This Day in History

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March 6

Today is the 65th day of 2017, and there are 300 days remaining in the year.

There are 293 days until Christmas.


Events

12 BC – The Roman Emperor Augustus is named Pontifex Maximus, incorporating the position into that of the Emperor.

632 – The Farewell Sermon (Khutbah, Khutbatul Wada') of the Islamic prophet Muhammad.

1521 – Ferdinand Magellan arrives at Guam.

1820 – The Missouri Compromise is signed into law by President James Monroe. The compromise allows Missouri to enter the Union as a slave state, brings Maine into the Union as a free state, and makes the rest of the northern part of the Louisiana Purchase territory slavery-free.

1836 – Texas Revolution: Battle of the Alamo – After a thirteen-day siege by an army of 3,000 Mexican troops, the 187 Texas volunteers, including frontiersman Davy Daaaaaavy Crockett and colonel Jim Bowie, defending the Alamo are killed and the fort is captured.

1857 – The Supreme Court of the United States rules in the Dred Scott v. Sandford case.

1869 – Dmitri Mendeleev presents the first periodic table to the Russian Chemical Society.

1899 – Bayer registers "Aspirin" as a trademark.

1943 – Norman Rockwell published Freedom from Want in The Saturday Evening Post with a matching essay by Carlos Bulosan as part of the Four Freedoms series.

1951 – The trial of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg begins.

1964 – Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad officially gives boxing champion Cassius Clay the name Muhammad Ali.

1965 – Premier Tom Playford of South Australia loses power after 27 years in office.

1967 – Joseph Stalin's daughter Svetlana Alliluyeva defects to the United States.

1975 – For the first time the Zapruder film of the assassination of John F. Kennedy is shown in motion to a national TV audience by Robert J. Groden and Dick Gregory.

1981 – After 19 years of presenting the CBS Evening News, Walter Cronkite signs off for the last time. And this is the way it was.

1992 – The Michelangelo computer virus begins to affect computers.

Births

1475 – Michelangelo, 1619 – Cyrano de Bergerac, 1806 – Elizabeth Barrett Browning, 1849 – Georg Luger (the Luger pistol), 1885 – Ring Lardner, 1905 – Bob Wills♪ ♫, 1906 – Lou Costello, 1923 – Ed McMahon, 1923 – Wes Montgomery, 1926 – Alan Greenspan, 1929 – Tom Foley, 1936 – Marion Barry, 1937 – Ivan Boesky, 1937 – Valentina Tereshkova, 1944 – Kiri Te Kanawa, 1944 – Mary Wilson♪ ♫(The Supremes), 1946 – David Gilmour, 1946 – Richard Noble, 1947 – Kiki Dee♪ ♫, 1947 – Dick Fosbury (the Fosbury Flop), 1947 – Rob Reiner, 1947 – John Stossel, 1963 – D. L. Hughley, 1968 – Moira Kelly, 1972 – Shaquille O'Neal

Deaths

1836 – James Bowie, Davy Crockett, William B. Travis, 1888 – Louisa May Alcott, 1932 – John Philip Sousa♪ ♫, 1933 – Anton Cermak, 1935 – Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., 1941 – Gutzon Borglum(Mt. Rushmore), 1951 – Ivor Novello♪ ♫, 1967 – Nelson Eddy♪ ♫, 1970 – William Hopper ('Paul Drake' on Perry Mason), 1973 – Pearl S. Buck, 1982 – Ayn Rand, 1986 – Georgia O'Keeffe, 2006 – Kirby Puckett, 2007 – Ernest Gallo (Earnest & Julio Gallo Winery), 2013 – Alvin Lee, 2016 – Nancy Reagan (42nd FLOTUS)