Otto Jonas
Lindblad, composer, was born.
(MC, 3/31/02)
1809 May 31, Composer Franz
Joseph Haydn died in Vienna, Austria on his 77th birthday. When
Napoleon’s armies marched into Vienna, the commanding general posted
guards in front of Haydn’s house to protect Haydn from trouble, and
a young officer was sent to sing for the old man.
(AP, 5/31/97)(WSJ, 1/8/98, p.A7)
1811 Mar 31, Robert Wilhelm
Eberhard von Bunsen, German inventor of the Bunsen burner, was born.
(HN, 3/31/99)
1814 Mar 31, Forces allied
against Napoleon captured Paris.
(MC, 3/31/02)
1831 Mar 31, Archibald Scott,
Scottish chemist, was born.
(MC, 3/31/02)
1831 Mar 31, Quebec and
Montreal were incorporated.
(HN, 3/31/98)
1836 Mar 31, The first monthly
installment of The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens was published
in London.
(HN, 3/31/01)
1837 Mar 31, John Constable
(60), English painter, water colors painter, died. His work included
some 100 studies of the sky done between 1821-1822. In 2009 Martin
Gayford authored “Constable in Love: Love, Landscape, Money and the
Making of a Great Painter.”
(WSJ, 6/9/04, p.D8)(Econ, 3/21/09,
p.92)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Constable)
1841 Mar 31, 1st performance of
Robert Schumann's 1st Symphony in B.
(MC, 3/31/02)
1847 Mar 31, Jarolslaw
Zielinski, composer, was born.
(MC, 3/31/02)
1850 Mar 31, The US population
hit 23,191,876, with the Black population at 3,638,808 (15.7%).
(MC, 3/31/02)
1850 Mar 31, John Calhoun
(b.1782), US vice-president (1825-1832), died while a senator from
South Carolina. He was elected vice president under two presidents,
John Quincy Adams in 1824 and Andrew Jackson in 1828.
(WUD, 1994 p.210)(HNQ, 8/19/99)(MC, 3/31/02)
1854 Mar 31, Sir Dugald Clerk,
inventor of the two-stroke motorcycle engine, was born.
(HN, 3/31/98)
1854 Mar 31, Chief Shogun
Iyesada, following negotiations with Commodore Perry, approved the
Treaty of Kanagawa on behalf of Emperor Osahito. This forced Japan
to open its ports to foreign trade.
(Jap. Enc., BLDM, p. 215)(ON, 11/04, p.12)
1855 Mar 31, Charlotte Bronte
(b.1816), English author (Jane Eyre), died.
(MC, 3/31/02)
1858 Mar 31, Norddeutscher
Lloyd Bremen launched the SS New York, a passenger cargo vessel. It
was sold to Edward Bates of Liverpool in 1874 and later wrecked near
Staten Island. In 1994 Edwin Drechsel (1914-2006) later authored a
2-volume history of the North German shipping line.
(www.clydesite.co.uk/clydebuilt/viewship.asp?id=15185)
1862 Mar 31, Skirmishing
between Rebels and Union forces took place at Island 10 on the
Mississippi River.
(HN, 3/31/98)
1863 Mar 31, Battle of Grand
Gulf, MS & Dinwiddie Court House, VA.
(MC, 3/31/02)
1865 Mar 31, Battle of Boydton,
VA (White Oaks Roads, Dinwiddie Court House).
(MC, 3/31/02)
1865 Mar 31, Gen. Pickett moved
to 5 Forks, abandoning the defense of Petersburg.
(MC, 3/31/02)
1872 Mar 31, Sergei Pavlovich
Diaghilev, dance master (Imperial Ballet), was born in Russia. [see
Mar 19]
(MC, 3/31/02)
1878 Mar 31, Jack Johnson,
first Africa-American boxer to become the world heavyweight champion
(1908-1915), was born.
(HN, 3/31/99)(MC, 3/31/02)
1880 Mar 31, Wabash, Ind.,
became the first town completely illuminated by electrical lighting.
(AP, 3/31/97)(HN, 3/31/98)
1880 Mar 31, Henryk Wieniawski
(44), Polish violist, composer, died.
(MC, 3/31/02)
1883 Mar 31, 1st performance of
Cesar Franck's "Le Chasseur Maudit."
(MC, 3/31/02)
1885 Mar 31, Madame Blavatsky
was hoisted in an invalid chair onto a steamer in the Madras harbor
of India and departed for London. In England she wrote “The Secret
Doctrine” and had as guests to her salon William Butler Yeats, Annie
Besant and the young Mohandas K. Gandhi.
(Smith., 5/95, p.127)
1885 Mar 31, Franz Wilhelm Abt
(65), German composer, choir conductor, died.
(MC, 3/31/02)
1886 Mar 31, Giovanni Rossi
(57), composer, died.
(MC, 3/31/02)
1889 Mar 31, French engineer
Gustave Eiffel unfurled the French tricolor from atop the Eiffel
Tower, officially marking its completion. Constructed of 7,000 tons
of iron and steel, the 984-foot structure was designed by Alexandre
Gustave Eiffel for the Paris Exhibition of 1889, commemorating the
centennial of the French Revolution. The price for the Eiffel Tower
was more than $1 million, but fees for the year 1889 alone nearly
recouped the cost. Fifty-five years later, plans by Hitler to leave
the tower and much of Paris a smoking ruin were foiled by an
unlikely hero. After the Paris World Fair a church designed by
Alexandre Gustave Eiffel was dismantled and shipped to Santa Rosalia
in Baja, Mexico.
(SFEC, 10/20/96, Par, p.23)(SFEC, 11/10/96,
p.T11)(HNPD, 3/31/99)(AP, 3/31/08)
1891 Mar 31, Erich Walter
Sternberg, composer, was born.
(MC, 3/31/02)
1893 Mar 31, Clemens Krauss,
conductor (Berlin State Orch-1937), was born in Vienna.
(MC, 3/31/02)
1895 Mar 31, Vardis A. Fisher,
US author (Darkness & Deep), was born.
(MC, 3/31/02)
1895 Mar 31, John Jay McCloy,
lawyer, banker (Sec of War 1941-45, High Commissioner for Germany,
pres Chase Manhattan), was born.
(MC, 3/31/02)
1903 Mar 31, New Zealand
aviator Richard Pearse flew a self-made, bamboo-framed, mono-winged
airplane in Waitohi.
(NW, 3/17/03, p.20)
1906 Mar 31, G.B. Shaw's German
version of "Caesar and Cleopatra," premiered in Berlin.
(MC, 3/31/02)
1907 Mar 31, Romanian Army put
down a Moldavian farmers' revolt.
(MC, 3/31/02)
1909 Mar 31, Gustav Mahler
conducted the NY Philharmonic for 1st time.
(MC, 3/31/02)
1913 Mar 31, John Pierpont
Morgan (b.1837), US banker, CEO (US Steel Corp), died in Rome,
Italy. His art collection was valued at $60m. In 1999 Jean Strouse
authored “Morgan.”
(www.netstate.com/states/peop/people/ct_jpm.htm)(Econ, 11/20/04,
p.86)(WSJ, 8/4/07, p.P9)
1914 Mar 31, Octavio Paz,
Mexican diplomat and Nobel Prize-winning writer, was born.
(HN, 3/31/01)
1915 Mar 31, Henry Morgan,
comedian, radio performer, was born.
(HN, 3/31/01)
1916 Mar 31, General Pershing
and his army routed Pancho Villa's army in Mexico.
(HN, 3/31/98)
1917 Mar 31, The United States
took possession of the Virgin Islands. The purchase from Denmark for
$25 million had been set up in 1916.
(AP,
3/30/97)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Virgin_Islands)
1918 Mar 31, Daylight Savings
Time went into effect throughout the U.S. for the first time.
(HN, 3/31/98)
1920 Mar 31, British parliament
accepted Irish "Home Rule" law.
(MC, 3/31/02)
1921 Mar 31, Great Britain
declared a state of emergency because of the thousands of coal
miners on strike.
(HN, 3/31/98)
1922 Mar 31, Richard Kiley,
actor (Man of La Mancha, Endless Love), was born in Chicago.
(MC, 3/31/02)
1923 Mar 31, The first U.S.
dance marathon, held in New York City, ended. Alma Cummings (32) set
a world record of 27 hours on her feet. 6 younger male partners
helped her.
(AP, 3/31/98)(WSJ, 6/1/05, p.B1)
1923 Mar 31, French soldiers
fired on workers at Krupp factory in Essen; 13 died.
(MC, 3/31/02)
1924 Mar 31, Leo Buscaglia,
"Dr. Hug", psychologist (Love), was born in LA, Calif.
(MC, 3/31/02)
1926 Mar 31, Sydney Chaplin,
son of Charlie, actor (Adding Machine, Psycho Sisters), was born.
(MC, 3/31/02)
1926 Mar 31, John Fowles
(d.2005), English novelist, was born. His work included “The
Collector” (1963) and “The French Lieutenant's Woman” (1969).
(HN, 3/31/01)(SFC, 11/8/05, p.B5)
1927 Mar 31, Cesar Chavez
(d.1993), California union leader of agricultural workers (United
Farm Workers), was born in Yuma, Az.
(SFEC,10/19/97, p.C3)(SFC, 3/29/00, p.A3)(MC,
3/31/02)
1927 Mar 31, William Daniels,
actor (Dr Mark Craig-St Elsewhere, 1776), was born in Brooklyn, NY.
(MC, 3/31/02)
1928 Mar 31, Gordie Howe, NHL
right wing (Detroit Redwings), was born in Floral, Sask., Canada.
(MC, 3/31/02)
1931 Mar 31, Knute Rockne (43),
football player, coach, died in a plane crash.
(MC, 3/31/02)
1932 Mar 31, Ford Motor Co.
publicly unveiled its V-8 engine.
(AP, 3/31/97)
1932 Mar 31, 150 wild swans
died in Niagara waterfall.
(MC, 3/31/02)
1933 Mar 31, Shirley Jones,
actress (Partridge Family, Elmer Gantry), was born in Smithton, Pa.
(MC, 3/31/02)
1933 Mar 31, Congress approved,
and President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed, the Emergency
Conservation Work Act (Reforestation Relief Act), which created the
Civilian Conservation Corps. The US unemployment rate reached 25%.
In its nine years of existence, the New Deal’s Civilian Conservation
Corps had a total of 2.9 million men aged 18 to 25 enrolled. The
program was designed to provide jobs for young men in the national
forests, conservation programs and national road construction.
Enacted as one of President Franklin Roosevelt’s first New Deal
programs, it lasted until World War II. At its high point in
September 1935, the CCC had 2,514 work camps across the U.S. with
502,000 men enrolled.
(SFEC, 5/2/99, Z1 p.1)(HNQ, 7/23/99)(AP,
3/31/08)(SSFC, 1/18/09, p.D6)
1933 Mar 31, German Republic
gave dictatorial power to Hitler.
(MC, 3/31/02)
1935 Mar 31, Herb Alpert,
bandleader, trumpeter (Tijuana Brass), CEO (A & M), was born.
(MC, 3/31/02)
1936 Mar 31, Marge Piercy, poet
and novelist, was born.
(HN, 3/31/01)
1939 Mar 31, Britain and France
agreed to support Poland if Germany threatened to invade. Seven
French islands were annexed by Japan.
(HN, 3/31/98)
1940 Mar 31, The New York
Municipal Airport, opened in October, 1939, was renamed La Guardia
airport, after the mayor, who had been a bomber pilot in World War I
and whose interest in aviation lasted throughout his lifetime,
barely a month after it opened.
(www.arcadiapublishing.com/news_article.html?id=1816)
1941 Mar 31, Germany began a
counter offensive in North Africa.
(HN, 3/31/98)
1943 Mar 31, The Rodgers and
Hammerstein musical “Oklahoma!” opened on Broadway. Richard Rodgers
and Oscar Hammerstein hired Agnes de Mille for the choreography. The
original is only on documentary videotape and the 1954 film was a
“bloated mess.” [see Mar 30]
(TMC, 1994, p.1943)(WSJ, 2/5/96, p.A-16)(AP,
3/30/97)
1943 Mar 31, US errantly bombed
Rotterdam, killed 326.
(MC, 3/31/02)
1944 Mar 31, Hungary ordered
all Jews to wear yellow stars.
(MC, 3/31/02)
1945 Mar 31, The Tennessee
Williams play "The Glass Menagerie" premiered on Broadway.
(AP, 3/31/97)
1945 Mar 31, The U.S. and
Britain barred a Soviet supported provisional regime in Warsaw from
entering the U.N. meeting in San Francisco.
(HN, 3/31/98)
1945 Mar 31, US artillery
landed on Keise Shima and began firing on Okinawa.
(MC, 3/31/02)
1945 Mar 31, Sicherheitsdienst
murdered 10 political prisoners in Zutphen.
(MC, 3/31/02)
1948 Mar 31, David Eisenhower,
Eisenhower's grandson (married Julie Nixon), was born.
(MC, 3/31/02)
1948 Mar 31, Al Gore, Vice
President to President William J. Clinton (1993-2001), was born.
(HN, 3/31/99)
1948 Mar 31, Rhea Perlman,
actress (Zena-Taxi, Carla-Cheers), was born in Brooklyn.
(MC, 3/31/02)
1948 Mar 31, Congress passed a
$6.2 billion foreign aid bill, the Marshall Aid Act, to rehabilitate
war-torn Europe.
(HN, 3/31/98)(MC, 3/31/02)
1948 Mar 31, The Soviet Union
in Germany began controlling the Western trains headed toward
Berlin.
(HN, 3/31/98)
1949 Mar 31, Newfoundland,
later called Newfoundland and Labrador, entered confederation as
Canada's 10th province. In 1999 Wayne Johnston authored “The Colony
of Unrequited Dreams,” a novel about postconfederation Newfoundland
and its 1st premier, Joe Smallwood. In 2000 Johnston authored
“Baltimore’s Mansion,” a personal memoir of Newfoundland.
(SFEC, 6/25/00, BR p.6)(AP, 3/31/08)
1949 Mar 31, Churchill declared
that the A-bomb was the only thing that kept the USSR from taking
over Europe.
(HN, 3/31/98)
1953 Mar 31, Stanley Kubrick's
first feature film, a war drama titled "Fear and Desire," premiered
in New York.
(AP, 3/31/03)
1953 Mar 31, Department of
Health, Education and Welfare was established.
(MC, 3/31/02)
1953 Mar 31, UN Security
Council nominated Dag Hammarskjold secretary-general.
(MC, 3/31/02)
1954 Mar 31, Moscow offered to
join NATO on the condition that the West join the Soviet European
security treaty.
(HN, 3/31/98)
1954 Mar 31, The siege of Dien
Bien Phu, the last French outpost in Vietnam, began after the Viet
Minh realized it could not be taken by direct assault.
(HN, 3/31/99)
1955 Mar 31, US Assay Office in
Seattle, Washington, closed.
(MC, 3/31/02)
1955 Mar 31, Chase National
(3rd largest bank) and Bank of the Manhattan Company (15th largest
bank) merged to form Chase Manhattan.
(MC, 3/31/02)
1957 Mar 31, The original
version of Rodgers and Hammerstein's "Cinderella," starring Julie
Andrews, aired live in color on CBS.
(AP, 3/31/07)
1958 Mar 31, US Navy formed the
atomic sub division.
(MC, 3/31/02)
1958 Mar 31, Moscow declared a
halt on all atomic tests and asked other nations to follow.
(HN, 3/31/98)
1959 Mar 31, Dalai Lama fled
the Chinese suppression of a national uprising in Tibet and crossed
the border into India. India granted him political asylum.
(MC, 3/31/02)
1960 Mar 31, The South African
government declared a state of emergency after demonstrations led to
the deaths of more than 50 Africans.
(HN, 3/31/98)
1960 Mar 31, Joseph Haas (81),
German opera composer (Totenmesse), died.
(MC, 3/31/02)
1962 Mar 31, Cesar Chavez
(d.1993) founded the United Farm Workers Union on his birthday.
(SSFC, 4/7/02, p.A14)
1963 Mar 31, LA ended streetcar
service after 90 years.
(MC, 3/31/02)
1966 Mar 31, An estimated
200,000 anti-war demonstrators marched in New York City. 25,000 anti
war demonstrators marched in NYC.
(HN, 3/31/98)(SFEC, 11/28/99, p.A28)(MC, 3/31/02)
1966 Mar 31, Labour Party won
British parliamentary election.
(MC, 3/31/02)
1967 Mar 31, President Lyndon
Johnson signed the Consular Treaty, the first bi-lateral pact with
the Soviet Union since the Bolshevik Revolution.
(http://travel.state.gov/law/legal/treaty/treaty_1508.html)
1968 Mar 31, Pres. Johnson
announced that he would not run for re-election and declared a
partial bombing halt in Vietnam. The stock market soared. Citing
national divisions over the war in Vietnam, Johnson declares that "I
shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party
for another term as your president."
(WUD, 1994, p.1687)(TMC, 1994, p.1968)(SFC,
8/18/96, Z1 p.4)(AP, 3/31/97)(MC, 3/31/02)
1970 Mar 31, The U.S. forces in
Vietnam downed a MIG-21, the first since September 1968.
(HN, 3/31/98)
1970 Mar 31, Semjon Timoshenko
(75), Russian marshal, inspector-general (WW II), died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semyon_Timoshenko)\
1971 Mar 31, US Lt. William
Calley (b.1943) was sentenced to life for the My Lai Massacre.
(www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1808937/posts)
1975 Mar 31, The TV show
Gunsmoke, which premiered in 1955, aired its last original episode.
The show was canceled in September.
(www.imdb.com/title/tt0047736/episodes)(www.episodeworld.com/show/Gunsmoke)
1976 Mar 31, The New Jersey
Supreme Court allowed the removal of the respirator that assisted
Karen Ann Quinlan, who had been comatose since Apr 15, 1975.
Quinlan, who remained comatose, died Jul 11, 1985.
(SFC, 12/12/96, p.C8)(AP, 3/30/97)
1979 Mar 31, The Arab League
suspended Egypt following its treaty with Israel.
(www.safarix.com/0131900048/ch08)
1980 Mar 31, Pres. Carter
signed the Depository Institutions Deregulation And Monetary Control
Act, which deregulated interest rates.
(WSJ, 11/19/04,
p.A8)(www.bos.frb.org/about/pubs/deposito.pdf)
1980 Mar 31, In Spain the first
session of the Basque parliament was held in Guernica.
(Econ, 3/7/09,
p.60)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basque_Parliament)
1981 Mar 31, In the 1st Golden
Raspberry Awards the film “Can't Stop the Music” won as worst film
of 1980.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980_Golden_Raspberry_Awards)
1981 Mar 31, In the 53rd
Academy Awards "Ordinary People," R. De Niro and Sissy Spacek won,
one day after the attempted assassination of Pres. Reagan. The
Awards were held at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.
(SFC, 3/21/02,
p.D1)(www.ropeofsilicon.com/awards/oscarhistory.php?y=1981)
1982 Mar 31, In California an
avalanche at the Alpine Meadows ski resort killed 7 people. In 2009
Jennifer Woodlief authored “A Wall of White: The True Story of
Heroism and Survival in the Face of a Deadly Avalanche.”
(http://tinyurl.com/7gjkf)(SFC, 2/27/09, p.F4)
1982 Mar 31, In South Africa
Nelson Mandela and 3 others were transferred from Robben Island to
Pollsmoor Prison on the mainland. Mandela had spent 18 years on
Robben Island.
(www.sabcnews.com/features/walter_sisulu/timeline.html)
1983 Mar 31, A 5.4 earthquake
hit the region of Popoyan, Colombia. It killed about 250 people and
left some 1,500 injured.
(SFEC, 11/10/96,
p.T10)(http://tinyurl.com/2pmrpn)
1986 Mar 31, English Hampton
Court palace was destroyed by fire and 1 person died.
(http://tinyurl.com/l6fxl)
1986 Mar 31, 167 people died
when a Mexicana Airlines Boeing 727 crashed in a remote mountainous
region of Mexico.
(AP, 3/31/97)
1987 Mar 31, Indiana Univ. won
the NCAA basketball finals with a last-second, corner shot by Keith
Smart.
(WSJ, 4/4/03, p.B2)(http://tinyurl.com/rcskk)
1987 Mar 31, The judge in the
"Baby M" case in Hackensack, N.J., awarded custody of the girl born
under a surrogate-motherhood contract to her father, William Stern,
instead of the surrogate, Mary Beth Whitehead.
(AP, 3/31/97)
1988 Mar 31, The novel
"Beloved" by Toni Morrison was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for
fiction, while the Charlotte (N.C) Observer won the prize for public
service for its coverage of the Praise The Lord scandal.
(AP, 3/31/98)
1989 Mar 31, The FBI announced
it would conduct a criminal investigation into the massive oil spill
in Alaska's Prince William Sound.
(AP, 3/31/99)
1990 Mar 31, Soviet President
Mikhail S. Gorbachev warned the defiant Baltic republic of Lithuania
to annul its declaration of independence or face "grave
consequences."
(AP, 3/31/00)
1990 Mar 31, Hundreds of people
were injured in rioting in London over Britain's so-called "poll
tax." The poll-tax disturbances helped to bring down PM Margaret
Thatcher.
(AP, 3/31/00)(Econ, 3/8/08, p.66)
1991 Mar 31, Albania offered a
multi-party election for the first time in 50 years. The Labor Party
won over 67 percent of votes, while the Democratic Party won around
30 percent. Communists won Albania’s first multiparty elections, but
democratic opponents scored victories in major cities.
(HN, 3/31/98)(www, Albania, 1998)(AP, 3/31/01)
1991 Mar 31, Voters in the
Soviet republic of Georgia overwhelmingly endorsed independence.
(AP, 3/31/01)
1991 Mar 31, The Warsaw Pact
spent the last day of its existence as a military alliance.
(AP, 3/31/01)
1992 Mar 31, The Battleship USS
Missouri was decommissioned. This was the ship on which Japan signed
its WWII surrender. In 1996 Paul Stillwell authored “Battleship
Missouri: An Illustrated History.”
(www.battleship.org/html/Articles/Features/stillwell.htm)
1992 Mar 31, The U.N. Security
Council voted to ban flights and arms sales to Libya, branding it a
terrorist state for shielding six men accused of blowing up Pan Am
Flight 103 and a French airliner.
(AP, 3/31/97)
1993 Mar 31, Actor Brandon Lee
(28) was killed during the filming of a movie in Wilmington, N.C.,
by a prop gun that fired part of a dummy bullet instead of a blank.
(MC, 3/31/02)
1993 Mar 31, "Star Dust"
lyricist Mitchell Parish died in New York City at age 92.
(AP, 3/31/98)
1993 Mar 31, The U.N. Security
Council increased international pressure on Bosnian Serbs,
authorizing NATO warplanes to shoot down aircraft that violated a
ban on flights over Bosnia.
(AP, 3/31/98)
1994 Mar 31, The PLO and Israel
agreed to resume talks on Palestinian autonomy, more than a month
after the Hebron mosque massacre.
(AP, 3/31/99)
1995 Mar 31, US baseball
players agreed to end their 232-day strike after a judge granted a
preliminary injunction against club owners.
(AP, 3/31/00)
1995 Mar 31, President Clinton
briefly visited Haiti, where he declared the U.S. mission to restore
democracy there a "remarkable success."
(AP, 3/31/00)
1995 Mar 31, Mexican-American
singer Selena, 23, was shot to death in Corpus Christi, Texas, by
the founder of her fan club. Yolanda Saldivar was convicted of
murder and sentenced to life in prison.
(AP, 3/31/97)
1995 Mar 31, Fred Cuny
(b.1944), American disaster relief specialist, disappeared in
Chechnya and was never found. He used his training in engineering to
do humanitarian work and worked in countries such as Biafra,
Guatemala, Ethiopia, Iraq, Somalia, and Bosnia. Cuny (50), an envoy
for George Soros' Open Society Institute, was shot and killed by
Chechen gunmen. In 1999 Scott Anderson published "The Man Who Tried
to Save the World: The Dangerous Life and Mysterious Disappearance
of Fred Cuny."
(http://www.onlineethics.org/cms/14193.aspx)(SFEC, 6/6/99, BR p.1)
1996 Mar 31, Pres. Clinton and
Monica Lewinsky resumed their sexual relationship.
(SFC, 9/12/98, p.A13)
1996 Mar 31 Russian President
Boris Yeltsin announced a halt to combat operations in Chechnya,
limited troop withdrawals and a willingness to hold indirect talks
with the rebels' leader.
(AP, 3/31/97)
1997 Mar 31, In the US men’s
NCAA Basketball finals Arizona beat Kentucky 84-79 in overtime.
(SFC, 4/1/97, p.A1)
1997 Mar 31, The Supreme Court
ruled that the government can force cable television systems to
carry local broadcast stations.
(AP, 3/31/98)
1997 Mar 31, Jury selection
began in Denver in the trial of accused Oklahoma City bomber Timothy
McVeigh.
(AP, 3/31/98)
1997 Mar 31, It was reported
from Los Angeles that Yasuyoshi Kato was caught after having
embezzled 85-95 [$62 mil] million from Day-Lee Foods, a Japanese
firm for which he worked as an accountant [chief financial officer].
He was sentenced to 5 years in prison.
(SFC, 3/31/97, p.A15)(SFC, 10/7/97, p.A14)
1997 Mar 31, Scientists
announced the first artificial human chromosomes that work properly
inside living cells.
(SFC, 4/1/97, p.A1)
1997 Mar 31, In Spain a
passenger train north of Pamplona derailed and killed at least 22
and injured some 87 people.
(WSJ, 4/1/97, p.A1)
1998 Mar 31, For the first time
in history, the Clinton administration released a detailed financial
statement for the federal government showing its assets and
liabilities.
(AP, 3/31/99)
1998 Mar 31, Hon-Ming Chen,
Taiwanese leader of a spiritual sect in Garland, Texas, was to meet
God at 10 AM.
(SFC, 3/23/98, p.A3)
1998 Mar 31, Starcraft, a
military science fiction real-time strategy video game, was released
in South Korea. It was developed by Blizzard Entertainment, a
California-based company.
(Econ, 10/30/10,
p.71)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StarCraft)
1998 Mar 31, Former New York
Congresswoman Bella Abzug died at age 77.
(AP, 3/31/99)
1998 Mar 31, In Egypt a
sweeping press ban forbade publishing houses from printing in
tax-free zones. This amounted to a temporary de facto ban for over
50 publications that printed in the Nasser City tax-free zone
outside of Cairo.
(SFC, 5/9/98, p.A10)
1998 Mar 31, The EU set this
date for membership talks with Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic,
Slovenia, Estonia and Cyprus. Preliminary talks were also set with
Lithuania, Latvia, Slovakia, Romania and Bulgaria.
(SFC,12/13/97, p.A12)
1998 Mar 31, In Lille, France,
an 18-year-old boy was shot dead by a fellow student in front of his
classmates and teacher.
(SFC, 4/22/98, p.A10)
1998 Mar 31, The UN Security
Council imposed a new arms embargo on Yugoslavia to press Milosevic
to grant ethnic Albanians concessions in Kosovo.
(SFC, 4/1/98, p.A8)(AP, 3/31/99)
1998 Mar 31, In Cambodia
government soldiers made a major offensive to destroy the remnants
of the Khmer Rouge guerrillas, which was disintegrating due to
defections and internal fighting.
(SFC, 4/1/98, p.A8)
1998 Mar 31, In Lebanon a
roadside bomb in the Israeli security zone killed 6 construction
workers in their pickup truck near Kaoukaba.
(SFC, 4/1/98, p.A10)
1998 Mar 31, It was reported
that in Thailand’s Mae Hong Son province, women of the Padaung tribe
of Burma were attracting tourists with their necks elongated by
wearing brass coils. They began fleeing Burma’s Kayah state over a
decade ago
(SFC, 3/31/98, p.B4)
1999 Mar 31, A federal judge
was expected to approve a settlement by black United Parcel Service
(UPS) workers for over $8 million for racial discrimination.
(SFEC, 3/7/99, p.D2)
1999 Mar 31, Four New York City
police officers were charged with murder for killing Amadou Diallo,
an unarmed African immigrant, in a hail of bullets. They were
acquitted in Feb 2000.
(AP, 3/31/04)
1999 Mar 31, Three peacekeeping
US soldiers were captured by Serb forces near the Yugoslav-Macedonia
border. Sgt. James Stone (25), Spec. Steven Gonzales (21) and Sgt.
Andrew Ramirez (24) were shown on Serbian TV and were released more
than a month later. Azen Syla, founder of the KLA, said that his
guerrilla supply lines from Albania were cut off when the bombing
began. Yugoslav soldiers herded ethnic Albanians onto trains bound
for the Macedonian border as NATO bombing continued for the 8th day.
(SFC, 4/1/99, p.A1,12)(SFC, 4/2/99, p.A1)(AP,
3/31/00)
1999 Mar 31, NATO bombs
destroyed the Sloboda household utilities plant in Cacak, Serbia. It
had employed some 5,000 people. Allied leaders said they would bomb
government buildings in Belgrade.
(SFC, 4/1/99, p.A14)(WSJ, 4/1/99, p.A1)
1999 Mar 31, In the village of
Dzakovo, Kosovo, a witness reported the Serbian paramilitary forces
invade a mosque during morning prayers and killed some 80 people.
(SFC, 4/6/99, p.A8)
1999 Mar 31, On Serbian TV
Ibrahim Rugova appealed for an end to NATO bombings. He had recently
been quoted by a German magazine that chaos would result if NATO
does not send in ground troops immediately. Serbs put Rugova under
house arrest and ordered him to appear on TV.
(SFC, 4/2/99, p.A15)(SFC, 4/17/99, p.A9)
1999 Mar 31, In England the
House of Lords passed a bill that stripped aristocrats with
inherited seats from voting in the upper chamber of Parliament.
(SFC, 4/1/99, p.C2)
1999 Mar 31, In Zambia the high
court declared former leader Kenneth Kaunda, born to Malawian
missionaries, a non-citizen.
(WSJ, 4/1/99, p.A1)
2000 Mar 31, The UN Security
Council decided to let Iraq spend more money to repair its oil
industry, an investment intended to boost the amount of food and
medicine Baghdad could buy through the UN humanitarian program.
(SFC, 4/1/00, p.A12)(AP, 3/31/01)
2000 Mar 31, In Russia Pres.
Putin called for a quick ratification of the START II nuclear arms
reduction treaty and deeper cuts in nuclear missiles.
(SFC, 4/1/00, p.A12)
2000 Mar 31, In Uganda police
revised the number of deaths linked to the doomsday cult to 924.
(SFC, 4/1/00, p.A1)
2001 Mar 31, Pres. Blaise
Compaore asked for forgiveness for abuses over his 13-year rule as
part of Burkina Faso’s 1st “National Pardon Day.”
(SSFC, 4/1/01, p.C10)
2001 Mar 31, In Macedonia
rebels engaged government troops in a firefight.
(SSFC, 4/1/01, p.C5)
2001 Mar 31, In the Netherlands
legislation enacted in 2000 to legalize gay marriages went into
effect at midnight.
(SFC, 3/31/01, p.A10)
2001 Mar 31, In Pakistan a
stampede at a shrine in Pakbattan Sharif left 40 dead as thousands
rushed for the “paradise door.”
(WSJ, 4/2/01, p.A1)
2001 Mar 31, In Russia some
20,000 people gathered in Pushkin Square to defend the NTV network
from the government’s 10-month financial and legal campaign against
it.
(SSFC, 4/1/01, p.C2)
2001 Mar 31, In Serbia
commandos stormed the residence of Slobodan Milosevic and attempted
to arrest him as the US deadline for cooperation with the UN War
Crimes tribunal approached. But a defiant Milosevic rejected a
warrant, reportedly telling police he wouldn't "go to jail alive."
He was taken into custody the next day.
(SFC, 3/31/01, p.A1)(AP, 3/31/02)
2001 Mar 31, In Taiwan the
Dalai Lama arrived for a spiritual visit.
(SFC, 4/2/01, p.A9)
2001 Mar 31, In Turkey
thousands rallied in major cities to protest a government economic
recovery plan backed by the IMF.
(SSFC, 4/1/01, p.C10)
2002 Mar 31, Connecticut beat
Oklahoma 82-70 to conclude its second unbeaten season with a third
women's national championship.
(AP, 3/31/03)
2002 Mar 31, Barry Took (73),
British comedian and comic writer, died. He helped produce “Monty
Python’s Flying Circus.” His autobiography was titled “A Point of
View.”
(SFC, 4/1/02, p.B5)
2002 Mar 31, On Australia’s
Norfolk Island Glenn McNeill (24) of New Zealand hit Janelle Patton
(29) with his car and later stabbed her "just to make sure she was
dead." McNeill was arrested in 2006 based on DNA evidence. Patton
suffered 64 separate injuries including a fractured skull and
numerous stab wounds in the attack In 2007 McNeill told police he
had been smoking cannabis when he hit Patton. On Mar 9 a jury
convicted McNeill of murder. On July 25 he was sentenced to 24 years
in jail.
(AP, 8/12/02)(Econ, 7/10/04, p.38)(Reuters,
3/9/07)(AFP, 7/25/07)
2002 Mar 31, Men in the Czech
Republic chased female relatives and friends for the traditional
Easter leg thwacking.
(WSJ, 3/28/02, p.A1)
2002 Mar 31, In France an arson
attacked destroyed Marseille’s Or Aviv temple. It was the 3rd
synagogue attack over the Passover weekend.
(SFC, 4/2/02, p.A8)
2002 Mar 31, Israeli forces
entered Qalqilya and Bethlehem. 2 Palestinians were killed after
they fired on Israeli soldiers. Some 40 European and American peace
activists joined Yasser Arafat. Israeli PM Ariel Sharon vowed to
smash Palestinian militants in a broadcast speech that came the same
day as a suicide bombing in Haifa that killed 15 Israelis. In 2009
Shimon Shiran died of wounds suffered in the bombing that also
killed his daughter Adi (17).
(SFC, 4/1/02, p.A1,10)(AP, 3/31/07)(AP, 4/12/09)
2002 cMar 31, In Madagascar a
bridge linking the capital to a southern port was blown up.
(WSJ, 4/1/02, p.A1)
2002 Mar 31, Serbia’s
government, faced with a midnight suspension of US aid, issued
arrest warrants against 4 former Milosevic associates.
(SFC, 4/1/02, p.A6)
2002 Mar 31, In Taiwan a
6.8-7.1 earthquake hit and 5 construction workers were killed in
Taipei when 2 construction cranes fell from the 60th floor of a new
building projected to be the tallest in the city. Taipei 101 reached
1,679 feet on completion and claimed to be have the highest
structural top, tallest roof and highest occupied floor.
(SFC, 4/1/02, p.A7)(WSJ, 4/1/02, p.A1)(SSFC,
8/8/04, p.A22)
2002 Mar 31, In Ukraine
elections the pro-Western Our Ukraine led by former PM Viktor
Yuschenko led with 23%. The Communist Party had 20%. Pres.
Kuchma’s United Ukraine had 13% and expected 119 seats in
parliament. The parties provide half the 450 sets of the parliament,
known as the Verkhovna Rada. Direct elections decide the other half.
(SFC, 4/1/02, p.A6)(SFC, 4/2/02, p.A6)(SFC,
4/3/02, p.A7)
2002 Mar 31, Pope John Paul II
used his Easter message to call for an end to violence in the Holy
Land.
(AP, 3/31/03)
2003 Mar 31, In the 13th day of
Operation Iraqi Freedom US-led troops fought pitched battles with
Saddam Hussein's Republican Guard within 50 miles of the capital.
B-1, B-2 and B-52 bombers struck communication and command centers
in Baghdad, and cruise missiles set Iraq's Information Ministry
ablaze. Casualties from the war to date US total: 40 dead, 7
captured, 18 missing; British total: 25 dead. Of 8,000 precision
bombs dropped since the war began, 3,000 fell in the last 3 days.
Port operations at Umm Qasr looked to be delayed for weeks.
(AP, 3/31/03)(WSJ, 4/1/03, p.A1)
2003 Mar 31, US troops between
Karbala and Najaf shot and killed 10 Iraqi civilians including women
and children, when the driver of a van failed to stop at a
checkpoint. The Pentagon reported 7 killed.
(AP, 4/1/03)(SFC, 4/1/03, p.A1)
2003 Mar 31, NBC said it
severed its relations with reporter Peter Arnett after he told Iraqi
television that the US war plan against Saddam Hussein had failed.
Arnett was quickly hired by London's Daily Mirror.
(AP, 3/31/03)(WSJ, 4/1/03, p.B1)
2003 Mar 31, The DJIA fell 153
to 7992.
(SFC, 4/1/03, p.C1)
2003 Mar 31, Harold Scott
MacDonald Coxeter (b.1907), British-born mathematician, died. He
pioneered the study of higher-dimensional shapes called polytopes.
In 2006 Siobhan Roberts authored “King of Infinite Space.”
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Scott_MacDonald_Coxeter)
2003 Mar 31, Britain and the US
signed a new Extradition Treaty.
(http://tinyurl.com/hbdpj)(http://eurealitshome.com/blog/?p=1086)
2003 Mar 31, In Bolivia rescue
officials struggled to reach victims buried by a landslide that
roared through Chima, a gold-mining town in Bolivia's tropical
lowlands, killing an estimated 300-400 people.
(AP, 4/1/03)(SFC, 4/1/03, p.A8)(AP, 4/2/03)
2003 Mar 31, Hong Kong
authorities quarantined more than 200 other residents in an
apartment block in an effort to contain the SARS virus.
(AP, 3/31/03)
2003 Mar 31, In eastern
Indonesia mudslides triggered by flash floods on Flores Island
killed 48 people with 28 reported missing.
(AP, 4/2/03)(AP, 4/5/03)
2003 Mar 31, In Tehran, Iran, a
pickup truck with extra fuel crashed into the British Embassy in an
apparent suicide attack. Police called it an accident.
(SFC, 4/1/03, p.A3)
2003 Mar 31, In Macedonia the
EU began its first military operation by taking over peacekeeping
duties from NATO.
(AP, 3/31/03)
2003 Mar 31, In southern
Pakistan gunmen in paramilitary uniforms shot dead 12 people and
wounded 26 others in an attack linked to a tribal feud.
(AP, 3/31/03)
2004 Mar 31, Air America Radio
went live in 3 of largest US markets with a left-leaning,
round-the-clock, talk format featuring Al Franken and Janeane
Garofalo. Air America was conceived by Anita and Sheldon Drobny of
Chicago. The idea was purchased by Guam entrepreneurs Evan M. Cohen
and Rex Sorensen, who resigned May 5.
(SFC, 3/31/04, p.C1)(WSJ, 6/21/04, p.A1)
2004 Mar 31, The US Navy closed
Naval Station Roosevelt Roads, its last base in Puerto Rico. It was
transferred to a special naval agency that will coordinate the
closing process. The base had been used for 6 decades to keep watch
over the Caribbean.
(AP, 1/6/04)(AP, 4/2/04)
2004 Mar 31, In Fallujah, Iraq,
jubilant residents dragged the charred corpses of 4 American private
security guards, from Blackwater Security Consulting, through the
streets and hanged them from a bridge spanning the Euphrates River.
5 American soldiers died in a roadside bombing nearby.
(AP, 3/31/04)(SFC, 4/1/04, p.A1)(SFC, 4/2/04,
p.A16)
2004 Mar 31, Lithuania's
highest court ruled that President Rolandas Paksas violated the
constitution by arranging citizenship for a businessman with alleged
mob ties, a verdict that will likely set the stage for an
impeachment vote.
(AP, 3/31/04)
2004 Mar 31, The International
Court of Justice ruled that the United States violated the rights of
51 Mexicans on death row and ordered their cases be reviewed.
(AP, 3/31/04)
2004 Mar 31, OPEC voted to cut
oil production by 4.1%.
(SFC, 4/1/04, p.C1)
2004 Mar 31, The US suspended
$26 million in aid to Serbia for refusal to give up war crimes
fugitives.
(WSJ, 4/1/04, p.A1)
2004 Mar 31, In Sudan security
police detained Hassan Turabi, the leading Islamic opposition
leader, 3 days after members of his party were accused of conspiring
to topple the government.
(AP, 3/31/04)
2005 Mar 31, A US presidential
commission reported that US intelligence agencies were dead wrong in
their prewar assessment of Iraq’s nuclear, biological and chemical
weapons.
(SFC, 4/1/05, p.A1)
2005 Mar 31, A US Commerce
Dept. study on Internet traffic, ordered in 1998, was published
under the title “Signposts in Cyberspace.”
(SFC, 4/1/05, p.C3)
2005 Mar 31, The World Bank
confirmed Paul Wolfowitz as its new president.
(WSJ, 4/1/05, p.A1)
2005 Mar 31, South Carolina
defeated Saint Joseph's, 60-57, in the NIT championship game.
(AP, 3/31/06)
2005 Mar 31, Terri Schiavo
(41), the severely brain-damaged woman who spent 15 years connected
to a feeding tube in an epic legal and medical battle that went all
the way to the White House and Congress, died in Florida, 13 days
after the tube was removed.
(AP, 3/31/05)(SFC, 4/1/05, p.A1)
2005 Mar 31, Frank Perdue,
businessman, died in Salisbury, Maryland. He transformed his
father’s backyard egg business into one of the nation's largest
poultry processors using the folksy slogan, "It takes a tough man to
make a tender chicken."
(AP, 4/1/05)(SFC, 4/2/05, p.B5)
2005 Mar 31, A US C-130
airplane crashed near the remote village of Rovie and all 9
Americans onboard were killed in mountainous southern Albania during
a joint exercise.
(AP, 4/1/05)
2005 Mar 31, It was reported
that Shirin Gul (39), an Afghan housewife, stood accused with her
lover and son (18) of murdering 27 men over the last 4 years in
order to sell their cars across the border in Pakistan.
(SFC, 3/31/05, p.A3)
2005 Mar 31, In Brazil a
massacre in Nova Iguacu, outside of Rio, left 29 people dead. The
next day state officials said they might have been carried out by
police incensed by investigations of brutality and corruption by
"bad" cops. In 2006 a court convicted Carlos Jorge Carvalho (32) a
state police officer, of taking part in the Baixada massacre. In
2009 ex-officer Julio Cesar de Paula was sentenced to 480
years in prison and ex-officer Marcos Siqueira Costa to 543 years
for homicide and belonging to a criminal organization. The length of
the sentences was largely symbolic because under Brazilian law no
one can serve more than 30 years in prison.
(AP, 4/1/05)(SFC, 6/24/05, p.A16)(AP,
8/23/06)(AP, 9/16/09)
2005 Mar 31, Alberta repaid the
last of its debt and became Canada’s only borrowing-free province.
(www.gov.ab.ca/home/index.cfm?Page=852)(www.td.com/economics/budgets/ab05.jsp)
2005 Mar 31, The president of
Ecuador's Supreme Court annulled corruption charges against former
President Abdala Bucaram, paving the way for his possible return
from political asylum in Panama.
(AP, 4/1/05)
2005 Mar 31, The EU head office
said it will seek to impose additional sanctions of up to 15 percent
on US products to punish Washington for failing to repeal an
antidumping law ruled illegal by the World Trade Organization.
(AP, 3/31/05)
2005 Mar 31, Guyana police
found American missionaries Richard Hicks (42) and his wife Charlene
Hicks (58) slain at a farm they rented in southwestern Guyana near
the border with Brazil. In 2008 Guyana police issued arrest warrants
for two Brazilians accused of the killings. Peter Marare and Aleiman
Cassiano Eligenio, who were ranch hands on the couple's farm, faced
one count of murder each.
(AP, 4/1/05)(AP, 8/6/08)
2005 Mar 31, India's PM said
India and Mauritius are moving toward a free trade agreement to
boost the island's threatened trade portfolio and help India tap
into African markets.
(AP, 3/31/05)
2005 Mar 31, A suicide bomber
blew up his car south of Kirkuk, killing two Iraqi army soldiers and
three bystanders. A second car bomber attacked a joint U.S.-Iraqi
patrol in the center of Samarra, killing three people and injuring
more than a dozen others. Bombings and ambushes across Iraq left at
least a dozen Iraqis and one US soldier dead.
(AP, 3/31/05)(SFC, 4/1/05, p.A3)
2005 Mar 31, Rho on the
outskirts of Milan, Italy, inaugurated a trade fair over the site of
a polluted refinery closed in 1992. The site featured a new
structure by Massimilian Fuksas.
(Econ, 4/2/05, p.61)
2005 Mar 31, The World Bank
approved financing support for the controversial $1.2 billion Nam
Theun 2 dam in Laos.
(WSJ, 4/1/05, p.A8)
2005 Mar 31, Two Lithuanian
illusionists have begun an attempt to break the record for staying
inside a giant ice cube, set by US magician David Blaine in 2000
when he spent nearly 62 hours inside a block of ice.
(AFP, 4/1/05)
2005 Mar 31, In Palestine
Mahmoud Abbas ordered a crackdown on Ramallah militants after a
group of gunmen fired at his compound in a sign of escalating
tensions.
(AP, 3/31/05)
2005 Mar 31, A Rwandan Hutu
militia group, the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda,
denounced the Hutu-orchestrated 1994 genocide in the African country
and announced it was stopping its fighting in the region.
(AP, 3/31/05)
2005 Mar 31, Zimbabweans waited
in long lines to vote in parliamentary elections that President
Robert Mugabe hopes will prove the legitimacy of a regime.
(AP, 3/31/05)
2005 Mar 31, After weeks of
often bitter negotiations, the UN Security Council approved a
resolution to refer Sudanese war crimes suspects to the
International Criminal Court, agreeing to major concessions demanded
by United States.
(AP, 4/1/05)
2006 Mar 31, President Bush,
closing a three-nation NAFTA summit, defended requiring secure
documents from border-crossing Canadians and pushed Mexico to
prevent more of its people from illegally entering America.
(AP, 3/31/06)
2006 Mar 31, Auto parts maker
Delphi Corp. moved to void its U.S. labor contracts, cut up to 8,500
salaried workers and close or sell a third of its plants globally as
it attempts to slash costs and restructure in order to exit
bankruptcy.
(Reuters, 3/31/06)
2006 Mar 31, A provincial
governor said Afghan authorities have detained a border police
commander from the Achakzai tribe accused in the killings of 17
Pakistanis on March 21. Taliban insurgents raided several police
posts in Helmand province and six of the attackers were killed. A
suicide car-bomber was killed when he blew himself up as he tried to
ram his vehicle into an Afghan army convoy in Kandahar province.
(AP, 3/31/06)(Reuters, 3/31/06)(SSFC, 7/30/06,
p.A18)
2006 Mar 31, Australian police
arrested and charged three men with alleged links with a terrorist
organization after counter-terrorism teams swooped on Melbourne's
northern suburbs.
(Reuters, 3/31/06)
2006 Mar 31, In Austria
Gertraud Arzberger (33), who stuffed the bodies of two of her four
newborn infants in a freezer and entombed two others in plastic
buckets filled with cement, was convicted of three counts of murder
and sentenced to life imprisonment. Her live-in companion, Johannes
Genser (39), was convicted as an accessory and was sentenced to 15
years.
(AP, 3/31/06)
2006 Mar 31, A lucky Belgian
won the jackpot of 75,753,123 euros (53 million pounds) in the
European lottery EuroMillions.
(Reuters, 4/1/06)
2006 Mar 31, Military and
police forces took control of Bolivia's major airports, one day
after hundreds of striking airline workers blocked runways and
disrupted flights to three airports.
(AP, 3/31/06)
2006 Mar 31, A plane carrying
19 people crashed in a mountainous region outside Rio de Janeiro,
killing all aboard. A small LET 410 twin-engine plane belonging to
the local Team airline went missing about 20 minutes after leaving
the city of Macae.
(AP, 4/1/06)
2006 Mar 31, In China Hu Jia, a
prominent AIDS activist, said he would sue the government for
improperly detaining him. Jia, released on March 28, accused Chinese
security forces of abducting and holding him for 41 days.
(AP, 4/1/06)
2006 Mar 31, French President
Jacques Chirac offered to soften a labor law that makes it easier to
fire young workers, but the student and labor leaders who have
organized nationwide strikes rejected his compromise and repeated
calls for the measure's repeal.
(AP, 3/31/06)
2006 Mar 31, Indonesia said it
has confirmed its 23rd bird flu fatality by tests carried out by the
World Health Organization (WHO). Local tests showed another patient
is infected.
(AP, 3/31/06)
2006 Mar 31, The air force
chief of the elite Revolutionary Guards said Iran successfully
test-fired a new missile, the Fajir-3, with the ability to avoid
radar and hit several targets simultaneously.
(AP, 3/31/06)(SFC, 4/3/06, p.A3)
2006 Mar 31, In western Iran 3
strong earthquakes and several aftershocks reduced villages to
rubble, killing 70 people and injuring about 1,200 others.
(AP, 3/31/06)(AP, 3/31/07)
2006 Mar 31, In Iraq a mortar
round slammed into a street in northeastern Baghdad, killing three
women when shrapnel hit their home, and soldiers discovered the
bullet-riddled bodies of six men wearing handcuffs in western
Baghdad. Gunmen attacked a minibus carrying Shiites northeast of
Baghdad, killing six men and wounding one woman. At least 18 other
people were killed elsewhere, including three ice cream vendors and
a butcher, many in drive-by shootings.
(AP, 3/31/06)(AP, 4/1/06)
2006 Mar 31, Japan's opposition
party suffered a fresh humiliation when its leadership resigned en
masse over a fake e-mail scandal, handing PM Junichiro Koizumi an
uncontested grip on power in his last six months in office.
(AP, 3/31/06)
2006 Mar 31, Jordanian health
officials announced the kingdom's first human case of the bird flu
in a worker (31) believed to have contracted the deadly strain in
his home village in Egypt.
(AP, 3/31/06)
2006 Mar 31, Abu Yousef Abu
Quka, a top commander of a small militant Palestinian group, was
killed when his car mysteriously exploded in flames. A shootout
between rival Palestinian factions erupted shortly after the blast.
(AP, 3/31/06)
2006 Mar 31, A Portuguese court
convicted 96 people, including 81 police officers, in a corruption
case involving bribes for dismissed traffic fines.
(AP, 3/31/06)
2006 Mar 31, Prosecutors in
Warsaw filed charges against Poland's last communist leader, Gen.
Wojciech Jaruzelski, in connection with his imposition of martial
law in 1981 as the Soviet-backed regime tried to crush the
Solidarity pro-democracy movement.
(AP, 3/31/06)
2006 Mar 31, The EU gave Serbia
an extra month to hand over genocide suspect Ratko Mladic or face
suspension of its talks on closer EU ties, after being reassured of
progress in the manhunt.
(AFP, 3/31/06)
2006 Mar 31, In Sri Lanka the
ruling coalition won an overwhelming victory in local elections,
according to results released by the government, a result seen as an
endorsement of the president's negotiations with Tamil Tiger rebels.
(AP, 3/31/06)
2006 Mar 31, Swiss prosecutors
said they have filed charges against 19 former top executives and
board members of the defunct Swissair for their part in the national
airline's 2001 bankruptcy.
(AP, 3/31/06)
2006 Mar 31, In Tonga Dr. Fred
Sevele agreed to serve as PM, making him the first commoner to lead
the government in living memory.
(www.taimiotonga.com/Taimi/News.asp?db=1&N_ID=448)(Econ,
3/17/07, p.47)
2006 Mar 31, In Turkey a bomb
hidden in a garbage can exploded near an Istanbul bus stop, killing
a street vendor and injuring 13 people. Fighting between Turkish
soldiers and Kurdish guerrillas killed a 3-year-old boy and brought
to 7 the number of fatalities in the 4th day of clashes.
(AP, 3/31/06)(SFC, 4/1/06, p.A5)
2007 Mar 31, President Bush
again came to the defense of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales,
under criticism for his role in the firing of federal prosecutors,
calling him "honorable and honest."
(AP, 3/31/08)
2007 Mar 31, President Bush
called for the release of 15 British sailors and marines held by
Iran, calling their capture by Tehran "inexcusable behavior." The
crew members were released on April 4.
(AP, 3/31/08)
2007 Mar 31, Nestle Purina
PetCare Co. said it was recalling all sizes and varieties of its
Alpo Prime Cuts in Gravy wet dog food with specific date codes.
Purina said a limited amount of the food contained a contaminated
wheat gluten from China.
(AP, 3/31/07)
2007 Mar 31, Berkeley Iceland
closed in Berkeley, Ca., after 66 years of operation.
(SSFC, 4/1/07, p.D1)
2007 Mar 31, Paul Watzlawick
(b.1921), Austrian-born pioneering psychotherapist, died in Palo
Alto, Ca. He held that people created their own misery by trying to
force self-defeating solutions to trivial problems of the ego. His
22 books included “The Situation Is Hopeless but not Serious: The
Pursuit of Unhappiness” (1993).
(SFC, 4/4/07, p.B7)
2007 Mar 31, Luanda, Angola,
built for half a million people was now home for at least 4 million,
many of whom fled there during the civil war.
(Econ, 3/31/07, p.58)
2007 Mar 31, It was reported
that Antarctica held about 90% of the world’s ice.
(Econ, 3/31/07, p.85)
2007 Mar 31, In Argentina
authorities said rising rivers due to 5 days of rain in three
provinces have forced some 38,000 people to flee their homes. The
floodwaters have claimed 7 lives.
(AP, 4/1/07)
2007 Mar 31, At least 22
Islamists were arrested in overnight raids as Bangladesh
strengthened security nationwide.
(AFP, 3/31/07)
2007 Mar 31, In Brazil air
traffic controllers protesting working conditions ended their
one-day strike after the government agreed to their demands.
(AP, 4/1/07)
2007 Mar 31, Janjaweed
militiamen killed up to 400 people in the volatile eastern border
region near Sudan, leaving an "apocalyptic" scene of mass graves and
destruction. Chadian officials initially said 65 people had died,
but added that the toll was sure to rise.
(AP, 4/10/07)
2007 Mar 31, In Eritrea a ban
on female circumcision went into effect. A health survey by
Eritrea's government in 2002 found 62 percent of circumcised women
in the Red Sea state had the procedure done before their first
birthday. Less than one percent had been performed by trained health
professionals.
(Reuters, 4/5/07)
2007 Mar 31, EU foreign
ministers backed an Arab peace initiative and agreed to engage with
ministers of the new Palestinian national unity government who are
not members of the Islamist Hamas movement.
(AP, 3/31/07)
2007 Mar 31, A parked car
exploded near a hospital in Baghdad's main Shiite district, the
deadliest in a series of bombings that killed at least nine people
and wounded dozens in Iraq.
(AP, 3/31/07)
2007 Mar 31, A report said
Malaysia's top anti-corruption official, who is facing a police
investigation into graft allegations against him, will not have his
contract renewed.
(AP, 3/31/07)
2007 Mar 31, In southern
Nigeria gunmen kidnapped a British oil worker from an offshore oil
rig.
(AP, 3/31/07)
2007 Mar 31, Pakistan
successfully tested a short-range, nuclear-capable missile.
Avalanches struck two villages in a remote part of northwest
Pakistan, killing at least 29 people and leaving 14 others missing.
(AP, 3/31/07)(AP, 4/1/07)
2007 Mar 31, In Somalia
artillery fire and mortar shells rained down on Mogadishu as
government troops and their Ethiopian allies continued a major
offensive to quash a growing insurgency by Islamic militants. A
Ugandan soldier was killed by artillery fire in Mogadishu, marking
the first death among African Union peacekeepers deployed here.
(AP, 3/31/07)(AFP, 4/1/07)
2007 Mar 31, In western Sudan
at least 62 people were killed and 21 wounded in an attack on an
Arab tribe in the Darfur region.
(AFP, 4/1/07)
2007 Mar 31, In Zimbabwe the
body of Edward Chikombo, an independent journalist, was found. He
had been missing since March 29. A lawyer for another reporter
arrested under sweeping media laws said he was assaulted and
tortured in custody. Chikombo had conveyed the picture of Morgan
Tsvangirai’s battered head (see March 24) to the wider world. On
April 6 Zimbabwe police opened a murder investigation into his
death.
(AP, 4/6/07)(Econ, 10/9/10, p.36)
2008 Mar 31, The Bush
administration proposed the most far-ranging overhaul of the
financial regulatory system since the stock market crash of 1929 and
the ensuing Great Depression. Alphonso Jackson, the Bush
administration's top housing official, under criminal investigation
and intense pressure from Democratic critics, announced he is
quitting.
(AP, 3/31/08)
2008 Mar 31, Gregg Bergersen
(51), a Pentagon weapons analyst, pleaded guilty to giving
classified information about US and Taiwanese military
communications systems to Tai Kuo, a New Orleans furniture salesman
working with the Chinese government.
(WSJ, 4/1/08, p.A2)
2008 Mar 31, The US investment
banking company Lehman Brothers sued the Japanese trading company
Marubeni, seeking to recover $350 million in financing it says was
obtained fraudulently.
(AP, 3/31/08)
2008 Mar 31, American director
Jules Dassin (96), whose Greek wife Melina Mercouri starred in his
hit movie "Never on Sunday" and six more of his films, died at an
Athens hospital.
(AP, 3/31/08)
2008 Mar 31, A clash in
southern Afghanistan killed a Danish soldier and wounded two others.
A separate attack on a NATO patrol killed two British troops. an
airstrike killed three men irrigating land close to a road in
Kandahar province. The men may have been mistaken for militants
planting roadside bombs. In Helmand province police arrested Mullah
Naqibullah, a senior Taliban commander who has escaped twice from
Afghan prisons. Naqibullah was nabbed during a clash that left three
insurgents dead.
(AP, 3/31/08)(AP, 4/1/08)
2008 Mar 31, Some of England's
most sacred soil was disturbed for the first time in more than four
decades as archaeologists worked to solve the enduring riddle of
Stonehenge: When and why was the prehistoric monument built?
(AP, 3/31/08)
2008 Mar 31, Chad's state radio
announced that the president has pardoned six French aid workers
convicted of kidnapping 103 children.
(AP, 3/31/08)
2008 Mar 31, Chinese President
Hu Jintao presided over the re-lighting of the Olympic torch in
Beijing, signaling the start of an around-the-world torch relay that
already has become a magnet for protesters.
(AP, 3/31/08)
2008 Mar 31, Chinese
authorities arrested suspects in four arson and murder cases
stemming from anti-government riots that engulfed the Tibetan
capital in mid-March.
(AP, 3/31/08)
2008 Mar 31, New President Raul
Castro's government has lifted a ban on Cubans staying at hotels
previously reserved for foreigners, ending another restriction that
had been especially irksome to citizens.
(AP, 3/31/08)
2008 Mar 31, In Iraq the
fortified Green Zone came under fresh attack, less than 24 hours
after anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr told his fighters
to stand down following a week of clashes with government forces.
Near Buhriz unknown gunmen in a car attacked a checkpoint manned by
US-backed Sunni fighters. Four of the fighters were killed.
(AP, 3/31/08)
2008 Mar 31, Jerusalem's city
hall has announced a plan to construct 600 new apartments in the
Pisgat Zeev neighborhood of east Jerusalem.
(AP, 3/31/08)
2008 Mar 31, Scientists in
Japan reported that they have designed artificial molecules that
when used with rats successfully reversed liver cirrhosis, a serious
chronic disease in humans that until now can only be cured by
transplants.
(Reuters, 3/31/08)
2008 Mar 31, Malaysia's Islamic
opposition party delivered a protest note to the Netherlands'
embassy over the release of an anti-Islam movie by a maverick Dutch
lawmaker, while hard-line Muslims in neighboring Indonesia demanded
the death of the filmmaker.
(AP, 3/31/08)
2008 Mar 31, In Mexico Juana
Barraza (50), a former female wrestler who terrorized Mexico City as
the "Little Old Lady Killer," was sentenced to 759 years in jail for
killing 16 elderly women.
(AP, 3/31/08)
2008 Mar 31, Turkey's top court
decided to put the Islamist-rooted ruling party on trial for alleged
anti-secular activity, in a case that could threaten national
stability and Ankara's bid to join the EU. Clashes between Turkish
troops and Kurdish rebels left nine rebels and three soldiers dead
in Turkey's southeast.
(AFP, 3/31/08)(AP, 4/1/08)
2008 Mar 31, Zimbabwe's
opposition Movement for Democratic Change and President Robert
Mugabe's ruling ZANU-PF were on level-pegging, as the results
trickled in from a weekend general election. The MDC's own tally of
votes in 128 of the 210 parliamentary seats showed that its leader
Tsvangirai had secured 60 percent of votes against 30 for Mugabe in
the presidential race.
(AFP, 3/31/08)
2009 Mar 31, The US Government
Accountability Office released a report saying 4 countries
designated a terrorism sponsors received $55 million from a US
supported program promoting the peaceful use of nuclear energy under
the IAEA’s Technical Cooperation program. Between 1997 and 2007 Iran
received over $15 million, $14 million went to Syria, while Sudan
and Cuba received over $11 million each.
(WSJ, 3/31/09, p.A3)
2009 Mar 31, The US State
Department said the United States will seek election to the UN Human
Rights Council this year, announcing the Obama administration's
latest reversal of former President George W. Bush's foreign
policies.
(AP, 3/31/09)
2009 Mar 31, The US Congress
passed the Edward Kennedy Serve America Act, a sweeping overhaul of
the 1993 national service program. It tripled the size of AmeriCorps
from 75,000 positions to 250,000.
(Econ, 4/11/09, p.30)
2009 Mar 31, Fritz Henderson,
GM's new chief executive said that more of the automaker's plants
could close and bankruptcy is "more probable" as it works to meet
new, tougher requirements for government aid. In his first news
conference as CEO, Henderson said he expects the company would "need
to take further measures" beyond the 5 plants the company said it
would shutter when it submitted a restructuring plan to the
government last month.
(AP, 4/1/09)
2009 Mar 31, Sun-Times Media
Group, the publisher of the Chicago Sun Times, filed Chapter 11
bankruptcy, becoming the 5th newspaper company to file for
protection since December.
(WSJ, 4/1/09, p.B4)
2009 Mar 31, At the Hague
Afghan President Hamid Karzai and US Secretary of State Hillary
Rodham Clinton offered an olive branch to Taliban fighters who
reject al-Qaida and pressed an international conference for help in
strengthening Afghanistan's security forces.
(AP, 3/31/09)
2009 Mar 31, In southern
Afghanistan foreign and Afghan troops killed 30 Taliban fighters and
wounded 17 others during a series of overnight clashes, while a
roadside bomb killed the mayor of eastern Khost city. A member of
the Kandahar provincial council of religious clerics was shot dead
while going home after prayers. A suicide bomber tried to attack a
police post on the border with Iran but blew himself up prematurely
when police warned him to stop.
(AP, 3/31/09)(AP, 4/1/09)
2009 Mar 31, Raul Alfonsin
(b.1927), former Argentine president (1983-1989), died. He guided
his country's return to democracy following a military dictatorship
that left thousands missing.
(AP,
4/1/09)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raul_Alfons%C3%ADn)
2009 Mar 31, In Brazil the
state government of Rio de Janeiro said it will build 7 miles of
concrete walls around some of its biggest slums in an effort to halt
deforestation of the jungle surrounding the metropolis.
(SFC, 4/1/09, p.A2)
2009 Mar 31, Sir Sacheverell
Reresby Sitwell (81) died in London. He restored the stately home of
his famously eccentric family to its former glory. In 1965 Reresby
Sitwell inherited Renishaw Hall in Derbyshire, the family seat since
1625. Sitwell was the elder son of Sacheverell Sitwell, who with his
brother Osbert and sister Edith were famed for their literary talent
and their quirks.
(AP, 4/2/09)
2009 Mar 31, In Cambodia Kaing
Guek Eav (aka Duch), the chief Khmer Rouge torturer, formally
apologized for the deaths of more than 14,000 people at S-21 prison,
the first Pol Pot cadre to accept blame for crimes committed by the
regime 30 years ago.
(Reuters, 3/31/09)
2009 Mar 31, In China and
official said police have arrested nine people and revoked the
license of a livestock market owner in a case involving pork tainted
with a chemical that made 70 people sick in Guangzhou, southern
China's biggest city. Investigators determined the pork was tainted
with clenbuterol and ractopamine, banned chemicals used to make
animals develop more muscle and less fat.
(AP, 3/31/09)
2009 Mar 31, Twelve Egyptian
laborers headed for jobs in Jordan were killed and 35 others injured
when their bus overturned in the Sinai peninsula.
(AP, 3/31/09)
2009 Mar 31, Angry French
workers facing layoffs at a Caterpillar factory briefly detained
four of their bosses at the US manufacturer's plant in the Alps to
protest job cuts.
(AP, 3/31/09)
2009 Mar 31, Germany's top
security official banned the Homeland-Faithful German Youth
(HDJ), a far-right group, on the ground that it organizes
seemingly harmless activities to promote racist and Nazi ideology
among children and young people.
(AP, 3/31/09)
2009 Mar 31, In Honduras
assailants stopped journalist Rafael Munguia (36) as he was driving
night in the city of San Pedro Sula, dragged him from his vehicle
and shot him at least eight times. Munguia had recently been
reporting on the country's violent crime wave.
(AP, 4/2/09)
2009 Mar 31, Volkswagen opened
a new plant in western India, pledging to make further inroads into
the country's growing auto market.
(AFP, 3/31/09)
2009 Mar 31, In Iraq a suicide
truck bomber plowed through a sandbag barrier to strike a police
station in the northern city of Mosul, killing at least eight people
and wounding 12. The British military transferred over coalition
command of the oil-rich southern province of Basra to the US. A US
Marine died as the result of a non-combat incident in Anbar
province. A US soldier died in a "noncombat-related incident" in
Salahuddin province.
(AP, 3/31/09)(AP, 4/1/09)
2009 Mar 31, Israel’s
parliament approved Benjamin Netanyahu as prime minister. His
Cabinet of 29 ministers was a among the largest in Israel’s history.
Israeli forces attacked a group of Palestinian militants along the
Gaza-Israel border, killing two gunmen and wounding three others in
one of the worst flare-ups of violence since Israel ended its
offensive in the territory more than two months ago.
(SFC, 4/1/09, p.A5)(AP, 3/31/09)
2009 Mar 31, Italian police
said they have arrested Mario Chiesa for his alleged role in a scam
involving garbage disposal in Milan and elsewhere in northern Italy.
He was one of eight people apprehended, with two others being placed
under house arrest. Chiesa was arrested in 1992 and convicted for
his involvement in the Clean Hands corruption scandals. He served
his sentences doing socially useful work and was freed in 2000.
(AP, 3/31/09)
2009 Mar 31, Madagascar's
neighbors suspended the impoverished nation from their regional
development and democracy club, and threatened to take further steps
if the Indian Ocean island's ousted president is not restored to
power.
(AP, 3/31/09)
2009 Mar 31, Mexico’s Pres.
Calderon revealed that his country had secured a $47 billion line of
credit from the IMF. It was the 1st country to be approved for the
new Flexible Credit Line, which does not require a country to make
policy changes.
(WSJ, 4/2/09, p.A6)(Econ, 4/4/09, p.76)
2009 Mar 31, Mexican
authorities said police in northern Mexico caught a gang that
allegedly stole oil from state-owned pipelines and smuggled it
across the border to sell it to US refineries.
(AP, 4/1/09)
2009 Mar 31, Pakistan's Supreme
Court restored the provincial government of a main opposition leader
in the Punjab, easing political turmoil. The decision by a
five-member bench returned Shahbaz Sharif to his post as chief
minister of Punjab, but it did not end court reviews of a case
questioning the eligibility of Sharif and his brother Nawaz for
office.
(AP, 3/31/09)
2009 Mar 31, Baitullah Mehsud,
the commander of the Pakistani Taliban, claimed responsibility for
the March 30 deadly assault on a Pakistani police academy and said
the group was planning a terrorist attack on the White House that
would "amaze" the world. A spokesman from Fedayeen al-Islam, a
little-known militant group linked to the Pakistani Taliban, also
claimed credit for the attack and a similar ambush-style attack
against the Sri Lankan cricket team earlier this month in Lahore.
(AFP, 3/31/09)
2009 Mar 31, Peru’s President
Alan Garcia reversed course and accepted a donation from Germany for
a museum honoring those killed in Peru's 20-year armed conflict with
Maoist Shining Path guerrillas.
(AP, 3/31/09)
2009 Mar 31, In Qatar
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez sought Arab support for a proposed
oil-backed currency to challenge the US dollar in his latest swipe
at Washington's dominance in global financial affairs.
(AP, 3/31/09)
2009 Mar 31, In Russia
prominent human rights activist Lev Ponomaryov (67) was beaten
outside his Moscow home by unknown attackers. His daughter, Yelena
Liptser, said she believed Ponomaryov, the head of the All-Russia
Movement for Human Rights, was attacked because of his rights work
and his strident criticism of the Kremlin.
(AP, 4/1/09)
2009 Mar 31, In Moscow, Russia,
the hatch slammed shut behind six volunteers from Europe and Russia
who will spend three months isolated in a capsule to simulate
conditions for a manned mission to Mars.
(AFP, 3/31/09)
2009 Mar 31, Sri Lanka's Tamil
Tiger rebels appealed again for a halt to fighting in their war
against the government, though they denied they were on the brink of
defeat despite being backed into an ever-shrinking pocket of land.
(AP, 3/31/09)
2009 Mar 31, In Yemen Jan and
Heleen Janszen, a Dutch couple, were kidnapped in a suburb of Sanaa
and taken to a mountainous area near the capital. They were released
on April 14 after Yemen's government paid more than a quarter
million dollars in ransom.
(AFP, 3/31/09)(SFC, 4/1/09, p.A2)(AP, 4/14/09)
2010 Mar 31, President Barack
Obama announced an expansive new policy that could put oil and
natural gas platforms in waters along the southern Atlantic
coastline, the eastern Gulf of Mexico and part of Alaska.
(AP, 3/31/10)
2010 Mar 31, The US federal
government and environmental groups reached an agreement that will
end the ghost fleet of retired ships in Suisun Bay, Ca.
(SFC, 4/1/10, p.A1)
2010 Mar 31, The CalNeva casino
on the north shore of Lake Tahoe closed due to declining gambling
revenues.
(SFC, 4/1/10, p.C5)
2010 Mar 31, Flooding
across the US Northeast forced hundreds of residents from their
homes, knocked out sewage plants, and snarled traffic on major East
Coast routes as roads. Rhode Island endured the most severe damage
as the Pawtuxet reached 20.8 feet unleashing the worst flooding in
over 200 years.
(AP, 3/31/10)(Econ, 4/10/10, p.32)
2010 Mar 31, US Navy Lt. Steven
Zilberman's E-2C Hawkeye went down in the North Arabian Sea after it
"experienced mechanical malfunctions." Three other crew members
survived the crash without significant injuries.
(AP, 4/3/10)
2010 Mar 31, In southern
Afghanistan a bomb concealed on a bicycle killed 13 people, as the
Pentagon's top military officer said NATO forces hope to reverse the
Taliban's momentum in the south with an upcoming offensive in
Kandahar.
(AP, 3/31/10)
2010 Mar 31, In Antigua a judge
ruled Wednesday that PM Baldwin Spencer and two other lawmakers were
improperly elected last year, a decision potentially threatening the
governing party's narrow hold on power in this Caribbean country.
Earlier this month, Spencer's government announced that the
International Monetary Fund agreed to lend the country $124 million
over three years.
(AP, 3/31/10)
2010 Mar 31, In Belgium a
parliamentary committee unanimously voted to ban the wearing of
face-covering veils in public, a major step in the legislative
process that could make Belgium the first European country to impose
such a religious prohibition.
(AP, 3/31/10)
2010 Mar 31, US envoy Stephen
Rapp said the US has pledged $5 million to Cambodia's Khmer Rouge
tribunal amid the troubled court's attempts to address corruption
allegations.
(AFP, 3/31/10)
2010 Mar 31, In central China a
gas explosion at a mine killed 12 workers and trapped 32 underground
at the privately owned Guomin Mining Co. coal pit in Yichuan County,
Luoyang City.
(AP, 4/1/10)
2010 Mar 31, In Dagestan 2
suicide bombers struck near the border with Chechnya, killing 12
people.
(AP, 4/3/10)
2010 Mar 31, Nearly 50 donors
pledged $9.9 billion in reconstruction aid for Haiti at a UN donor
conference, but leaders and businessmen stressed private investment
would be the key to improving the lot of the hemisphere's poorest
nation.
(AP, 4/1/10)
2010 Mar 31, Six major world
powers agreed to begin putting together proposed new sanctions on
Iran over its suspect nuclear program after China dropped its
opposition.
(AP, 3/31/10)
2010 Mar 31, In Iraq gunmen
fatally shot Mohammed Chillab, a health ministry official, at his
home in Baghdad in the latest slaying apparently targeting
government employees. A mobile phone shop owner was gunned down and
killed as he was closing his store for the night.
(AP, 4/1/10)
2010 Mar 31, In Kashmir 4
Indian soldiers and 10 separatist guerrillas were killed in clashes,
the highest number of people killed in firefights in 24 hours in
recent months.
(AP, 4/1/10)
2010 Mar 31, In Mexico
authorities in the Gulf coast state of Tabasco announced that
Roberto Rivero Arana, the nephew of reputed Zetas gang leader
Heriberto Lazcano, was captured together with Daniel Perez, an
acting police chief of Ciudad del Carmen, accused of protecting the
Zetas. 4 severed human heads were found in Apatzingan, a town in the
western state of Michoacan. In Morelia, the Michoacan state capital,
police reported finding the bodies of 3 young men who had been shot
to death. Police in the border city of Nogales reported finding the
bullet-ridden bodies of 3 men, including a city transport official,
on a rural road along with three burned-out vehicles.
(AP, 4/1/10)
2010 Mar 31, Niger's police
director said police have arrested more than 600 people in an effort
to crackdown on recent crime and insecurity in the capital.
(AP, 3/31/10)
2010 Mar 31, Nigerian gunmen
kidnapped Chris Nnaji. a local employee of French oil group Total,
on his way to work in the country's oil hub of Port Harcourt.
(AFP, 4/1/10)
2010 Mar 31, In Pakistan US
missiles and fighting in the mountains killed up to 36 militants and
six Pakistani soldiers as violence swept the northwest tribal belt
bordering Afghanistan.
(AFP, 3/31/10)
2010 Mar 31, In southern Russia
2 suicide bombers, including one impersonating a police officer,
killed 12 people in Dagestan. PM Vladimir Putin said the blasts may
have been organized by the same militants who attacked the Moscow
subway. Russian police broke up anti-Kremlin protests in Moscow and
St. Petersburg, detaining dozens of demonstrators who had defied
bans in holding the rallies.
(AP, 3/31/10)
2010 Mar 31, Scotland and
Northern Ireland were battered by snow, gale force winds and
torrential rain, leaving thousands of people without power and
causing havoc on roads.
(AP, 3/31/10)
2010 Mar 31, In Spain flight
attendant Adriana Ricardo said attendants owed up to nine months'
wages by a grounded Spanish airline have posed nude for a calendar
to draw attention to their plight. Air Comet, run by the embattled
chairman of Spain's main employers' association CEOE, Gerardo
Ferran, filed for administration in December after a British court
impounded nine of its aircraft at the request of German bank HSH
Nordbank.
(Reuters, 3/31/10)
2010 Mar 31, Southern Sudan's
main political party withdrew its candidate from the country's
upcoming presidential election and said it will not contest
parliamentary and local polls in Darfur, a move that erodes the
credibility of Sudan's first multiparty election in decades.
(AP, 4/1/10)
2010 Mar 31, Swiss authorities
said they could not reopen a money-laundering case against the
Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari as long as he enjoys legal
immunity.
(AP, 3/31/10)
2010 Mar 31, Taiwan officials
lost contact with the 79-ton Jih-chun Tsai 68 fishing trawler and
the government feared the boat may have been hijacked by pirates off
the Somali coast.
(AP, 4/1/10)
2010 Mar 31, Google Inc. says
malicious software has been used to spy on Vietnamese computer users
opposed to a controversial bauxite mine in the Southeast Asian
country. Computer security firm McAfee said the perpetrators may be
linked to the communist government.
(AP, 3/31/10)
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