This Day In History

On March 8
1790 George Washington delivers the first State of the Union address.
1880 U.S. President Rutherford B. Hayes declared that the United States would have jurisdiction over any canal built across the isthmus of Panama.
1894 A dog license law is enacted in New York State. It’s the first animal control law in the United States.
1907 The British House of Commons turned down a women's suffrage bill.
1910 Baroness de Laroche of France becomes the first woman to obtain a pilot’s license.
1930 Babe Ruth signs a contract worth $80,000 with the New York Yankees.
1941 Martial law was proclaimed in Holland in order to extinguish any anti-Nazi protests.
1945 Phyllis Mae Daley received a commission in the U.S. Navy Nurse Corps. She became the first African-American nurse to serve duty in World War II.
1948 The U.S. Supreme Court rules that religious instruction in public schools is unconstitutional.
1954 Herb McKenley sets a world record for the quarter mile, running the distance in 48.6 seconds.
1959 Groucho, Chico and Harpo Marx make their final television appearance together.
1962 The Beatles perform for the first time on the BBC in Great Britain.
1985 The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) reported that 407,700 Americans were millionaires. That was more than double the total from just five years before.
1988 In Fort Campbell, KY, 17 U.S. soldiers were killed when two Army helicopters collided in midair.
1999 The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the conviction of Timothy McVeigh for the bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995.