March 20, 2013

Born on this date
Happy Birthday, Cliff Lander!

600 years ago
1413

Died on this date
Henry IV, 45. King of England, 1399-1413. King Henry took the throne by deposing his cousin, Richard II. Henry IV was the first king from the Lancaster branch of the House of Plantagenet. After years of poor health, he died in the "Jerusalem" chamber of the house of the Abbot of Westminster during a convocation of Parliament. It had been predicted that King Henry would die in Jerusalem, a prophecy that was repeated by William Shakespeare's play Henry IV, Part 2 (1599).

130 years ago
1883

Diplomacy
Belgium, Brazil, France, Guatemala, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, El Salvador, Serbia, Spain and Switzerland signed the Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property.

125 years ago
1888

Born on this date
Amanda Clement. U.S. baseball umpire. Miss Clement played various sports, and sometime during the period 1903-1905, became the first woman to be paid to umpire a game, when she substituted for an absent umpire in a semi-professional game in Hawarden, Iowa. She umpired regularly for six years and occasionally for many years thereafter, and may have been the first woman to referee a high school basketball game. Miss Clement worked at several occupations, and was a social worker in Sioux Falls, South Dakota for 25 years until her retirement in 1966. She died on July 20, 1971 at the age of 83.

Opera
Children of the Forests, the first Romani-language operetta, received its premiere performance in Moscow.

100 years ago
1913

World events
Sung Chiao-jen, a founder of the Kuomintang (Chinese Nationalist party), was shot twice at close range by a lone gunman, Ying Kuicheng, at a Shanghai railway station while travelling with friends to the parliament in Peking. Sung had recently led Kuomintang to its first electoral victory.

90 years ago
1923

Art
The Arts Club of Chicago hosted the opening of Pablo Picasso's first United States showing, entitled Original Drawings by Pablo Picasso.

80 years ago
1933

Died on this date
Dan Burke, 64. U.S. baseball player. Mr. Burke was a catcher, outfielder, and first baseman with the Rochester Broncos (1890); Syracuse Stars (1890); and Boston Beaneaters (1892), batting .175 with no home runs and 9 runs batted in in 42 games. He played in the minor leagues--mainly in the New England League--from 1886-1897.

Giuseppe Zangara, 32. U.S. assassin. Mr. Zangara, a native of Italy who had become a United States citizen in 1929, was executed in "Old Sparky," the electric chair at Florida State Prison in Raiford, Florida, for the February 15, 1933 shooting in Miami of Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak. Mr. Cermak had died of peritonitis on March 6. Five others had also been shot by Mr. Cermak, although U.S. President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt, who may have been Mr. Zangara's target, was unharmed. Mr. Zangara spent only 10 days on death row.

Abominations
German Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler ordered the creation of Dachau Concentration Camp and appointed Theodor Eicke as the camp commandant.

70 years ago
1943

Hit parade
#1 single in the U.S.A. (Billboard): I've Heard That Song Before--Harry James and his Music Makers with Helen Forrest (3rd week at #1)

60 years ago
1953

Hit parade
#1 single in the U.K. (New Musical Express): She Wears Red Feathers--Guy Mitchell (2nd week at #1)

On television tonight
Tales of Tomorrow, on ABC
Tonight's episode: Read to Me, Herr Doktor, starring Mercedes McCambridge, Everett Sloane, and Ernest Graves



40 years ago
1973

Politics and government
The British White Paper, Northern Ireland Constitutional Proposals, was announced in London. The program called for an 80-seat assembly which would give fair representation to Northern Ireland's 500,000 Roman Catholics as well as to its 1,000,000 Protestants. The assembly's executive committee, also to include Catholics, would administer departments such as education, housing, and health, all areas in which the minority claimed there was much discrimination.

Corinne Boggs, widow of Representative Hale Boggs (Democrat--Louisiana), won a special election for her husband's seat in the United States House of Representatives. Mr. Boggs, the House majority leader, had been lost in a plane crash in Alaska on October 15, 1972. Mrs. Boggs became the first woman to represent Louisiana in Congress.

World events
Three days after an assassination attempt on the Presidential Palace, Cambodian President Lon Nol continued imposing strict measures; about 100 anti-government suspects were arrested, including newspaper editors, journalists, opposition politicians, and student leaders.

Protest
Prisoners in West Virginia Penitentiary in Moundsville killed an inmate, injured two others, and took five guards hostage. Their demands included an investigation into the October 1972 slaying of a prison guard and more sharply defined prison rules and regulations.

Disasters
11 people were killed and 43 injured in a 32-car pile-up near Barrie, Ontario.

Baseball
In a special election, Roberto Clemente was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame, receiving 93% of the 424 votes cast. Mr. Clemente, who played right field for the Pittsburgh Pirates from 1955-1972, had been killed in a plane crash on December 31, 1972, while still an active player. Normally, players have to have been retired for at least five years before appearing on the Hall of Fame ballot, but the rule was waived in the case of Mr. Clemente.

25 years ago
1988

Hit parade
#1 single in New Zealand (RIANZ): Heaven is a Place on Earth--Belinda Carlisle (4th week at #1)

War
In the Eritrean War of Independence, the Eritrean People's Liberation Front entered the town of Afabet, successfully concluding the Battle of Afabet.

Politics and government
In the contest for the 1988 U.S. presidential nominations, Jesse Jackson won the Democratic preference vote in Puerto Rico; Vice President George Bush won the Republican vote.

Jose Napoleon Duarte’s centrist party lost ground in elections in El Salvador. The right-wing Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) won about half the seats in the National Assembly. ARENA had called for a more vigorous war against leftist rebels and had criticized the Duarte government for corruption and various economic problems. The rebels called for a boycott of the vote. ARENA won in about 80% of the municipalities--including San Salvador--that voted. A preliminary report from the ruling party said that ARENA had won 31 of the 60 seats in the assembly.

Diplomacy
Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze arrived in Washington to meet with U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz in order to work out details of a summit between U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to take place in Moscow from May 29-June 2.

Disasters
A fire that began in the kitchen of a private home in Lashio, Burma killed 113 people and destroyed 2,000 homes.

Hockey
CIAU
The York University Yeomen won the national men’s hockey championship with a 5-2 win over the University of Western Ontario Mustangs in the final.

20 years ago
1993

Hit parade
#1 single in Australia (ARIA): You Don't Treat Me No Good--Sonia Dada (4th week at #1)

#1 single in Italy: La Solitudine--Laura Pausini (2nd week at #1)

#1 single in Spain (PROMUSICAE): No Limit--2 Unlimited (3rd week at #1)

#1 single in Flanders (VRT): No Limit--2 Unlimited (2nd week at #1)

#1 single in France (SNEP): I Will Always Love You--Whitney Houston (8th week at #1)

#1 single in the Netherlands (De Nederlandse Top 40): No Limit--2 Unlimited (3rd week at #1)

#1 single in the U.K. (Chart Information Network): Oh Carolina--Shaggy

#1 single in the U.S.A. (Billboard): Informer--Snow (2nd week at #1)

U.S.A. Top 10 (Cash Box)
1 I'm Every Woman--Whitney Houston
2 Ordinary World--Duran Duran
3 A Whole New World (Aladdin's Theme)--Peabo Bryson and Regina Belle
4 Bed of Roses--Bon Jovi
5 Informer--Snow
6 Nothin' But a "G" Thang--Dr. Dre
7 Don't Walk Away--Jade
8 Hip Hop Hooray--Naughty By Nature
9 Mr. Wendal--Arrested Development
10 7--Prince and the New Power Generation

Singles entering the chart were Kiss of Life by Sade (#58); The Crying Game by Boy George (#67); Candy Everybody Wants by 10,000 Maniacs (#69); Easy by Faith No More (#81); Buddy X by Neneh Cherry (#85); Somebody Love Me by Michael W. Smith (#88); and Give it to You by Martha Wash (#91). The Crying Game was the title song of the movie, which was released in 1992.

Canada's Top 10 (RPM)
1 Ordinary World--Duran Duran (3rd week at #1)
2 Bed of Roses--Bon Jovi
3 I'm Every Woman--Whitney Houston
4 Man on the Moon--R.E.M.
5 Hope of Deliverance--Paul McCartney
6 If I Ever Lose My Faith in You--Sting
7 No Mistakes--Patty Smyth
8 Two Princes--Spin Doctors
9 Little Bird--Annie Lennox
10 Angel--Jon Secada

Singles entering the chart included Jump They Say by David Bowie (#74); You and Me by Crash Vegas (#88); Somebody Love Me by Michael W. Smith (#97); and Sweet Thing by Mary J. Blige (#98).

Died on this date
Polykarp Kusch, 82. German-born U.S. physicist. Dr. Kusch shared the 1955 Nobel Prize in Physics with Willis Eugene Lamb for his accurate determination that the magnetic moment of the electron was greater than its theoretical value, thus leading to reconsideration of—-and innovations in-—quantum electrodynamics.

World events
A U.S. Grayling attack submarine and a Russian Delta-class submarine, normally equipped with 16 ocean-spanning nuclear-tipped missiles, collided in the Arctic Ocean.

Terrorism
Jonathan Ball, 3, and Tim Parry, 12, were fatally injured, and 56 others were injured when two bombs exploded near a shopping centre in Warrington, Cheshire, England. The Provisional Irish Republican Army was resonsible for the atrocity.

10 years ago
2003

War
Units of the United States Army 3rd Infantry Division and U.S. Marine 1st Expeditionary Force entered Iraq after dark. The division moved north toward Baghdad, while U.S. and U.K. marines turned northeast toward Basra. Meanwhile, Turkey's parliament agreed to allow U.S. planes to cross Turkish airspace. The parliament also approved deployment of new Turkish troops in northern Iraq, but the U.S.A. and U.K. opposed such a move.

About 1,000 U.S. soldiers raided Kandahar, Afghanistan to root out members of the al-Qaeda terrorist organization.

The Canadian military hearing on the 2002 deaths of four Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan by "friendly fire" from a U.S. plane recommended against court-martial and criminal charges, opting instead for administrative punishment. Families of the deceased were upset by the decision and its timing.