On March 14, 1964, nightclub owner Jack Ruby was convicted of the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald, who had presumably assassinated President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963. Ruby was sentenced to death. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals overturned Ruby’s conviction in October 1966 and ordered a new trial citing improperly admitted testimony [...]
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On March 14, 2005, the Cedar Revolution began in Lebanon after the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. Led by the March Fourteenth Movement, street protests in the Cedar Revolution led to the resignation of the generally pro-Syrian government of Lebanon and the withdrawal of Syrian troops from the country.
On March 13, 1925, Tennessee passed a law banning the teaching of evolution in schools. The violation of this law by a local schoolteacher resulted in the famous “Scopes Monkey Trial.” Learn more about The State v. John Scopes.
On March 13, 1881, revolutionaries assassinated Russian Tsar Alexander II. The terrorist organization Narodnaya Volya (People’s Will) hoped to spark a revolution by assassinating the monarch. Instead, Alexander II’s assassination led to a repressive backlash from his successor, Alexander III. Read an account of the assassination of Tsar Alexander II by anarchist revolutionary Peter Kropotkin.
On March 12, 1993, Janet Reno was sworn in as the first female US Attorney General. Learn more about Janet Reno from the US Department of Justice Attorney General’s website as it stood on November 9, 2000.
On March 12, 1999, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland became the first former members of the Warsaw Pact join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Read the NATO accession treaties for the Czech Republic, the Republic of Hungary, and the Republic of Poland.
On March 11, 1861, seven former US states adopted the Constitution of the Confederate States of America, which closely followed the language, if not necessarily the purport, of the original US Constitution. Section 9 (4) of the Confederate Constitution read “No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law denying or impairing the right [...]
On March 11, 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev became the leader of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, following the death of Konstantin Chernenko. He soon announced that he would hold arms-reduction negotiations in Geneva with the United States. Gorbachev also used his tenure to liberalize the economy and social structure of the USSR, eventually leading to [...]
On March 10, 1922, Mahatma Gandhi was arrested and charged with sedition for leading a campaign of mass civil disobedience against the British in India. He was then convicted and sentenced to six years in prison. After his release, Gandhi continued to build Indian unity and use civil disobedience and non-cooperation to oppose British rule [...]
On March 10, 1969, James Earl Ray was sentenced to 99 years in prison for the murder of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr.. Ray died in 1998, still seeking a retrial of his case. On December 9th, 1999, a Memphis jury handed down a verdict agreeing with the King family that the 1968 [...]
