On March 12, 1922, Jack Kerouac, the Beat Generation novelist (“On the Road”), was born in Lowell, Mass.
In 1933 President Franklin Roosevelt delivered the first of his radio “fireside chats,” telling Americans what was being done to deal with the nation’s economic crisis.
In 1955 saxophonist Charlie Parker, 34, died in New York.
In 1967 Indira Gandhi became India’s premier.
In 1980 John Wayne Gacy Jr. was convicted of murdering 33 men and boys. He was executed in May 1994.
In 1985 conductor Eugene Ormandy, director of the Philadelphia Orchestra for four decades, died at 85 in Philadelphia.
In 1987 “Les Miserables” opened on Broadway.
In 1989 about 2,500 veterans and supporters marched on the Art Institute to demand removal of an American flag placed on the floor as part of a student’s exhibit.
In 1993 Janet Reno was sworn in as the nation’s first female attorney general.
In 1997 Mikhail Markhasev was arrested in the shooting death of Bill Cosby’s son, Ennis. (Markhasev is serving a life sentence without parole.)
In 1999 Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic joined NATO. Also, violinist Yehudi Menuhin died at 82 in Berlin.
In 2000 Pope John Paul II asked God’s forgiveness for the sins of Roman Catholics through the ages.
In 2001 novelist Robert Ludlum, 73, died in Naples, Fla.
In 2002 the UN Security Council endorsed a Palestinian state.
In 2003 Elizabeth Smart, the 15-year-old who had vanished from her bedroom nine months earlier, was found alive in a Salt Lake City suburb with two drifters.
