Today is Thursday, March 25, the 84th day of 2021. There are 281 days left in the year.
Today’s Highlight in History:
On March 25, 1911, 146 people, mostly young female immigrants, were killed when fire broke out at the Triangle Shirtwaist Co. in New York.
On this date:
In 1776, Gen. George Washington, commander of the Continental Army, was awarded the first Congressional Gold Medal by the Continental Congress.
In 1915, the U.S. Navy lost its first commissioned submarine as the USS F-4 sank off Hawaii, claiming the lives of all 21 crew members.
In 1931, in the so-called “Scottsboro Boys” case, nine young Black men were taken off a train in Alabama, accused of raping two white women; after years of convictions, death sentences and imprisonment, the nine were eventually vindicated.
In 1947, a coal-dust explosion inside the Centralia Coal Co. Mine No. 5 in Washington County, Illinois, claimed 111 lives; 31 men survived.
In 1954, RCA announced it had begun producing color television sets at its plant in Bloomington, Indiana.
In 1965, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. led 25,000 people to the Alabama state capitol in Montgomery after a five-day march from Selma to protest the denial of voting rights to Blacks. Later that day, civil rights activist Viola Liuzzo, a white Detroit homemaker, was shot and killed by Ku Klux Klansmen.
In 1985, “Amadeus” won eight Academy Awards, including best picture, best director for Milos Forman and best actor for F. Murray Abraham.
In 1987, the Supreme Court, in Johnson v. Transportation Agency, ruled 6-3 that an employer could promote a woman over an arguably more-qualified man to help get women into higher-ranking jobs.
In 1990, 87 people, most of them Honduran and Dominican immigrants, were killed when fire raced through an illegal social club in New York City.
Today’s Birthdays: Film critic Gene Shalit is 95. Former astronaut James Lovell is 93. Feminist activist and author Gloria Steinem is 87. Singer Anita Bryant is 81. Actor Paul Michael Glaser is 78. Singer Sir Elton John is 74. Actor Bonnie Bedelia is 73. Actor Marcia Cross is 59. Actor Sarah Jessica Parker is 56. Baseball Hall of Famer Tom Glavine is 55. TV personality Ben Mankiewicz is 54. Olympic bronze medal figure skater Debi Thomas is 54. Former auto racer Danica Patrick is 39.
