Today In History: March 14
1757 β On-board the HMS Monarch, Admiral John Byng is executed by firing squad for neglecting his duty.
1794 β Eli Whitney is granted a patent for the cotton gin.
1900 β The Gold Standard Act is ratified, placing United States currency on the gold standard.
1903 β The Hay-Herran Treaty, granting the United States the right to build the Panama Canal, is ratified by the United States Senate. The Colombian Senate would later reject the treaty.
1910 β Lakeview Gusher, the largest U.S. oil well gusher near Bakersfield, California, vented to atmosphere.
1939 β Slovakia declares independence under German pressure.
1942 β Orvan Hess and John Bumstead became the first in the world to successfully treat a patient, Anne Miller, using penicillin.
1943 β World War II β The KrakΓ³w Ghetto is ‘liquidated’.
1964 β A jury in Dallas, Texas finds Jack Ruby guilty of killing Lee Harvey Oswald, assumed assassin of John F. Kennedy.
1967 β The body of President John F. Kennedy is moved to a permanent burial place at Arlington National Cemetery.
1980 β In Poland, a plane crashes during final approach near Warsaw, killing 87 people, including a 14-man American boxing team.
1994 β Timeline of Linux development: Linux kernel version 1.0.0 is released.
1995 β Space Exploration: Astronaut Norman Thagard becomes the first American astronaut to ride to space on-board a Russian launch vehicle.
1998 β An earthquake measuring 6.9 on the Richter scale hits southeastern Iran.
Born on March 14:
1813 β Joseph Philo Bradley, U.S. Supreme Court Justice (d. 1892)
1851 β John Sebastian Little, American politician and congressman (d. 1916)
1854 β Thomas R. Marshall, 28th Vice President of the United States of America (d. 1925)
1863 β Casey Jones, American railroad engineer (d. 1900)
1879 β Albert Einstein, German-born physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1955)
1933 β Quincy Jones, American musician and composer
1947 β William J. Jefferson, American politician
1948 β Tom Coburn, American politician, junior senator from Oklahoma
1948 β Billy Crystal, American actor and comedian
Today in Alaskan history:
1929 Air passenger service between Seattle and Alaska was inaugurated by International Airways of Seattle.
1959 Plans were announced for a second group of Detroit residents to travel to Alaska to create a “Little Michigan” in Alaska. According to their leader, they had plans to “move the mountains and spill the glaciers.”
1969 Interior Secretary Walter Hickel asked the Senate Interior Committee for clearance of the first step towards construction of a huge oil pipeline from the North Slope to the Gulf of Alaska.
1969 Several sunken railroad cars were found in Resurrection Bay waters off Seward, apparently swept there by the 1964 earthquake’s tidal aftermath. Each was reportedly filled with 10,000 gallons of aviation fuel.
