Today in history

March 29

1626
First American forestry legislation enacted, Plymouth Colony.
1870
African-American men gain right to vote, 15th Amendment.
1925
Black leaders protest the showing of D. W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation, scheduled to open at the Rialto Theatre in Charleston on April 1, on the grounds it violated a 1919 state law prohibiting any entertainment which demeaned another race.

1971
U.S. Army Lieutenant William Calley was found guilty at a court martial for his part in the My Lai massacre which claimed the lives of hundreds of South Vietnamese civilians. Convicted for the premeditated murder of at least 22 Vietnamese civilians, he was sentenced to three years under house arrest.

1973
The last American troops left South Vietnam, ending direct U.S. military involvement in the Vietnam War; Saigon would fall a month later and be renamed Ho Chi Minh City. Of the more than 3 million Americans who served in the war, almost 58,000 had died, and more than 1,000 were missing in action. Some 150,000 Americans had been seriously wounded. The loss of Vietnamese killed and wounded was in the millions and damage to the countryside persists to this day.

The 615th MP Company was inactivated in Vietnam on the last day of American military combat presence.

Vietnam Timeline

1987
Members of Vietnam Veterans For Peace arrived in Wicuili at the end of a march from Jinotega, Nicaragua. The veterans were actively monitoring the U.S. attempts to destabilize the country by providing aid to the terrorist contras.