Today is Thursday, March 18, the 77th day of 2021. There are 288 days left in the year.
Today’s Highlight in History:
On March 18, 1963, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Gideon v. Wainwright, ruled unanimously that state courts were required to provide legal counsel to criminal defendants who could not afford to hire an attorney on their own.
On this date:
In 1910, the first filmed adaptation of Mary Shelley’s novel “Frankenstein,” a silent short produced by Thomas Edison’s New York movie studio, was released.
In 1911, Irving Berlin’s first major hit, “Alexander’s Ragtime Band,” was first published by Ted Snyder & Co. of New York.
In 1922, Mohandas K. Gandhi was sentenced in India to six years’ imprisonment for civil disobedience. (He was released after serving two years.)
In 1925, the Tri-State Tornado struck southeastern Missouri, southern Illinois and southwestern Indiana, resulting in some 700 deaths.
In 1937, in America’s worst school disaster, nearly 300 people, most of them children, were killed in a natural gas explosion at the New London Consolidated School in Rusk County, Texas.
In 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed an executive order authorizing the War Relocation Authority, which was put in charge of interning Japanese-Americans, with Milton S. Eisenhower (the younger brother of Dwight D. Eisenhower) as its director.
In 1974, most of the Arab oil-producing nations ended their 5-month-old embargo against the United States that had been sparked by American support for Israel in the Yom Kippur War.
In 2017, Chuck Berry, rock ‘n’ roll’s founding guitar hero and storyteller who defined the music’s joy and rebellion in such classics as “Johnny B. Goode,” ″Sweet Little Sixteen” and “Roll Over Beethoven,” died at his home west of St. Louis at age 90.
In 2018, Vladimir Putin rolled to a crushing reelection victory for six more years as Russia’s president.
Today’s Birthdays: Nobel peace laureate and former South African president F.W. de Klerk is 85. Actor Brad Dourif is 71. Singer Irene Cara is 62. TV personality Mike Rowe is 59. Singer-actor Vanessa L. Williams is 58. Olympic gold medal speedskater Bonnie Blair is 57. Rapper-actor-talk show host Queen Latifah is 51. Rock singer Adam Levine (Maroon 5) is 42.
