Today in History March 20

141 – 6th recorded perihelion passage of Halley’s Comet

1345 – Saturn/Jupiter/Mars-conjunction: thought “cause of plague epidemic”

1760 – Great Fire of Boston destroys 349 buildings

1815 – Napoleon enters Paris after escape from Elba, begins 100-day rule

1852 – Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” published

1861 – An earthquake completely destroys Mendoza, Argentina.

1890 – German emperor Wilhelm II fires republic Chancellor Otto Von Bismarck

1896 – Marines land in Nicaragua to protect US citizens

1920 – First flight from London to South Africa lands. The journey took 1½ months.

1934 – Rudolf Kuhnold demonstrates radar in Kiel Germany

1944 – Mount Vesuvius, Italy, erupts

1947 – 180 tonne blue whale (a record) caught in South Atlantic

1954 – First newspaper vending machine used (Columbia, Pennsylvania)

1968 – LBJ signs a bill removing gold backing from US paper money

1969 – Nixon proclaims he will end Vietnam war in 1970

1976 – Patricia Hearst convicted of armed robbery

1997 – Liggett admits cigarettes are addictive

	Ovid

Births

43 BC – Ovid, Roman poet (d. 17)

1828 – Henrik Ibsen, Norway, playwright (Peer Gynt, Hedda Gabler)

1873 – Sergei V Rachmaninov, Russian/US pianist/composer (Aleko)

1906 – Abraham Beame, (Mayor-D-NYC)

1922 – Carl Reiner, (2000 Year Old Man, Dick Van Dyke Show)

1925 – John D Erlichman, Nixon aide

1952 – Geoff Brabham, Australian racing driver

1413 – King Henry IV of England (1399-1413) dies at 45

1933 – Giuseppe Zangara, electrocuted for assassination attempt on FDR

1962 – Andrew E Douglass, Dendrochronologer (Study of Tree Rings), dies