On March 14, 1689, William and Mary were proclaimed England’s king and queen.
In 1743 the first recorded town meeting in America was held, at Faneuil Hall in Boston.
In 1794 Eli Whitney received a patent for his cotton gin, an invention that revolutionized America’s cotton industry.
In 1879 physicist Albert Einstein was born in Ulm, Germany.
In 1907 President Theodore Roosevelt signed an executive order designed to prevent Japanese laborers from immigrating to the U.S. as part of a “gentlemen’s agreement” with Japan.
In 1933 Maurice Micklewhite, who would become film star Michael Caine, was born in London.
In 1939 the republic of Czechoslovakia was dissolved, opening the way for Nazi occupation.
In 1943 Aaron Copland’s orchestral work “Fanfare for the Common Man” premiered in New York.
In 1945 the U.S. flag was raised on the Pacific island of Iwo Jima during World War II. U.S. forces declared the island secure against Japanese forces two days later despite fighting that continued for weeks. (This item as published has been corrected in this text.)
In 1951, during the Korean War, UN forces recaptured Seoul.
In 1964 a jury in Dallas found Jack Ruby guilty of murdering Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused assassin of President John Kennedy.
In 1965 Israel’s Cabinet formally approved establishment of diplomatic relations with West Germany.
In 1968 it was disclosed that, after seven years of warfare, American combat deaths in Vietnam had passed 20,000.
In 1975 actress Susan Hayward died in Beverly Hills, Calif.
In 1980 a Polish airliner crashed while making an emergency landing near Warsaw, killing all 87 people aboard, including 22 members of a U.S. amateur boxing team.
In 1983 the OPEC oil cartel agreed to the first price cut in its 23-year history, from $34 to $29 a barrel.
In 1990 the Soviet Congress elected Mikhail Gorbachev to the country’s new, powerful presidency, a day after creating the post.
In 1994 Associate Atty. Gen. Webster Hubbell, a longtime friend of President Bill Clinton’s, resigned because of controversy over billings he had charged while in private law practice.
In 1996, during a visit to Israel, President Bill Clinton pledged $100 million to the fight against terrorism.
In 1998 India’s Congress Party selected Sonia Gandhi, the Italian-born widow of assassinated Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, as the party’s president.
In 2002 the government charged the Arthur Andersen accounting firm with obstruction of justice, securing its first indictment in the collapse of Enron.
