On March 12, 1849, an ice flood in the Chicago River tore ships from moorings and hurled them, along with blocks of ice, against bridges. (The bridges at Madison, Randolph and Wells Streets were swept away.)
In 1912 Juliette Gordon Low of Savannah, Ga., founded this country’s first Girl Scout troop.
In 1933 President Franklin D. Roosevelt held the first of his radio “fireside chats.”
In 1947 President Harry Truman established what became known as the Truman Doctrine to help Greece and Turkey resist communism.
In 1969 Paul McCartney of the Beatles married Linda Eastman in London.
In 1973 President Richard Nixon, asserting executive privilege, barred White House staff members and former staffers from testifying before congressional committees.
In 1975 former Commerce Secretary Maurice Stans pleaded guilty to five misdemeanor charges of campaign law violations while with the 1972 Nixon re-election campaign.
In 1980 John Wayne Gacy, arrested in 1978 in the murders of 33 men and boys in the Chicago area, was convicted. (On March 4, 1985, the U.S. Supreme Court denied an appeal by Gacy, who claimed that the Illinois law under which he was sentenced to death violated the Constitution’s prohibitions against “cruel and unusual punishment.”)
In 1989 an estimated 2,500 protesters marched at the Art Institute of Chicago to demand officials remove a U.S. flag placed on the floor as part of a student’s exhibit.
