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Saturday, February 22, 2014

Saturday March 1

by  Associated Press Saturday March 1 by The Associated Press, Associated Press - 21 February 2014 20:19-05:00

Today is Saturday, March 1, the 60th day of 2014. There are 305 days left in the year.

Highlights in history on this date:

1553 - League of Heidelberg is formed by Catholic and Protestant princes in Germany to prevent election of Philip of Spain as Holy Roman Emperor.

1562 - Some 1,200 French Huguenots are slain at Massacre of Vassy, provoking first War of Religion in France.

1692 - The Salem Witch trial begins in the American colony of Massachusetts.

1767 - King Charles III expels Roman Catholic Jesuits from Spain.

1790 - U.S. Congress authorizes the first census.

1799 - Turks and Russians complete conquest of Ionian Islands in Greece.

1815 - Napoleon Bonaparte lands in France, forcing King Louis XVIII to flee.

1829 - Brig. Gen. Juan Manuel de Rosas is sworn in as governor of Buenos Aires, rules Argentina until 1852.

1870 - War ends between Paraguay and combined forces of Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay.

1896 - Ethiopian forces defeat Italians at Adwa, northern Ethiopia, ending Italy's quest to create a substantial African colony.

1919 - Korean independence is declared in Seoul and 2 million people rally, leading to brutal Japanese repression.

1932 - The infant son of Charles and Anne Lindbergh is kidnapped from the family home near Hopewell, New Jersey.

1943 - Britain's Royal Air Force begins systematic bombing of European railway systems in World War II.

1952 - Britain returns the North Sea island of Helgoland, occupied since World War II, to West Germany.

1954 - First conference of Organization of American States opens in Caracas, Venezuela; Puerto Rican nationalists open fire in the U.S. House of Representatives, wounding five congressmen.

1961 - U.S. President John F. Kennedy establishes the Peace Corps.

1966 - Soviet Union lands one-ton spacecraft on planet Venus after three and one-half month flight.

1973 - Palestinian terrorists invade diplomatic reception in Khartoum, Sudan, and capture five diplomats.

1981 - Irish Republican Army member Bobby Sands begins a hunger strike at the Maze Prison in Northern Ireland; he dies 65 days later.

1985 - Julio Sanguinetti is sworn in as constitutional president of Uruguay, ending nine years of military rule.

1988 - South African government introduces bill to outlaw foreign funding of political activity.

1989 - U.N. General Assembly approves $416 million for U.N.'s one-year plan to free Namibia from 74 years of South African rule.

1991 - Colombia's third largest rebel group, the Popular Liberation Army, formally lays down its arms.

1992 - Muslims and Croats in Bosnia and Herzegovina vote for independence from Yugoslavia, enraging Serb nationalists.

1993 - Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin closes the occupied Gaza Strip "for a number of days" after a Gaza Palestinian stabs to death two Israelis and wounds nine others.

1994 - Israel releases more than 500 Palestinian prisoners to coax the PLO back to peace talks.

1995 - The director of Russia's only national television network, Vladislav Listyev, is shot and killed as he enters his apartment building.

1996 - The United States approves a visa for Irish Republican Army political leader Gerry Adams.

1997 - About 5,000 neo-Nazis march through Munich to protest an exhibit on the army's involvement in World War II atrocities.

1998 - Serbian police sweep through ethnic Albanian villages in the troubled Kosovo province while the Albanians' leader appeals to the West to stop the violence. Twenty-four Albanians are killed by Serbian security forces in a few days.

1999 - Rwandan Hutu rebels, claiming they oppose American and British support of the Tutsi government in Rwanda, abduct eight foreign tourists from camps in the Ugandan rain forest and hack them to death.

2002 - U.S. space shuttle Columbia carries out a mission to repair and refurbish the Earth-orbiting Hubble Space Telescope, so that the observatory would have enough power to operate fully for the rest of its projected 20-year life.

2003 - Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-described planner and organizer of the September 11 attacks is captured in Rawalpindi, Pakistan.

2004 - Exiled Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide claims he was forced to leave Haiti by U.S. military forces. Aristide, in a phone interview said that he was abducted from Haiti by U.S. troops who accompanied him on a flight to the Central African Republic.

2006 - Authorities regain control of Afghanistan's most notorious prison after four days of rioting allegedly sparked by al-Qaida and Taliban convicts. Six inmates are reported killed in the revolt.

2007 - Japan's nationalist Prime Minister Shinzo Abe denies Tokyo's military forced women into sexual slavery during World War II, backtracking from a past government apology.

2008 - Prince Harry returns to Britain after his secret deployment with the military in Afghanistan was cut short after 10 weeks by disclosures in the media on Feb. 28.

2009 - Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Olmert resigns after the country's attorney general informs him that he plans to indict him on suspicion of illicitly taking cash-stuffed envelopes from a Jewish-American businessman.

2010 - Russia's president says Moscow is ready to consider new sanctions on Iran for its nuclear defiance and the chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency warns that he cannot confirm that all of Tehran's atomic activities are peaceful.

2011 - Yemen's embattled president accuses the U.S., his closest ally, of instigating the mounting protests against him, but the gambit failsed to slow the momentum for his ouster as hundreds of thousands rally in cities across the country against him.

2012 - French President Nicolas Sarkozy takes refuge from a crowd of several hundred angry protesters in a cafe, as riot police swarmed in to protect him while he campaigned in the country's southwest Basque country.

2013 - Secretary of State John Kerry wades into the controversy over comments by Turkey's prime minister equating Zionism to a crime against humanity, rebuking the leader of the NATO ally by saying such remarks complicate efforts to find peace in the Middle East.

Today's Birthdays:

Frederic Chopin, Polish romantic pianist and composer (1810-1849); Theophile Delcasse, French statesman (1852-1923); Giles Lytton Strachey, English author (1880-1932); Yitzhak Rabin, former Israeli prime minister (1922-1995); Harry Belafonte, U.S. singer/actor (1927--); Dirk Benedict, U.S. actor/director (1945--); Ron Howard, U.S. director/actor (1954--); Roger Daltrey, British singer/songwriter (1944--); Javier Bardem, Spanish actor (1969--).

Thought For Today:

If you are able to state a problem, it can be solved — Edwin H. Land, American inventor (1909-1991).

News Topics: Business, Arts and entertainment, General news, International incidents, War and unrest, Protests and demonstrations, Legislature, Government and politics, Prison riots, Territorial disputes, Army, Diplomacy, International relations, Nationalism, Political and civil unrest, Prisons, Correctional systems, Law and order, Armed forces, Military and defense

People, Places and Companies: Yitzhak Rabin, Gerry Adams, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Shinzo Abe, Ehud Olmert, Nicolas Sarkozy, John Kerry, Harry Belafonte, Dirk Benedict, Roger Daltrey, Javier Bardem, United Kingdom, Palestinian territories, Haiti, Caracas, United States, Israel, France, Spain, Japan, Gaza Strip, Middle East, Russia, Columbia, Western Europe, Europe, Caribbean, Latin America and Caribbean, Venezuela, South America, North America, East Asia, Asia, Eastern Europe, Tennessee

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