This Week in History: March 6-12, 2024

Mar. 6- 1836: After 13 days of fierce fighting, the Siege of the Alamo ends with the deaths of the last Texas defenders. 1857: The US Supreme Court issues its decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford, ruling that enslaved people were not citizens and therefore not entitled to any protection from the federal government or the courts. 1964: Boxer Cassius Clay announces that he has changed his name to Muhammad Ali. 1981: Walter Cronkite signs off his final CBS Evening News broadcast after 19 years. “And that’s the way it is…”

Mar. 7- 1801: The Massachusetts state legislature enacts the first voter registration law. 1912: Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen announces that his team was the first to reach the South Pole. 1917: First jazz record was released by the Victor Talking Machine Company (later RCA).

Mar. 8- 1910: Baroness Raymonde de Laroche becomes the first licensed female airplane pilot. 1930: Former US President and Supreme Court Chief Justice William Howard Taft died in Washington, DC, the only man to ever hold both offices. 1936: Daytona, FL hosts its first stock car race. 2014: Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 took off from Kuala Lumpur Int’l Airport bound for Beijing, China with 239 people aboard. It disappeared from radar en route and was never found.

Mar. 9- 1454: Future explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci is born in Florence, Italy. His first name would provide names for the “new world” continents discovered in his lifetime. 1776: Scottish economist and philosopher Adam Smith publishes his landmark book [An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of] “The Wealth of Nations.” (The shortened title no doubt helped sales of the book). 1959: Barbie makes her debut at the International Toy Fair in New York City, kicking off a product that would eventually extend to over ONE BILLION in sales!

Photo credit: History.com

Mar. 10- 1876: Alexander Graham Bell realizes his new “improved telegraph” works when his assistant Thomas Watson hears him say “Come here Watson, I want to see you.” 1913: Abolitionist leader and Underground Railroad conductor Harriet Tubman dies from pneumonia in Auburn, NY. 1945: US B-29s bomb Tokyo, Japan with napalm, incinerating more than 16 square miles of the city and killing more than 100 thousand. 1969: James Earl Ray pleads guilty to assassinating Dr. Martin Luther King in April of the previous year.

Mar. 11- 1888: The “Great Blizzard of ‘88’” begins, dumping up to five feet of snow from the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland to northern Maine with sustained winds in excess of 40 mph. 1945: As ordered by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Gen. Douglas McArthur leaves the Philippines and heads to Australia, famously vowing “I shall return” just days later. 2011: A powerful earthquake, measuring 9.0 on the Richter Scale, occurs 80 miles east of Sendai, Japan, triggering a massive tsunami that would kill thousands and permanently disable the Fukushima nuclear power plant.

Mar. 12- 1894: Coca-Cola is sold in bottles for the first time at a candy store in Vicksburg, MS. 1918: Vladimir Lenin orders that the Russian capital be moved from Petrograd (St. Petersburg) to Moscow. 1930: Mahatma Gandhi begins his 200-mile march to protest the British tax on salt. 1973: The final episode of Rowan and Martin’s “Laugh-In” airs on NBC. Sock it to me!