21st March: Today In History

Today is Tuesday, March 21st, the 80th day of 2017. There are 285 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History:

Events:

1952:  The Moondog Coronation Ball, considered the first rock and roll concert, took place at Cleveland Arena.

1556:  Thomas Cranmer, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, was burned at the stake for heresy.

1685:  Composer Johann Sebastian Bach was born in Eisenach, Germany.

1804:  The French civil code, or the “Code Napoleon” as it was later called, was adopted.

1925:  Tennessee Gov. Austin Peay (pee) signed the Butler Act, which prohibited the teaching of the Theory of Evolution in public schools. (Tennessee repealed the law in 1967.)

1935:  Persia officially changed its name to Iran.

1946:  The recently created United Nations Security Council set up temporary headquarters at Hunter College in The Bronx, New York.

1957:  President Dwight D. Eisenhower and British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan began a four-day conference in Bermuda.

1963:   The Alcatraz federal prison island in San Francisco Bay was emptied of its last inmates and closed at the order of Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy.

1972:  The Supreme Court, in Dunn v. Blumstein, ruled that states may not require at least a year’s residency for voting eligibility.

1981:  Michael Donald, a black teenager in Mobile, Alabama, was abducted, tortured and killed by members of the Ku Klux Klan. (A lawsuit brought by Donald’s mother, Beulah Mae Donald, later resulted in a landmark judgment that bankrupted one Klan organization.)

1997:  President Bill Clinton and Russian President Boris Yeltsin wrapped up their summit in Helsinki, Finland, still deadlocked over NATO expansion, but able to agree on slashing nuclear weapons arsenals.

2006:  The social media website Twitter was established with the sending of the first “tweet” by co-founder Jack Dorsey, who wrote: “just setting up my twttr.”

Birthdays:

Actress Kathleen Widdoes is 78.

Songwriter Chip Taylor (“Wild Thing”) is 77.

Folk-pop singer/musician Keith Potger (The Seekers) is 76.

Actress Marie-Christine Barrault is 73.

Singer-musician Rose Stone (Sly and the Family Stone) is 72.

Actor Timothy Dalton is 71.

Singer Ray Dorset (Mungo Jerry) is 71.

Singer Eddie Money is 68.

Rock singer-musician Roger Hodgson (Supertramp) is 67.

Rock musician Conrad Lozano (Los Lobos) is 66.

Rhythm-and-blues singer Russell Thompkins Jr. (The Stylistics) is 66.

Comedy writer-performer Brad Hall is 59.

Actress Sabrina LeBeauf is 59.

Actor Gary Oldman is 59.