On This Date In 1776During the American Revolution, and in advance of the Continental Army's occupation of Dorchester Heights, Massachusetts, General George Washington ordered American artillery forces to begin bombarding Boston from their positions at Lechmere Point, northwest of the city center.
On This Date In 1776The Battle of the Rice Boats was a battle of the American Revolutionary War that took place in the Savannah River on the border between the Province of Georgia and the Province of South Carolina. The battle, which pitted colonial militia successfully against the Royal Navy, took place on March 2 and 3, 1776. It is sometimes referred to as the Battle of Yamacraw Bluff.
On This Date In 1780The Battle of Fort Charlotte was a two-week siege from March 2 – March 14, 1780 conducted by Spanish General Bernardo de Gálvez against the British fortifications guarding the port of Mobile (which was then in the British province of West Florida, and now in Alabama) during the American Revolutionary War. Fort Charlotte was the last remaining British frontier post capable of threatening New Orleans in Spanish Louisiana. Its fall drove the British from the western reaches of West Florida and reduced the British military presence in West Florida to its capital, Pensacola.
On This Date In 1793Samuel Houston (March 2, 1793 - July 26, 1863), nineteenth-century American statesman, politician, and soldier, was born in Timber Ridge in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, of Scots-Irish descent. Houston became a key figure in the history of Texas and was elected as the first and third President of the Republic of Texas, U.S. Senator for Texas after it joined the United States, and finally as a governor of the state.
On This Date In 1807The U.S. Congress passes an act to “prohibit the importation of slaves into any port or place within the jurisdiction of the United States...from any foreign kingdom, place, or country.” In abolishing the African slave trade, note that the widespread trade of slaves within the South was not prohibited, however, and children of slaves automatically became slave themselves, thus ensuring a self-sustaining slave population in the South.
On This Date In 1836The Texas Declaration of Independence was the formal declaration of independence of the Republic of Texas from Mexico in the Texas Revolution. It was adopted at the Convention of 1836 at Washington-on-the-Brazos on March 2, 1836, and formally signed the following day after errors were noted in the text.
On This Date In 1865During the American Civil War, and at the Battle of Waynesboro, Virginia, Union General George Custer's troops routed Confederate General Jubal Early's force, bringing an end to fighting in the Shenandoah Valley.
On This Date In 1899President William McKinley signed legislation creating Mount Rainier National Park in central Washington. The nearly 365-square-mile area of pristine forests and spectacular alpine scenery was the fifth national park designated by Congress.http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/today/mar02.html
On This Date In 1904Theodor Seuss Geisel (March 2, 1904– September 24, 1991) was born in Springfield, Massachusetts to Henrietta Seuss and Theodor Robert Geisel. His father, the son of German immigrants, inherited the family brewery one month before the start of Prohibition and later supervised Springfield's public park system and zoo. Geisel was raised in the Lutheran faith and remained a member of the denomination his entire life. Suess was an American writer, poet, and cartoonist most widely known for his children's books written under the pen names Dr. Seuss, Theo LeSieg and, in one case, Rosetta Stone.
On This Date In 1917Barely a month before the United States entered World War I, President Woodrow Wilson signed the Jones-Shafroth act, under which Puerto Rico became a U.S. territory and Puerto Ricans were granted statutory citizenship, meaning that citizenship was granted by an act of Congress and not by the Constitution (thus it was not guaranteed by the Constitution). The act also created a bill of rights for the territory, separated its government into executive, legislative and judicial branches, and declared Puerto Rico's official language to be English. As citizens, Puerto Ricans could now join the U.S. Army, but few chose to do so. After Wilson signed a compulsory military service act two months later, however, 20,000 Puerto Ricans were eventually drafted to serve during World War I.
On This Date In 1929The Jones Act, the last gasp of the Prohibition, was passed by the U.S. Congress. Since 1920 when the Eighteenth Amendment went into effect, the United States had banned the production, importation and sale of alcoholic beverages. But the laws were ineffective at actually stopping the consumption of alcohol. The Jones Act strengthened the federal penalties for bootlegging. Of course, within five years the country ended up rejecting Prohibition and repealing the Eighteenth Amendment.
On This Date In 1933“King Kong,” a landmark black-and-white monster film about a gigantic gorilla named “Kong” and how he is captured from a remote lost prehistoric island and brought to civilization against his will, premiered in New York City at Radio City Music Hall. The film was made by RKO and originally written for the screen by Ruth Rose and James Ashmore Creelman, based on a concept by Merian C. Cooper. The film was directed by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, starred Fay Wray, Robert Armstrong and Bruce Cabot, and is notable for Willis O'Brien's ground-breaking stop-motion animation, Max Steiner's musical score and Fay Wray's performance as the ape's love interest.
On This Date In 1937“Lost Horizon,” an American drama-fantasy film directed by Frank Capra starring Ronald Colman, Jane Wyatt and Sam Jaffe, was released. It tells the story of a group of travelers who find a utopian society in the Himalaya Mountains. The film is based upon the James Hilton novel of the same name and was adapted by Sidney Buchman (uncredited) and Robert Riskin. The Streamline Moderne sets were designed by Stephen Goosson.
On This Date In 1939The Venerable Pope Pius XII, born Eugenio Maria Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli (March 2, 1876 – October 9, 1958), reigned as the 260th Pope, head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of Vatican City State, from March 2, 1939 until his death in 1958.
On This Date In 1943During World War II, the Battle of the Bismarck Sea (March 2 - 4, 1943) took place in the South West Pacific Area (SWPA). In the course of the battle, aircraft of the U.S. Fifth Air Force and the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) attacked a Japanese convoy that was carrying troops to Lae, New Guinea. Most of the task force was destroyed, and Japanese troop losses were heavy.
On This Date In 1944The 16th Academy Awards was the first Oscar ceremony held at a large public venue, Grauman’s Chinese Theater in Los Angeles, California. Free passes were given out to men and women in uniform. The more theatrical approach makes it a forerunner of the contemporary Oscar telecast. For the first time, supporting actors and actresses took home full-size statuettes, instead of smaller-sized awards mounted on a plaque. This was the last year until 2009 to have 10 nominations for best picture. Also,The Ox-Bow Incidentwas the last film to be nominated for best picture and nothing else.
On This Date In 1944In the Balvano train disaster of March 2-3, 1944, some 520 of approximately 650 people riding a steam-hauled freight train died of carbon monoxide poisoning when the train stalled on a steep gradient in the Armi tunnel. The accident occurred in southern Italy, near Balvano (Basilicata).
On This Date In 1962Wilt Chamberlain’s 100-point game, named by the National Basketball Association as one of its greatest games, took place between the Philadelphia Warriors and the New York Knicks on March 2, 1962 at Hersheypark Arena in Hershey, Pennsylvania. With 46 seconds left, Chamberlin had 98 pointts. Chamberlain got free from the five Knicks, jumped high and stuffed the ball through the hoop for an alley-oop slam dunk to hit the century mark. The arena exploded in a frenzy. Over 200 spectators stormed the floor, wanting to touch the hero of the night. Some confusion remains about whether the game’s last 46 seconds were played. According to the NBA, play was halted and never resumed.http://listverse.com/2008/11/15/top-15-greatest-sports-moments-of-a...
On This Date In 1965Operation Rolling Thunder was the title of a gradual and sustained U.S. 2nd Air Division (later Seventh Air Force), U.S. Navy, and Republic of Vietnam Air Force (VNAF) aerial bombardment campaign conducted against the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam) from March 2, 1965 until November 1, 1968, during the Vietnam War. After one of the longest aerial campaigns ever conducted by any nation, Rolling Thunder was terminated as a strategic failure in late 1968 having achieved none of its objectives.
On This Date In 1965Rodgers and Hammerstein's “The Sound of Music,” a musical film directed by Robert Wise and starring Julie Andrews in the lead role, was released. The film is based on the Broadway musicalThe Sound of Music, with songs written by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, and with the musical book written by the writing team of Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse. Ernest Lehman wrote the screenplay. The movie version was filmed on location in Salzburg, Austria; Bavaria in Southern Germany; and at the 20th Century Fox Studios in California. It won a total of five Academy Awards including Best Picture and displacedGone with the Windas the highest-grossing film of all-time. The cast album was also nominated for a Grammy Award for Album of the Year. In 2001, the United States Library of Congress selected the film for preservation in the National Film Registry as it was deemed “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”.
On This Date In 1966In Dearborn, Michigan, the Ford Motor Company celebrated the production of its 1 millionth Mustang, a white convertible. The sporty, affordable vehicle was officially launched two years earlier, on April 17, 1964, at the World's Fair in Flushing Meadows, New York. That same day, the new car debuted in Ford showrooms across America; almost immediately, buyers snapped up nearly 22,000 of them. More than 400,000 Mustangs were sold within that first year, exceeding sales expectations.
On This Date In 1967Senator Robert Kennedy (D-New York) proposed a three-point plan to help end the Vietnam War. The plan included suspension of the U.S. bombing of North Vietnam and the gradual withdrawal of U.S. and North Vietnamese troops from South Vietnam with replacement by an international force. Secretary of State Dean Rusk rejected Kennedy's proposal because he believed that the North Vietnamese would never agree to withdraw their troops.
On This Date In 1969In a dramatic confirmation of the growing rift between the two most powerful communist nations in the world, troops from the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China fired on each other at a border outpost on the Ussuri River in the eastern region of the USSR, north of Vladivostok. In the years following this incident, the United States used the Soviet-Chinese schism to its advantage in its Cold War diplomacy.
On This Date In 1972Pioneer 10, the world's first outer-planetary probe, was launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on a mission to Jupiter, the solar system's largest planet. In December 1973, after successfully negotiating the asteroid belt and a distance of 620 million miles, Pioneer 10 reached Jupiter and sent back to Earth the first close-up images of the spectacular gas giant. In June 1983, the NASA spacecraft left the solar system and the next day radioed back the first scientific data on interstellar space. NASA officially ended the Pioneer 10 project on March 31, 1997, with the spacecraft having traveled a distance of some six billion miles.
On This Date In 1979“Norma Rae,” a drama film which tells the story of a factory worker from a small town in the Southern United States who becomes involved in the labor union activities at the textile factory where she works, was released. It stars Sally Field, Beau Bridges, Ron Leibman, Pat Hingle, Barbara Baxley, Gail Strickland and Noble Willingham. The movie was written by Harriet Frank Jr. and Irving Ravetch, and was directed by Martin Ritt. It is based on the true story of Crystal Lee Sutton which was told in a 1975 book Crystal Lee, a woman of inheritance by New York Times reporter Henry P Leifermann. It won Academy Awards for Best Actress in a Leading Role (Sally Field) and Best Original Song (for David Shire and Norman Gimbel for “It Goes Like It Goes”). It was also nominated for Best Picture and for Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium.
On This Date In 1984“This Is Spinal Tap,” an American rock musical mockumentary directed by Rob Reiner about the fictional heavy metal band Spinal Tap, was released. Reiner and the three main stars played by American actors Michael McKean and Harry Shearer, and English-American actor Christopher Guest, respectively, are credited as the writers of the film, based on the fact that much of the dialogue was ad libbed by them. In 2002,This Is Spinal Tapwas deemed “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” by the Library of Congress and was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.
On This Date In 1985The controversial Prince-penned song “Sugar Walls” reached #9 on Billboard magazine's R&B Singles chart, and made Sheena Easton the first and still only recording artist to score top-10 singles on all five major Billboard singles charts: Pop, Country, Dance, Adult Contemporary and R&B.
On This Date In 1999Mary Isobel Catherine Bernadette O'Brien (April 16, 1939 – March 2, 1999), known professionally as Dusty Springfield, died from breast cancer. Dubbed The White Queen of Soul, she was a British pop singer whose career extended from the late 1950s to the 1990s. With her distinctive sensual sound, she was an important white soul singer, and at her peak was one of the most successful British female performers, with 18 singles in the Billboard Hot 100 from 1964 to 1970. She is a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the U.K. Music Hall of Fame. International polls have named Springfield among the best female rock artists of all time.
On This Date In 2004The Ashura massacre in Iraq was a series of planned terrorist explosions that killed at least 178 and injured at least 500 Iraqi Shi'a Muslims commemorating the Day of Ashura. The bombings brought one of the deadliest days in the Iraq occupation after the Iraq War to topple Saddam Hussein.
On This Date In 2005At a White House ceremony, President George W. Bush congratulated the 2004 World Champion Boston Red Sox baseball team for winning their first World Series since 1918. Massachusetts Senators Edward Kennedy and John Kerry, and former Red Sox players were among those on hand for the event. Before saluting the Red Sox, Bush also paid tribute to one of baseball's greatest African-American players, Jackie Robinson.http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2005/03/im...
On This Date In 2006“The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth II,” abbreviated BFME2 is a real-time strategy video game developed and published by Electronic Arts. It is based on the fantasy novelThe Lord of the Ringsby J. R. R. Tolkien and its live-action film trilogy adaptation. The game is the sequel to Electronic Art's 2004 titleThe Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth. The Windows version of the game was released on March 2, 2006 and the Xbox 360 version was released on July 5, 2006. Along with the standard edition, a Collector's Edition of the game was released, containing bonus material and a documentary about the game's development.
On This Date In 2010“Never Let You Go” is a song performed by Canadian recording artist Justin Bieber. The track was written by Bieber and also co-written and produced by production duo Johnta Austin and Bryan-Michael Cox. It was originally released as the first digital-only single from latter half of Bieber's debut album,My World 2.0on March 2, 2010. The accompanying music video features Bieber and Paige Hurd at the Atlantis Resort in The Bahamas, including scenes at the resort, an aquarium, and on the coast. Bieber performed the song a number of times, including on BET'sSOS: Saving Ourselves - Help for Haiti Telethon, which benefited victims of the 2010 Haiti earthquake.
On This Date In 2010The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in McDonald v. City of Chicago, the case challenging Chicago's handgun bans in Chicago and Oak Park. The Question Presented by the Court asked if the bans should be considered unconstitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process clause, or under the Privileges or Immunities clause. As expected, the arguments focused on application of the Second Amendment to the states (“incorporation”) and avoided the meaning of the Second Amendment (or any related unenumerated right), except insofar as the meaning drives the incorporation analysis.http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/conlaw/2010/03/oral-arguments-in-m...
On This Date In 2011Ferocious street fighting, air strikes in a heavily populated city and a siege with terrified families held hostage: these were the violent and chaotic scenes yesterday (March 2, 2011) as Colonel Gaddafi's regime began its offensive to claw back the land lost to Libya's revolution. ...http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/colonel-gaddafi-to-t...
On This Date In 2011The movement to restrict the power of public sector unions chalked up a legislative win today (March 2, 2011) in Ohio. A measure that would ban strikes and greatly restrict collective bargaining rights cleared the state Senate by a 17-16 vote, report(ed) the Columbus Dispatch. It now goes to the House, where Republicans have a sizable majority. If it passes there—figure on a vote in about two weeks—Gov. John Kasich has promised to sign it into law. Unlike their counterparts in Wisconsin, Ohio Republicans could call a vote because they have enough members to make a quorum. …http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2011/03/02/02-senate-...
Hat tip to any included contributing sources, along with:
Happy BirthdayTom Wolfe (1931), Mikhail Gorbachev (1931), David Satcher (1941), John Irving (1942), Lou Reed (1942), Gordon Thomson (1945), Gates McFadden (1949), Laraine Newman (1952), Jay Osmond (1955), Jon Bon Jovi (1962), Al Del Greco (1962), Suzette Charles (1963), Charles Perez (1963), Amber Smith (1971), Ben Roethlisberger (1982), Elizabeth Jagger (1984), and Reggie Bush (1985).
RIPBedrich Smetana (1824 – 1884), Preston Brown (1872 – 1948), Pope Pius XII (1876 – 1958), Kurt Weill (1900 – 1950), Dr. Seuss (1904 – 1991), Desi Arnaz (1917 – 1986), Jennifer Jones (1919 – 2009), Walter Chiari (1924 – 1991), Al Waxman (1935 – 2001), and Rory Gallagher (1948 – 1995).
A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way, and shows the way. John C. Maxwell
Hope has two beautiful daughters. Their names are anger and courage; anger at the way things are, and courage to see that they do not remain the way they are. Augustine of Hippo
The experienced mountain climber is not intimidated by a mountain - he is inspired by it. The persistent winner is not discouraged by a problem - he is challenged by it. Mountains are created to be conquered; adversities are designed to be defeated; problems are sent to be solved. It is better to master one mountain than a thousand foothills. William Arthur Ward
It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope. Robert Francis Kennedy
One isn't necessarily born with courage, but one is born with potential. Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can't be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest. Maya Angelou
When we least expect it, life sets us a challenge to test our courage and willingness to change; at such a moment, there is no point in pretending that nothing has happened or in saying that we are not ready. The challenge will not wait. Life does not look back. A week is more than enough time for us to decide whether or not to accept our destiny. Paulo Coelho
I love my job. I love fighting for what I believe in. I love having fun while doing it. I love reporting stories that the Complex refuses to report. I love fighting back, I love finding allies, and - famously - I enjoy making enemies.
I always wondered what it would be like to enter the public realm to fight for what I believe in. I've lost friends, perhaps dozens. But I've gained hundreds, thousands - who knows? - of allies. At the end of the day, I can look at myself in the mirror, and I sleep very well at night.
Andrew Breitbart (February 1, 1969 - March 1, 2012)