History Today

Hello, and welcome to This Day in History. Here’s what happened on March 27th. While March Madness is cancelled this year, we look back to this day in 1939 when March Madness began, or at least the NCAA men’s basketball tournament did. The University of Oregon claimed the first title, beating out Ohio State University and seven other teams. Surprising fact? For the first 12 years of the tourney, only eight teams--all male--were invited to participate.

Hello, and welcome to This Day in History. Here’s what happened on March 26. As scientists race to develop a vaccine to fight the corona virus, we look back to this day in 1953, when Dr. Jonas Salk announced that he had developed a successful vaccine against polio, a crippling disease that could cause paralysis. After the vaccine was made available, new diagnoses of polio dropped from a reported 58,000 to just 6,000 cases in only one year.

Hello, and welcome to This Day in History. Here’s what happened on March 25th. It was one of the worst industrial accidents in U.S. history--on this day in 1911, 146 people were killed in a fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company factory in downtown Manhattan. When the fire broke out, the factory workers—most of them teenaged, female immigrants—became trapped in the factory, a 10-story building with derelict fire escapes, locked exits and only one fully operational elevator.

Hello, and welcome to This Day in History. Here’s what happened on March 24th. As Women’s History Month comes to a close, we look back to this day in 2006, when astronaut Shannon Lucid became the first woman astronaut to live on a space station. A biochemist who also served as NASA’s chief scientist, Lucid ran scientific experiments while onboard the Russian space station Mir.

Hello, and welcome to This Day in History. Here’s what happened on March 23rd. “Give me liberty or give me death!”--they are some of the most famous words in American history, and they were uttered by patriot Patrick Henry on this day in 1775. Henry, who was known for being a passionate orator, was giving a speech in his native Virginia in response to what he saw as increasingly oppressive British rule.

Hello, and welcome to This Day in History. Here’s what happened on March 22nd. With movie theaters shuttered across the country, we look back to this day in 1895, when “Workers Leaving the Lumiere Factory” made its debut. You may never have heard of it, but it’s widely considered to be the world’s first motion picture. Produced by a pair of French brothers who patented the world’s first machine that could both record and project movies to an audience.

Hello, and welcome to This Day in History. Here’s what happened on March 21st. Amid concerns that this year’s Olympics may be cancelled due to the spread of the Corona virus, we look back to this day in 1980, when President Jimmy Carter announced that the U.S. would boycott that summer’s Olympics in Moscow.

Hello, and welcome to This Day in History. Here’s what happened on March 20th. Even before Major League Baseball's opening day was postponed, there was one thing you’d be unlikely to find on the diamond--women. Things looked a little different on this day in 1934, when Babe Didrikson pitched one inning of baseball for the Philadelphia Athletics. She started the first inning of an exhibition game, allowing just one walk and no hits.

Hello, and welcome to This Day in History. Here’s what happened on March 19th. There are still more than 5,000 U.S. troops in Iraq today, 17 years after the Iraq war began. Coalition forces led by the U.S. were able to topple the regime of Saddam Hussein and capture Iraq’s major cities in just three weeks, sustaining few casualties.

Hello and welcome to This Day in History. Here’s what happened on March 18th. Amid news that NASA will look to send astronauts on commercial space flights, we look back to this day in 1965 when Russian cosmonaut Alexei Leonov became the first man to “free-float” or walk in space. Leonov likened the spacewalk to feeling “like a seagull with its wings outstretched, soaring high above the Earth.