This Week in History: March 10-16, 2025

This Week in History
by Dianne Hermann

“The secret to happiness is freedom.
The secret to freedom is courage.” Carrie Jones

March 10-16, 2025

March 10

1849 – Abraham Lincoln applies for and receives (on May 22nd) a patent for his invention of a device to lift boats over shoals, although his device was never manufactured. Lincoln is the only U.S. president to hold a patent.

1862 – The U.S. issues the first paper money ($5, $10, $20, $50, $100, $500, and $1,000 bills).

1951 – FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover declines the job of baseball commissioner. Ford Frick was named baseball commissioner. Hoover remained FBI director until his death in 1972 at age 77.

1969 – James Earl Ray pleads guilty of the murder of Martin Luther King, Jr. Ray died in prison in 1998 at age 70.

1971 – The U. S. Senate approves the 26th Amendment, lowering the voting age from 21 to 18.

1980 – Willard Scott becomes the weather forecaster on the “Today Show.” He was the first Ronald McDonald. Scott died in 2021 at age 87. Watch Scott in a 1987 weather forecast.

1994 – White House officials began testifying before a federal grand jury about the Clinton Whitewater controversy. Although the Bill and Hillary Clinton were never charged with any crimes, 15 other people were convicted in the land swindle, including the sitting Arkansas governor, Guy Tucker, who was removed from office.

2020 – New York Governor Andrew Cuomo deploys the National Guard to establish a one-mile radius zone around New Rochelle after 108 cases of COVID-19 are detected.


March 11

1789 – Benjamin Banneker, the son of a freed slave, and Pierre L’Enfant, who came from France to fight in the Revolutionary War, begin laying out the plans for Washington, DC.

1841 – The first continuous filibuster in the U.S. Senate ends. It began on February 18th. It started over Senator Henry Clay’s bill to charter the Second Bank of the United States. The word “filibuster” is derived from the French word meaning “pirate.”

1918 – The first confirmed cases of the Spanish Flu are observed at Fort Riley, Kansas, starting the 3-year global flu pandemic that killed 3 to 5 percent of the world’s population after the soldiers were deployed overseas. It was called the Spanish Flu because Spain was the first country to report the outbreak.

1953 – An American B-47 aircraft accidentally drops a nuclear bomb on Mars Bluff, South Carolina. The bomb didn’t detonate, but the hole it made is still visible.

1958 – Herb Stempel finally loses on the TV game show “Twenty-One.” It was later revealed that the show’s producers provided competitor Charles Van Doren with the correct answer and told Herb Stempel to give the wrong answer, resulting in one of the biggest game show scandals. Van Doren died in 2019 at age 93, Stempel died in 2020, also at age 93. Watch the full episode.

1986 – The National Football League adopts the instant replay rule. The first instant replay in baseball was used in 2008. Instant replay became official in major league baseball in 2014.

1997 – The ashes of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry are launched into space on the Voyager Memorial Spaceflight Service arranged by the Houston-based firm Celestis, Inc. The ashes of his wife were also launched into space after her 2012 death.

2002 – Two columns of light are pointed skyward from ground zero in New York as a temporary memorial to the victims of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.


March 12

1789 – The U.S. Post Office is established. Ben Franklin served as the first Postmaster General.

1912 – Juliette Gordon Low forms the Girl Scouts in Savannah, Georgia. There are about 2.6 million Girl Scouts.

1933 – FDR conducts the first of his 31 “fireside chats” on the radio. Listen to the chat.

1980 – A jury finds John Wayne Gacy guilty of murdering 33 men and boys in Chicago. Gacy was executed by lethal injection in 1994 at age 52.

1986 – Susan Butcher wins the first of her four 1,158-mile Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Races (1986, 1987, 1988, and 1990). She ran the race 18 times. Butcher died of leukemia in 2006 at age 51. Only Rick Swenson and Dallas Seavey have won more Iditarod races (tied with 5 wins). The first Iditarod race was run in 1973. It recreated the dog-sled relay that transported the antitoxin serum to treat a diphtheria epidemic in Nome, Alaska, in January of 1925. Twenty mushers, using 150 dogs, covered 674 miles in 5 ½ days in brutal winter conditions. Watch a brief bio of Butcher.

2003 – Elizabeth Smart is found after having been missing for 9 months. She was kidnapped from her bedroom in Salt Lake City, Utah, by Brian David Mitchell. He was sentenced to life in prison in 2011. Mitchell’s wife, Wanda Barzee, participated in the kidnapping. She was sentenced to 15 years in federal prison and was paroled in 2018. Smart is now 37 years old.

2003 – The U.S. Air Force announces it will resume reconnaissance flights off the coast of North Korea. The flights stopped on March 2 after an encounter with four armed North Korean jets.


March 13

1868 – The Senate begins President Andrew Johnson’s impeachment trial. The Senate failed by one vote to impeach Johnson.

1901 – Andrew Carnegie announces he is retiring from business and that he will spend the rest of his life giving away his fortune. His net worth was estimated at $300 million. That’s over $11 billion in today’s dollars.

1925 – Tennessee passes the “Butler Act,” making it unlawful to teach evolution. High school teacher John Scopes was tried in July for violating that act. He was found guilty and fined $100, but the verdict was overturned on a technicality. It was later revealed that town leaders convinced Scoped to plead guilty for the publicity after the ACLU offered to defend anyone accused of teaching evolution.

1963 – Ernesto Miranda is arrested in Phoenix, Arizona, and interrogated by police until he signs a confession. The Supreme Court ruled in 1966 that Miranda had not been informed of his legal rights and his conviction for kidnapping and rape was overturned. Miranda was stabbed to death in a bar fight in 1976. He was 34 years old.

1991 – Exxon pays $1 billion in fines and for the cleanup of the Valdez oil spill.

1997 – The unidentified flying objects called the “Phoenix Lights” are seen over Phoenix, Arizona, by hundreds of people and by millions on television. They continue to be a hotly debated controversy. Watch a news report.

2012 – After 244 years of publication, Encyclopedia Britannica announced it is discontinuing its U.S. print edition.


March 14

1812 – Congress authorizes the sale of war bonds to finance the War of 1812.

1900 – U.S. currency goes on the gold standard. Since 1971, the U.S. dollar has been called fiat currency, meaning it is not backed by a physical commodity (gold), and is only worth the paper it’s printed on.

1958 – The Recording Industry Association of American is created. Perry Como’s “Catch a Falling Star” is certified as its first gold record. Listen to Mr. Relaxation perform his hit song.

1967 – In the first NFL-AFL football common draft, the Baltimore Colts pick defensive lineman Bubba Smith. Smith won the 1971 Super Bowl with the Baltimore Colts. He turned to acting after a career-ending knee injury. Bubba died in 2011 at age 66.

1989 – Imported semi-automatic “assault” rifles are banned in the U.S. under President George H.W. Bush’s administration.

2018 – NASA reports the results of their twins study with astronaut Scott Kelly and his brother Mark. After one year in space, Scott is no longer identical to his twin brother because 7% of his genes had been altered.


March 15

1869 – The Cincinnati Red Stockings become the first professional baseball team.

1892 – The first escalator is patented by inventor Jesse W. Reno. It was introduced as an amusement park ride at New York’s Coney Island in 1896.

1892 – The first lever voting machine, the “Myers Automatic Booth,” debuts in Lockport, New York. A lever was assigned to each candidate and the voter pulled the lever to vote for the corresponding candidate.

1912 – Future Hall of Fame baseball pitcher Cy Young retires from baseball with 511 wins. The award bearing his name has been given annually to the best pitcher starting in 1956, the year after Young’s death.

1916 – General Pershing and 15,000 troops, on orders from President Wilson, chase Pancho Villa into Mexico after Villa repeatedly attacked American interests in New Mexico. Villa was never captured but was assassinated in Mexico in 1923.

1945 – Billboard publishes its first top album chart with “The King Cole Trio” as its first #1 album. The album included “It’s Only a Paper Moon.” Listen to the original song with still photos.

1954 – “CBS Morning Show” premieres with Jack Paar and Walter Cronkite. Paar died in 2004 at age 85 and Cronkite died in 2009 at age 92.

1977 – The U.S. House of Representatives begins a 90-day test of televising its sessions.

1985 – The first Internet domain name, symbolics.com, is registered.

1989 – The Department of Veterans Affairs is officially established as a Cabinet position.

2002 – Burger King begins selling a veggie burger in the U.S. The event was billed as the first veggie burger to be sold nationally by a fast food chain. Many fast food restaurants now sell plant-based meatless burgers.


March 16

1641 – The general court declares Rhode Island a democracy and it adopts a new constitution.

1802 – Thomas Jefferson signs legislation establishing the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York.

1881 – The P. T. Barnum and James A. Bailey Circuses merge and debuts as “The Greatest Show on Earth.” Bailey bought Barnum’s shares after his death in 1890 and the five Ringling brothers bought the circus after Bailey’s death in 1906 creating the Ringling Brothers Barnum & Bailey Circus. The circus closed in 2017.

1912 – First Lady Helen Herron Taft plants the first cherry trees in Washington, DC. The first Cherry Blossom Festival was held in 1935.

1926 – Rocket scientist Robert Goddard launches the first liquid fuel rocket. It went up 184 feet. He is considered the father of the Space Age for his work as a theorist and engineer.

1968 – Robert Kennedy announces his presidential campaign. Kennedy was assassinated on June 6th in Los Angeles at the age of 42. His older brother, President John F. Kennedy, was assassinated five years earlier. Listen to Robert’s announcement.

1974 – The first performance at the new Grand Ole Opry House is held at Opryland in Nashville, Tennessee. President Nixon attended and sang Happy Birthday to his wife, Pat.

1988 – A federal grand jury indicts Oliver North and John Poindexter in the Iran-Contra affair. North is convicted of accepting an illegal gratuity, obstructing a congressional inquiry, and destruction of documents, but the ruling is overturned since he had been granted immunity. Poindexter was convicted in 1990 of five counts of lying to Congress and obstructing the investigation, but his conviction was overturned on appeal in 1991.

1995 – The Mississippi House of Representatives finally ratifies the 13th Amendment, formally abolishing slavery. Mississippi originally rejected the amendment in 1865, the year it was passed by Congress.

2012 – George Clooney, his father, and other several prominent participants, including Martin Luther King III, are arrested during a protest outside the Sudanese Embassy for civil disobedience. Watch the protest and arrests.

Image from: billboard.com

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