On March 21, 1685, composer Johann Sebastian Bach was born in Eisenach, Germany.
In 1790 Thomas Jefferson reported to President George Washington in New York as the new secretary of state.
In 1804 the French civil code, or the “Code Napoleon” as it was later called, was adopted.
In 1806 Mexican statesman Benito Juarez was born in Oaxaca.
In 1839 composer Modest Mussorgsky was born in Karevo, Russia.
In 1869 theater producer Florenz Ziegfeld was born in Chicago.
In 1871 journalist Henry Stanley began his famous expedition to Africa to find missing Scottish missionary David Livingstone.
In 1900 an agreement is signed that brings the St. Paul Saints to Chicago’s South Side; the team would be renamed the Chicago White Stockings.
In 1944 Charles Chaplin went on trial in Los Angeles, accused of transporting former protege Joan Barry across state lines for immoral purposes.
In 1945, during World War II, Allied bombers began four days of raids over Germany.
In 1960 about 70 people were killed in Sharpeville, South Africa, when police fired on demonstrators.
In 1963 the Alcatraz federal prison island in San Francisco Bay was emptied of its last inmates at the order of Atty. Gen. Robert Kennedy.
In 1965 more than 3,000 civil rights demonstrators led by Martin Luther King Jr. began their march from Selma to Montgomery, Ala.
In 1972 the Supreme Court ruled that states may not require at least a year’s residency for voting eligibility.
In 1979 the Egyptian Parliament unanimously approved a peace treaty with Israel.
In 1985 police in Langa, South Africa, opened fire on people marching to mark the 25th anniversary of the Sharpeville shootings, killing at least 21 demonstrators.
In 1999 Israel’s Supreme Court rejected a final effort to have American teenager Samuel Sheinbein returned to the United States to face murder charges. (Under a plea agreement with Israeli prosecutors, Sheinbein was later sentenced to 24 years in prison for the murder of Alfred Tello Jr.)
In 2001 the Supreme Court ruled that hospitals cannot test pregnant women for drug use without their consent. Also in 2001 the U.S. ordered 51 Russian diplomats to leave, in retaliation for Russia’s use of an FBI spy, Robert Hanssen.
In 2005 a high school student on the Red Lake Indian reservation in Minnesota killed five schoolmates, a teacher and an unarmed guard before taking his own life; Jeff Weise had earlier killed his grandfather and his grandfather’s companion.
