Today in history

March
Ash Wednesday
Women’s History Month
Nuclear-Free and Independent Pacific Day

1691
Salem, Massachusetts, the witch trials began.
1780
Pennsylvania abolishes slavery.
1790
First U.S. Census count includes slave & free Negroes. Indians were not included.
1875
Civil Rights Act enacted in US.
1943
A huge rally in New York City’s Madison Square called on the U.S. government to reconsider its refusal to offer sanctuary to Jewish refugees of Nazi Germany.
1954
The biggest explosion ever made by man is witnessed in the Pacific when U.S. scientists explode their second hydrogen bomb at Bikini Atoll, part of the Marshall Islands in the south Pacific.

Over 7,000 square miles were contaminated, as well as many local residents and Japanese fishermen. It was believed this hydrogen bomb was up to 1,000 times more powerful than the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. This date was designated Nuclear-Free Pacific Day.

1961
President John F. Kennedy issued Executive Order #10924 establishing the Peace Corps as a new agency within the Department of State. The same day, he sent a message to Congress asking for permanent funding for the agency, which would send trained American men and women to foreign nations to assist in development efforts. The Peace Corps captured the imagination of the U.S. public, and during the week following its creation, thousands of letters poured into Washington from young Americans hoping to volunteer.

1981
Irish Republican Army member Bobby Sands began a hunger strike at the Maze Prison in Northern Ireland; he died 65 days later. He had dedicated his life to free Ireland from British rule.

1983
International Day of the Seal to promote awareness of the seal’s peril.
1968
Chicana Welfare Rights Organization is formed, with Alicia Escalante as director.
1991
Women for Peace protest against militarism, Belgrade & Ljubljana, Yugoslavia.
1997
15,000 demonstrate in Lunesburg against shipment of French nuclear waste to site in Gorleben.