13-03-2025
Today in History: March 13, Francis becomes first non-European pope in over 1,250 years
In 1925, the Tennessee General Assembly approved the Butler Act, which prohibited public schools from teaching of the theory of evolution. ( Governor Austin Peay signed the measure on March 21; the bill was challenged in court later that year in the famous Scopes Monkey Trial. Tennessee ultimately repealed the law in 1967.)
In 1946, US Army Private First Class Sadao Munemori was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for sacrificing himself to save fellow soldiers from a grenade explosion in Seravezza, Italy; he was the only Japanese American service member so recognized in the immediate aftermath of World War II.
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In 1954, the pivotal Battle of Dien Bien Phu began during the First Indochina War as Viet Minh forces attacked French troops, who were defeated nearly two months later.
In 1996, a gunman entered an elementary school in Dunblane, Scotland, and opened fire, killing 16 children and one teacher before killing himself; it remains the deadliest mass shooting in British history.
In 2013, Jorge Bergoglio of Argentina was elected pope, choosing the papal name Francis. He was the first pontiff from the Americas, and the first from outside Europe since Pope Gregory III's death in the year 741.
In 2020, President Donald Trump declared a national emergency in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
In 2020, Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman, was fatally shot in her apartment in Louisville, Ky., during a botched raid by plainclothes narcotics detectives searching for a suspected drug dealer; no drugs were found, and the 'no-knock' warrant used to enter by force was later found to be based on false information.
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