Today in History

Today is Wednesday, March 13, the 74th day of 2024. There are 293 days left in the year.

Today’s highlight in history:

On March 13, 2013, Jorge Bergoglio of Argentina was elected pope, choosing the name Francis. he was the first pontiff from the Americas and the first from outside Europe in more than a millennium.

On this date:

In 1781, the seventh planet of the solar system, Uranus, was discovered by Sir William Herschel.

In 1862, President Abraham Lincoln signed a measure prohibiting Union military officers from returning fugitive slaves to their owners.

In 1925, the Tennessee General Assembly approved a bill prohibiting the teaching of the theory of evolution. (Gov. Austin Peay signed the measure on March 21; Tennessee repealed the law in 1967.

In 1933, banks in the U.S. began to reopen after a “holiday” declared by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

In 1938, famed attorney Clarence S. Darrow died in Chicago.

In 1943, financier and philanthropist J.P. Morgan Jr., 75, died in Boca Grande, Florida.

In 1946, U.S. Army Pfc. Sadao Munemori was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for sacrificing himself to save fellow soldiers from a grenade explosion in Seravezza, Italy; he was the only Japanese-American service member so recognized in the immediate aftermath of World War II.

In 1954, the Battle of Dien Bien Phu began during the First Indochina War as Viet Minh forces attacked French troops, who were defeated nearly two months later.

In 1995, two Americans working for U.S. defense contractors in Kuwait, David Daliberti and William Barloon, were seized by Iraq after they strayed across the border; sentenced to eight years in prison, both were freed later the same year.

In 1996, a gunman burst into an elementary school in Dunblane, Scotland, and opened fire, killing 16 children and one teacher before killing himself.

In 2011, the estimated death toll from Japan’s earthquake and tsunami climbed past 10,000 as authorities raced to combat the threat of multiple nuclear reactor meltdowns while hundreds of thousands of people struggled to find food and water.

In 2012, a ferry carrying more than 200 people collided with a cargo boat and sank just short of Dhaka, Bangladesh; most on board died.

In 2017, Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, once the world’s most-wanted fugitive known as “Carlos the Jackal,” appeared in a French court for a deadly 1974 attack on a Paris shopping arcade that killed two people. (He was convicted and sentenced to life in prison for the third time.)

In 2018, President Donald Trump abruptly dumped Secretary of State Rex Tillerson — via Twitter — and moved CIA Director Mike Pompeo from the role of America’s spy chief to its top diplomat.

In 2020, Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman, was fatally shot in her apartment in Louisville, Kentucky, during a botched raid by plainclothes narcotics detectives; no drugs were found, and the “no-knock” warrant used to enter by force was later found to be flawed.

In 2021, Marvelous Marvin Hagler, the middleweight boxing great whose title reign and career ended with a split-decision loss to “Sugar” Ray Leonard in 1987, died at age 66 at his New Hampshire home.

Today’s Birthdays: Jazz musician Roy Haynes is 99. Songwriter Mike Stoller is 91. Singer-songwriter Neil Sedaka is 85. R&B/gospel singer Candi Staton is 84. Opera singer Julia Migenes is 75. Actor William H. Macy is 74. Comedian Robin Duke is 70. Actor Dana Delany is 68. Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., is 67. Rock musician Adam Clayton (U2) is 64. Jazz musician Terence Blanchard is 62. Actor Christopher Collet is 56. Rock musician Matt McDonough (Mudvayne) is 55. Actor Annabeth Gish is 53. Actor Tracy Wells is 53. Rapper-actor Common is 52. Rapper Khujo (Goodie Mob, The Lumberjacks) is 52. Singer Glenn Lewis is 49. Actor Noel Fisher is 40. Singers Natalie and Nicole Albino (Nina Sky) are 40. Actor Emile Hirsch is 39. U.S. Olympic gold medal skier Mikaela Shiffrin is 29. Tennis star Coco Gauff is 20.