Today is Thursday, March 11, the 70th day of 2021. There are 295 days left in the year.
Today’s Highlight in History:
On March 11, 1918, what were believed to be the first confirmed U.S. cases of a deadly global flu pandemic were reported among U.S. Army soldiers stationed at Fort Riley, Kansas; 46 would die. (The worldwide outbreak of influenza claimed an estimated 20 to 40 million lives.)
On this date:
In 1862, during the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln removed Gen. George B. McClellan as general-in-chief of the Union armies, leaving him in command of the Army of the Potomac, a post McClellan also ended up losing.
In 1935, the Bank of Canada began operations, issuing its first series of bank notes.
In 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Lend-Lease Bill, providing war supplies to countries fighting the Axis.
In 1942, as Japanese forces continued to advance in the Pacific during World War II, U.S. Army Gen. Douglas MacArthur left the Philippines for Australia, where he vowed on March 20, “I shall return” — a promise he kept more than 2½ years later.
In 1955, Sir Alexander Fleming, the discoverer of penicillin, died in London at age 73.
In 1977, more than 130 hostages held in Washington, D.C., by Hanafi Muslims were freed after ambassadors from three Islamic nations joined the negotiations.
In 1985, Mikhail S. Gorbachev was chosen to succeed the late Konstantin U. Chernenko as general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party.
In 2004, ten bombs exploded in quick succession across the commuter rail network in Madrid, Spain, killing 191 people in an attack linked to al-Qaida-inspired militants.
In 2006, former Serb leader Slobodan Milosevic was found dead of a heart attack in his prison cell in the Netherlands, abruptly ending his four-year U.N. war crimes trial; he was 64.
Today’s Birthdays: Media mogul Rupert Murdoch is 90. Former ABC News correspondent Sam Donaldson is 87. Singer Bobby McFerrin is 71. Movie director Jerry Zucker is 71. Country singer Jimmy Fortune (The Statler Brothers) is 66. Singer Lisa Loeb is 53. Actor Terrence Howard is 52.Actor Johnny Knoxville is 50.
