On March 28, 1797, Nathaniel Briggs of New Hampshire patented a washing machine.
In 1834 the U.S. Senate voted to censure President Andrew Jackson for the removal of federal deposits from the Bank of the United States.
In 1854, during the Crimean War, Britain and France declared war on Russia.
In 1930 the names of the Turkish cities of Constantinople and Angora were changed to Istanbul and Ankara.
In 1939 the Spanish Civil War ended when Madrid fell to the forces of Francisco Franco.
In 1942, during World War II, British naval forces raided the Nazi-occupied French port of St. Nazaire.
In 1943, four days short of his 70th birthday, composer Sergei Rachmaninoff died in Beverly Hills, Calif.
In 1969 Dwight D. Eisenhower, the former general and World War II hero who became the 34th president, died in Washington at 78.
In 1979 America’s worst commercial nuclear accident occurred inside reactor No. 2 at the Three Mile Island plant near Middletown, Pa.
In 1982 voters in El Salvador went to the polls for a constituent assembly election that resulted in victory for the Christian Democrats led by President Jose Napoleon Duarte.
In 1984 Democrats Gary Hart and Walter Mondale engaged in a heated debate in New York City, each charging misrepresentation of his policies by the other side. Also in 1984 two dozen tornadoes raked North and South Carolina, killing 62 people and injuring more than 800.
In 1987 Maria von Trapp, whose life in Austria inspired the musical “The Sound of Music,” died at age 82 in Morrisville, Vt.
In 1988 Rep. Richard Gephardt of Missouri ended his run for the Democratic presidential nomination after finishing third in the Michigan caucuses.
In 1989 President George Bush sent three high-ranking officials to Alaska to “take a hard look” at the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska’s Prince William Sound.
In 1993 about 10,000 people marched in Dublin to protest an Irish Republic Army bombing that killed two boys.
