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Highlight in History
On March 5, 1963, country music performers Patsy Cline, Cowboy Copas and Hawkshaw Hawkins died in the crash of their plane, a Piper Comanche, near Camden, Tenn., along with pilot Randy Hughes (Cline’s manager).
On this date
In 1770, the Boston Massacre took place as British soldiers who’d been taunted by a crowd of colonists opened fire, killing five people.
In 1868, the Senate was organized into a Court of Impeachment to decide charges against President Andrew Johnson, who was later acquitted.
In 1933, in German parliamentary elections, the Nazi Party won 44 percent of the vote; the Nazis joined with a conservative nationalist party to gain a slender majority in the Reichstag.
In 1946, Winston Churchill delivered his “Iron Curtain” speech at Westminster College in Fulton, Mo.
In 1953, Soviet dictator Josef Stalin died after three decades in power. Composer Sergei Prokofiev died in Moscow at age 61.
In 1979, NASA’s Voyager 1 space probe flew past Jupiter, sending back photographs of the planet and its moons.
In 1982, comedian John Belushi was found dead of a drug overdose in a rented bungalow in Hollywood; he was 33.
Ten years ago
In a blunt warning to the United States and Britain, the foreign ministers of France, Germany and Russia said they would block any attempt to get U.N. approval for war against Iraq.
Five years ago
John McCain, having sewn up the Republican presidential nomination, got a White House embrace from President George W. Bush, who praised the Arizona senator’s “incredible courage and strength of character and perseverance.”
One year ago
President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met at the White House, where Obama urged pressure and diplomacy to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear bomb while Netanyahu emphasized his nation’s right to a pre-emptive attack. Assailants waving the battle flag of al-Qaida gunned down 25 policemen in Iraq.
Iraqi town of Haditha. Songwriter Robert B. Sherman, 86, who’d collaborated with his brother Richard on such movie musicals as “Mary Poppins” and “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang,” died in London. “Lipstick Killer” William Heirens, 83, died in Chicago after serving more than six decades in prison.
