Today:
1. 1876: Alexander Graham Bell received the patent for the invention of the telephone.
2. 1876: The patent for the first practical typewriter, invented by Christopher Latham Sholes, was granted.
3. 1936: Adolf Hitler ordered German troops to reoccupy the Rhineland, violating the Treaty of Versailles.
4. 1965: Civil rights marchers, led by Martin Luther King Jr., were brutally attacked by state troopers on “Bloody Sunday” in Selma, Alabama.
5. 1969: James Earl Ray pleaded guilty to the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.
6. 1985: The song “We Are the World” was recorded by a supergroup of artists, including Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie, to raise funds for famine relief in Africa.
7. 2002: Operation Anaconda, the largest U.S.-led ground offensive since the Gulf War, began in eastern Afghanistan as part of the War on Terror.
8. 2009: The Kepler space observatory was launched by NASA to discover Earth-like planets orbiting other stars.
9. 2014: Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 disappeared while flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, leading to one of the greatest aviation mysteries in history.