7th March: Today In History

Today is Tuesday, March 7th, the 66th day of 2017. There are 299 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History: 

Events:

1793:  During the French Revolutionary Wars, France declared war on Spain.

1850:  In a three-hour speech to the U.S. Senate, Daniel Webster of Massachusetts endorsed the Compromise of 1850 as a means of preserving the Union.

1876:  Alexander Graham Bell received a U.S. patent for his telephone.

1916:  Bavarian Motor Works (BMW) had its beginnings in Munich, Germany, as an airplane engine manufacturer.

1926:  The first successful trans-Atlantic radio-telephone conversations took place between New York and London.

2010:   Five hundred (500) people, mainly women and children were allegedly killed in overnight attacks in the three villages of Dogo Nahawa, Ratsat and Zot near the city of Jos. 

1936: Adolf Hitler ordered his troops to march into the Rhineland, thereby breaking the Treaty of Versailles and the Locarno Pact.

1945: during World War II, U.S. forces crossed the Rhine at Remagen, Germany, using the damaged but still usable Ludendorff Bridge.

1955: the first TV production of the musical "Peter Pan" starring Mary Martin aired on NBC.

1965:  A march by civil rights demonstrators was violently broken up at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, by state troopers and a sheriff's posse in what came to be known as "Bloody Sunday."

1967:  The musical “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown,” based on the “Peanuts” comic strips by Charles M. Schulz with Gary Burghoff in the title role, opened in New York’s Greenwich Village, beginning an off-Broadway run of 1,597 performances.

1975: the U.S. Senate revised its filibuster rule, allowing 60 senators to limit debate in most cases, instead of the previously required two-thirds of senators present.

1981: anti-government guerrillas in Colombia executed kidnapped American Bible translator Chester Bitterman, whom they'd accused of being a CIA agent.

1994: the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled that a parody that pokes fun at an original work can be considered "fair use." (The ruling concerned a parody of the Roy Orbison song "Oh, Pretty Woman" by the rap group 2 Live Crew.)

2007:  Atiku Abubakar was cleared to take part in the presidential poll, overturning a decision by the electoral commission to disqualify him.

Birthdays;

TV personality Willard Scott is 83.

International Motorsports Hall Of Famer Janet Guthrie is 79. 

Actor Daniel J. Travanti is 77.

Entertainment executive Michael Eisner is 75.

Rock musician Chris White (The Zombies) is 74.

Actor John Heard is 71.

Rock singer Peter Wolf is 71.

Rock musician Matthew Fisher (Procol Harum) is 71.

Pro Football Hall-of-Famer Franco Harris is 67.

Pro and College Football Hall-of-Famer Lynn Swann is 65.

Rhythm-and-blues singer-musician Ernie Isley(The Isley Brothers) is 65.

Rock musician Kenny Aronoff (BoDeans, John Mellencamp) is 64.

Actor Bryan Cranston is 61.

Actress Donna Murphy is 58.