13th March: Today In History

Today is Monday, March 13th, the 72nd day of 2017. There are 293 days left in the year.

Today's highlight:

Events;

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

1865:  Confederate President Jefferson Davis signed a measure allowing black slaves to enlist in the Confederate States Army with the promise they would be set free.

1901:  The 23rd President of the United States, Benjamin Harrison, died in Indianapolis at age 67.

1925:  The Tennessee General Assembly approved a bill prohibiting the teaching of the theory of evolution. (Gov. Austin Peay (pee) signed the measure on March 21.)

1933: Banks in the U.S. began to reopen after a "holiday" declared by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

1947:  The Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe musical "Brigadoon," about a Scottish village which magically reappears once every hundred years, opened on Broadway.

1964:  Bar manager Catherine "Kitty" Genovese, 28, was stabbed to death near her Queens, New York, home; the case gained notoriety over the supposed reluctance of Genovese's neighbors to respond to her cries for help.

1980:  Ford Motor Co. Chairman Henry Ford II announced he was stepping down, the same day a jury in Winamac, Indiana, found the company not guilty of reckless homicide in the fiery deaths of three young women in a Ford Pinto.

1997:  A jordanian soldier fired on Israeli junior high school girls on a field trip, killing seven of them. (The soldier, Cpl. Ahmed Daqamseh, was later sentenced by a military court to life in prison.)

2013:  Jorge Bergoglio of Argentina was elected pope, choosing the name Francis.

Birthdays;

Singer-songwriter Neil Sedaka is 78.

Actor William H. Macy is 67.

Actress Dana Delanyis 61.

Rock musician Adam Clayton (U2) is 57.

Jazz musician Terence Blanchard is 55.

Actor Christopher Collet is 49.

Actress Annabeth Gish is 46.

Actress Tracy Wells is 46.

Actor Danny Masterson is 41.

Actor Noel Fisher is 33.

Singers Natalie and Nicole Albino (Nina Sky) are 33.

Actor Emile Hirsch is 32.