15th March: Today In History

Today is Wednesday, March 15th, the 74th day of 2017. There are 291 days left in the year.

Today's Highlight;

Events:

44 B.C., Roman dictator Julius Caesar was assassinated by a group of nobles that included Brutus and Cassius.

1767:  The seventh president of the United States, Andrew Jackson, was born in the Waxhaw settlement along the North Carolina-South Carolina border.

1820:  Maine became the 23rd state.

1917:  Czar Nicholas II abdicated in favor of his brother, Grand Duke Mikhail Alexandrovich, who declined the crown, marking the end of imperial rule in Russia.

1922:  Sultan Fuad I proclaimed himself the first king of modern Egypt.

1937:  America's first hospital blood bank was opened at Cook County Hospital in Illinois.

1944:  During World War II, Allied bombers again raided German-held Monte Cassino.

1956:  The Lerner and Loewe musical play "My Fair Lady," based on Bernard Shaw's "Pygmalion," opened on Broadway.

1964:  Actress Elizabeth Taylor married actor Richard Burton in Montreal; it was her fifth marriage, his second. (They divorced in 1974, remarried in 1975, then divorced again in 1976)

1977:  The U.S. House of Representatives began a 90-day closed-circuit test to determine the feasibility of showing its sessions on television. The situation comedy "Three's Company," starring John Ritter, Joyce DeWitt and Suzanne Somers, premiered on ABC-TV.

1985:  The first internet domain name, symbolics.com, was registered by the Symbolics Computer Corp. of Massachusetts.

1999:  An Amtrak train slammed into a steel-filled truck at a crossing in Bourbonnais, Illinois, killing 11 people.

2011:  The Syrian civil war had its beginnings with Arab Spring protests across the region that turned into an armed insurgency and eventually became a full-blown conflict.

Birthdays:

Nigerian Artist Olamide Is 28.

Musician DJ Fontana is 86.

Former astronaut Alan L. Bean is 85.

Supreme Court JusticeRuth Bader Ginsburg is 84.

Actor Judd Hirsch is 82.

Jazz musician Charles Lloyd is 79.

Rock musician Phil Lesh is 77.

SingerMike Love (The Beach Boys) is 76.

Rock singer-musician Sly Stone is 74.

Rock singer-musician Howard Scott (War; Lowrider Band) is 71.

Singer and composer Ry Cooder is 70.

Actor Craig Wasson is 63.

Rock singer Dee Snider (Twisted Sister) is 62.

Actor Joaquim de Almeida is 60.