On this day - March 19
2009-03-19 08:01
Today is Friday, March 19, the 78th day of 2010. There are 287 days left in the year.
Highlights in history on this date:
1799 - Napoleon Bonaparte begins siege of Acre - now Akko, Israel - which was defended by Turks.
1812 - Spanish Cortes passes liberal constitution under a hereditary monarch.
1861 - Maori War in New Zealand ends.
1920 - The US Senate rejects for the second time the United States' involvement in the League of Nations by a vote of 49-35, falling short of the two-thirds majority needed for approval.
1932 - Sydney Harbour Bridge in Australia officially opens.
1933 - Italy's dictator Benito Mussolini proposes pact with Britain, France and Germany.
1944 - Nazi German soldiers occupy Hungary.
1962 - Relative calm returns to Algeria after cease-fire, ending seven years of warfare between French and Algerian Nationalists.
1963 - Algeria demands that France negotiate on ending nuclear testing in Algerian Sahara.
1970 - Heads of government of West and East Germany, Willy Brandt and Willi Stoph, meet for the first time in Erfurt.
1971 - At least 160 people perish in landslides north of Sao Paulo, Brazil.
1977 - The president of the Republic of Congo, Marien Ngouabi, is assassinated at his official residence in Brazzaville.
1979 - US House of Representatives begins televising its day-to-day business.
1987 - US television evangelist Jim Bakker resigns as chairperson of his PTL ministry organisation amid a sex-and-money scandal involving Jessica Hahn, a former church secretary.
1988 - Two British soldiers are shot to death after they were dragged from a car and beaten by mourners attending an Irish Republican Army funeral in Belfast, Northern Ireland.
1989 - Muslim gunners fire rockets into Christian areas of Lebanon.
1990 - Latvia's political opposition claims victory in the republic's first free elections in 50 years.
1993 - Georgia shoots down a Russian warplane over the separatist Abkhazia region, killing its pilot and heightening tensions between the two countries.
1994 - Cambodian government seizes control of Pailin, the Khmer Rouge's main stronghold.
1995 - Finnish voters throw out the centre-right coalition government and give the opposition Social Democratic Party its biggest election victory since World War II; after giving up an attempt to become a major league baseball player, Michael Jordan returns to pro basketball with his former team, the Chicago Bulls.
1996 - A discotheque fire kills at least 150 people in Manila, Philippines.
1997 - Police fired tear gas and warning shots in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, to quell a protest against the government's plan to use foreign mercenaries to crush a separatist rebellion.
1998 - Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic agrees to international demands to pull back special police from the troubled province of Kosovo.
1999 - A bomb shatters a packed outdoor food market in southern Russia, killing at least 56 people.
2000 - A mob storms the Nationalist Party's headquarters in Taiwan, forcing Taiwanese President Lee Teng-hui to quit as party leader, after a humiliating election defeat.
2003 - The US launches an attack against Iraq after a deadline for Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to go into exile expires.
2004 - A federal judge in Argentina declares unconstitutional a presidential decree that pardoned several high-ranking military officers accused of human rights abuses during Argentina's Dirty War. The ruling could pave the way for the officers to be tried for atrocities committed during the 1976-83 military dictatorship.
2005 - Tens of thousands of anti-war protesters demonstrate across Europe to mark the second anniversary of the US-led invasion of Iraq, with 45 000 marching from London's Hyde Park past the American Embassy.
2006 - Thousands of protesters throng the main square of the Belarusian capital of Minsk, refusing to recognize a presidential vote that appears all but certain to give President Alexander Lukashenko a third term.
2007 - Five judges resign and hundreds of lawyers demonstrate to protest Pakistan President General Pervez Musharraf's March 9 removal of Supreme Court Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry, deepening a political crisis for the military leader.
2008 - Belgium's political parties announce a deal to form a new national government, ending a nine-month political stalemate that had threatened to split the country along linguistic lines.
Today's Birthdays:
David Livingstone, British explorer-missionary (1813-1873); Sergei Diaghilev, Russian choreographer (1872-1929); Max Reger, German composer (1873-1916); Paul Atkinson, US guitarist/music producer (1947-2004); Ursula Andress, Swiss-born actress (1936--); Glenn Close, US actress (1947--); Bruce Willis, German-born US actor (1955--); Harvey Weinstein, film producer (1952--).
Thought For Today:
He who has a thousand friends has not a friend to spare, And he who has one enemy will meet him everywhere - Ali ibn-Abi-Talib, the fourth caliph (602-661).
Sapa-AP