March 20, 1987: The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approves the anti-AIDS drug, AZT.
March 20, 1852: Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin is published.
March 20, 1917-100-year old British singer Vera Lynn was born.
March 21, 1952: Alan Freed presents the Moondog Coronation Ball, the first rock and roll concert, in Cleveland, Ohio.
March 21, 1980: U.S. President Jimmy Carter announces that the United States will boycott the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow to protest the Soviet Union’s war in Afghanistan.
March 22, 1972: In Eisenstadt v. Baird, the United States Supreme Court decides that unmarried persons have the right to possess contraceptives.
March 23, 1913: The Great Easter Sunday Tornado kills 140 and injures hundreds in Omaha, Nebraska.
March 23, 1775: Patrick Henry delivers his speech – “Give me liberty, or give me death!” – at St. John’s Episcopal Church, Richmond, Virginia.
March 24, 1878: The HMS *Eurydice * sinks in a storm off of the Isle of Wight. Over 360 die. At the time it was the largest loss of life in a peacetime maritime accident in British history. The *Eurydice *is also reportedly now a ghost ship. The three-masted galleon has been spotted dozens of times in the past 139 years still sailing, trying to reach port.
March 24, 1944: In an event later dramatized in the movie The Great Escape, 76 Allied prisoners of war begin breaking out of the German camp Stalag Luft III.
March 25, 1911: The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire kills 146 garment workers in New York City. Most of the dead are young women, girls aged 14 to 19.
The fire began on the eighth floor, too high for Fire Department ladders and hoses. Doors to the stairways had been locked to prevent theft and union activity. The fire escape collapsed sending several victims plummeting to the street below. Elevators quit working. Over 60 jumped to their death from windows. The others were killed in the flames.
Despite a very public trial, no one was held responsible.
March 25, 1965: Civil rights activists led by Martin Luther King Jr. successfully complete their 4-day 50-mile march from Selma to the capitol in Montgomery, Alabama.
March 26, 1812: An estimated 7.7 earthquake in Northeast Venezuela destroys the city of Caracas. Upwards of 20,000 die.
March 26, 1942: The first female prisoners arrive at Auschwitz concentration camp in German-occupied Poland.
March 27, 1890: The tornado they called “a demon” devastates Louisville, Kentucky. Estimates of the dead range between 75 and 120.
March 27, 1977: Two Boeing 747 airliners collide on a foggy runway on Tenerife in the Canary Islands, killing 583 (all 248 on KLM and 335 on Pan Am). Sixty-one survived on the Pan Am flight. This is the worst aviation accident in history.
March 28, 1943: The ship *Caterina Costa * catches fire and explodes at a harbor in Naples, Italy. Over 600 are killed and thousands injured.
March 28, 1842: First concert of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, founded by Otto Nicolai.
**April 1, 1700 **- On this day in 1700, English pranksters did not begin popularizing the annual tradition of April Fools’ Day by playing practical jokes on each other.
April Fool!
April 2, 1971: The last episode of *Dark Shadows *airs.