Today is Sunday, March 7, the 66th day of 2021 There are 299 days left in the year.
Today's Highlight in History:
On March 7, 1965, a march by civil rights demonstrators was violently broken up at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, by state troopers and a sheriff's posse in what came to be known as "Bloody Sunday."
On this date:
• In 1875, composer Maurice Ravel was born in Ciboure, France.
• In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell received a U.S. patent for his telephone.
• In 1911, President William Howard Taft ordered 20,000 troops to patrol the U.S.-Mexico border in response to the Mexican Revolution.
• In 1912, Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen arrived in Hobart, Australia, where he dispatched telegrams announcing his success in leading the first expedition to the South Pole the previous December.
• In 1926, the first successful trans-Atlantic radio-telephone conversations took place between New York and London.
• In 1936, Adolf Hitler ordered his troops to march into the Rhineland, thereby breaking the Treaty of Versailles (vehr-SY') and the Locarno Pact.
• In 1945, during World War II, U.S. forces crossed the Rhine at Remagen, Germany, using the damaged but still usable Ludendorff Bridge.
• In 1963, the Pan Am Building (today the MetLife Building) first opened in midtown Manhattan.
• In 1975, the U.S. Senate revised its filibuster rule, allowing 60 senators to limit debate in most cases, instead of the previously required two-thirds of senators present.
• In 1994, the U.S. Navy issued its first permanent orders assigning women to regular duty on a combat ship -- in this case, the USS Eisenhower.
One year ago: Health officials in Florida said two people who had tested positive for the new coronavirus had died; the deaths were the first on the East Coast attributed to the outbreak. Italy saw its biggest daily increase in coronavirus cases since the outbreak began in the northern part of the country. A hotel in southeastern China that was being used to quarantine suspected coronavirus patients collapsed, killing 29 people. In an interim report, Ethiopian investigators put most of the blame on Boeing for the 2019 crash of a 737 Max jet shortly after takeoff, saying there were design failures and inadequate training for pilots; the crash killed all 157 people on board.
Today's Birthdays: TV personality Willard Scott is 87. International Motorsports Hall of Famer Janet Guthrie is 83. Rock singer Peter Wolf is 75. Pro Football Hall of Famer Franco Harris is 71. Pro and College Football Hall of Famer Lynn Swann is 69. R&B singer-musician Ernie Isley (The Isley Brothers) is 69. Rock musician Kenny Aronoff (BoDeans, John Mellencamp) is 68. Actor Nick Searcy is 62. Golfer Tom Lehman is 62. International Tennis Hall of Famer Ivan Lendl is 61. Author Bret Easton Ellis is 57. Comedian Wanda Sykes is 57. Actor Jonathan Del Arco is 55. Rock musician Randy Guss (Toad the Wet Sprocket) is 54. Actor Rachel Weisz (wys) is 51. Classical singer Sebastien Izambard (Il Divo) is 48. Rock singer Hugo Ferreira (Tantric) is 47. Actor Jenna Fischer is 47. Actor Tobias Menzies is 47. Actor Sarayu Blue is 46. Actor Audrey Marie Anderson is 46. Actor TJ Thyne is 46. Bluegrass singer-musician Frank Solivan is 44. Actor Laura Prepon is 41. Actor Giselle Eisenberg (TV: "Life in Pieces") is 14.