31-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
Today in History: March 31, LBJ announces he won't run for reelection
In 1492, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain issued the Alhambra Decree, an edict expelling Jews from Spanish soil, except those willing to convert to Christianity.
In 1775, 250 years ago, a letter to John Adams from a fellow lawyer, Samuel Smith, humorously detailed the troop movements of the British forces the day before, when several hundred marched out of their encampment toward Concord, presumably a trial run for their expedition a few weeks later: 'They marched it seems as far as Jamaica-plain, and there the light Infantry display'd their Military Genius to the Admiration of Stumps and Alderbushes, for they in the most heroick manner disregarding even mud and Water, fil'd Off to the left near the new Bridge in the Fresh meadow Near Scarboroughs, manfully lay'd Siege to a Certain Swamp, Surrounding the Same ...'
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In 1854, Japan and the United States signed the Treaty of Kanagawa, which opened two Japanese ports to American vessels and marked the beginning of Japan's transition away from isolationism.
In 1906, Gorton's announced it would merge with three smaller Gloucester fishing businesses to form what would become the largest fishing business on the Atlantic Coast, with about 1,000 fishermen on 55 vessels and another 1,000 processing the fish.
In 1918, the United States first observed daylight saving time, moving clocks ahead one hour.
In 1931, Notre Dame college football coach Knute Rockne, 43, was killed in the crash of a TWA plane near Bazaar, Kan.
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In 1968, at the conclusion of a nationally broadcast address on Vietnam, President Lyndon B. Johnson stunned listeners by declaring, 'I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your president.'
In 1993, actor Brandon Lee, 28, was accidentally shot to death during the filming of a movie in Wilmington, N.C., when he was hit by a bullet fragment that had become lodged inside a prop gun.
In 1995, Tejano music star Selena, 23, died after being shot by Yolanda Saldívar, the president of Selena's fan club, who was found to have been embezzling money from the singer.
In 2004, four US civilian contractors were killed by Iraqi insurgents in Fallujah, Iraq. Frenzied crowds then dragged the burned, mutilated bodies and hanged two of them from a bridge.
In 2005, Terri Schiavo , 41, died at a hospice in Pinellas Park, Fla., 13 days after her feeding tube was removed in a wrenching right-to-die court battle that began in 1998.
In 2015, lawyers for Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev rested their case in his federal death penalty trial, a day after they began presenting testimony designed to show his late older brother, Tamerlan, was the mastermind of the 2013 terror attack.
In 2022, scientists announced they had finished fully sequencing the human genome, the full genetic blueprint for human life.
