Today in History:
On March 28, 1979, America’s worst commercial nuclear accident occurred with a partial meltdown inside the Unit 2 reactor at the Three Mile Island plant near Middletown, Pennsylvania.
On this date:
In 1797, Nathaniel Briggs of New Hampshire received a patent for a washing machine.
In 1854, during the Crimean War, Britain and France declared war on Russia.
In 1898, the U.S. Supreme Court, in United States v. Wong Kim Ark, ruled 6-2 that Wong, who was born in the United States to Chinese immigrants, was an American citizen.
In 1935, the notorious Nazi propaganda film “Triumph des Willens” (Triumph of the Will), directed by Leni Riefenstahl, premiered in Berlin with Adolf Hitler present.
In 1939, the Spanish Civil War neared its end as Madrid fell to the forces of Francisco Franco.
In 1941, novelist and critic Virginia Woolf, 59, drowned herself near her home in Lewes, East Sussex, England.
In 1942, during World War II, British naval forces staged a successful raid on the Nazi-occupied French port of St. Nazaire in Operation Chariot, destroying the only dry dock on the Atlantic coast capable of repairing the German battleship Tirpitz.
In 1969, the 34th president of the United States, Dwight D. Eisenhower, died in Washington, D.C., at age 78.
In 1977, “Rocky” won best picture at the 49th Academy Awards; Peter Finch was honored posthumously as best actor for “Network” while his co-star, Faye Dunaway, was recognized as best actress.
In 1987, Maria von Trapp, whose life story inspired the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical “The Sound of Music,” died in Morrisville, Vermont, at age 82.
In 1999, NATO broadened its attacks on Yugoslavia to target Serb military forces in Kosovo in the fifth straight night of airstrikes; thousands of refugees flooded into Albania and Macedonia from Kosovo.
In 2000, in a unanimous ruling, the Supreme Court, in Florida v. J.L., sharply curtailed police power in relying on anonymous tips to stop and search people.
In 2012, bluegrass legend and banjo pioneer Earl Scruggs died in Nashville, Tennessee at 88.
In 2022, the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences condemned the actions of Will Smith during the previous night’s Oscars and launched an inquiry into his slapping of Chris Rock. (Smith was later expelled from the movie academy received a 10-year ban from the Oscars.)