Today in History for March 25, 2016

Eddie Collins

March 25, 1306 – Robert the Bruce became king of Scotland.

March 25, 1558 – French friar and explorer Marcos de Niza passed away around age 63 in Mexico.

March 25, 1584 – Sir Walter Raleigh was granted a patent to colonize Virginia.

March 25, 1609 - Henry Hudson left on an exploration for the Dutch East India Co.

March 25, 1634 – The first settlers arrived in Maryland, which Lord Baltimore founded as a Catholic colony.

March 25, 1655 - Dutch astronomer Christiaan Huygens discovered Titan, the largest moon of Saturn. In recent years, the orange moon has been found to have lakes of hydrocarbons.

March 25, 1774 - The British Parliament passed the Boston Port Act. The act closed the port of Boston and demanded funds to pay for the tea that had been dumped into Boston Harbor during the Boston Tea Party on Dec. 16, 1773.

March 25, 1776 - The Continental Congress authorized a medal for General George Washington.

March 25, 1807 – The Slave Trade Act, which was passed by the British Parliament, became law, abolishing the slave trade in the British Empire.

March 25, 1811 – The Great Comet of 1811 was discovered by Honoré Flaugergues at 2.7 AU from the sun in the now-defunct constellation of Argo Navis. After being obscured for several days by moonlight, it was also found by Jean-Louis Pons on April 11, while Franz Xaver, Baron Von Zach was able to confirm Flaugergues' discovery the same night.

March 25, 1850 – By this date, at least 39 bodies from the Orline St. John disaster had been recovered and other passengers were still missing. Capt. Tim Meaher and his brother were among those who escaped, but at least 13 members of the crew were lost, including the second mate. The remaining 26 dead were passengers, including everyone woman and child on board. (Rivers of History)

March 25, 1862 – During the Civil War, a four-day Federal operation in Moniteau County, Mo. began. Federal reconnaissance was conducted to Agnew’s Ferry, Tenn. A four-day Federal operation involving Murfreesborough, Shelbyville, Tullahoma, Manchester, and McMinnville, Tenn. began. A skirmish was fought at Mount Jackson, Va.

March 25, 1863 – During the Civil War, a skirmish was fought at Florence, Ala.

March 25, 1863 – During the Civil War, skirmishes were fought at Jacksonville, Fla.; in the vicinity of Louisa, Ky.; at Brentwood and at Franklin, Tenn. on the Little Harpeth River, Tenn.; and at Norfolk, Va.

March 25, 1863 – During the Civil War, a seven-day Federal operation in the Booneville, Miss. area began. The ironclad, Switzerland, successfully ran past the Vicksburg, Miss. batteries. The Lancaster was destroyed during the attempt. A four-day Federal operation in Westmoreland County, Va. began.

March 25, 1864 – During the Civil War, skirmishes were fought at Dover, Rockport, in VanBuren County and along the White River, all in Arkansas; at Paducah, Ky.; and at McClellansville, S.C. A two-day Federal operation between Batesville and Fairview, Ark. began. A two-day Federal operation in and around Beaufort, S.C. began.

March 25, 1864 - Several days before President Abraham Lincoln had issued a proclamation declaring that U.S. military personnel who were absent without leave would be permitted to return to their units without penalty so long as they arrived by April 1. He was obliged to issue a second proclamation on the subject on this day to clarify that the amnesty did not apply to Federal deserters who had already been apprehended and placed in confinment.

March 25, 1865 – Spurling’s Raid into Conecuh County, Ala. ended as his troops moved through Brooklyn and on to Pollard.

March 25, 1865 – During the Civil War, a skirmish was fought on Deer Park Road, Ala. A community named Deer Park is shown as being located in the general area of Montrose, Ala. on a period map.

March 25, 1865 – During the Civil War, there were skirmishes at the following Florida locations: Canoe Creek (or Bluff Springs,) Escambia River and Mitchell’s Creek. Canoe Creek and Mitchell’s Creek are tributaries of the Escambia River. These two creeks join the Escambia River just south of the community of Bluff Springs, Fla. This is closer to Pollard, Ala. than it is to Pensacola, Fla.

March 25, 1865 – One of two Federal columns directly involved in the Mobile Campaign came ashore on the Fish River in the Bon Secour area, off the eastern shore of Mobile Bay in boggy ground.

March 25, 1865 – The Civil War Siege of Petersburg, Va., which began on June 9, 1864, ended. 3rd Sgt. Louis Stahl of the Conecuh Guards was wounded (Oct. 1864) at Petersburg, Va. (arm resected), and he survived war and moved to Marlin, Texas. Lewis Lavon Peacock also claimed to have been wounded at Petersburg. William Haskins of Conecuh Guards was killed at Petersburg.

March 25, 1865 - During the Civil War, Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia enacted its last offensive by attacking Fort Stedman in Petersburg, Virginia, in a desperate attempt to split the Union lines so Lee’s Army could break out of Petersburg. The attack failed, and within a week Lee was evacuating his positions around Petersburg. Two weeks after the Battle of Fort Stedman, Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Court House, Virginia.

March 25, 1865 – During the Civil War, skirmishes were fought near Glasgow, Ky.; at Indian Bend, La.; at Brawley Forks, Tenn.; at Fort Fisher and at the Watkin’s House, Va. A four-day Federal operation between Brashear City and Oyster Bayou, La. began.

March 25, 1896 – Monroe County Deputy Sheriff Harrengton returned to Monroeville, Ala. on this Wednesday from Hillsboro, Texas with his prisoner, James Nettles, charged with murder.

March 25, 1905 - Rebel battle flags that were captured during the American Civil War were returned to the South.

March 25, 1914 - Agricultural scientist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Norman Borlaug was born in Cresco, Iowa.

March 25, 1916 - Ishi, the last surviving member of the Yahi tribe of American Indians, died from tuberculosis.

March 25, 1916 – A “terrifying rainstorm” occurred on this Saturday night and destroyed several mill dams in Conecuh County, Ala., the outlets of which were tributaries to Murder Creek. “When the contents of these mill ponds reached the creek, together with the great rise caused by the heavy rains, it swept away road fills and bridges like chaff,” The Conecuh Record reported. “The Conecuh Naval Stores Co. and the Alger-Sullivan Lumber Co. sustained very expensive damages.” The Record also reported that high water prevented the Rev. H.S. Ellisor from filling his preaching appointment in the Kindig neighborhood on the afternoon of Sun., March 26.

March 25, 1916 - The “heaviest rainfall of which there is any record in this section visited practically all parts” of Monroe County, Ala. on this Saturday night, according to The Monroe Journal. “All streams were swollen beyond previous high water marks and nearly all bridges were damaged. Recently built roads stood the strain much better than was expected but they were also damaged. Plowed land suffered badly from erosion. The wasteway of Hatter’s mill, four miles from town, was blown out occasioning a loss of several hundred dollars, while the Chandler mill near Peterman was practically wrecked. Reports from various neighborhoods indicate that hundreds of cattle were caught by the backwater and drowned.”

March 25, 1921 - Alabama author Max Weatherly is born in Alco, La.

March 25, 1923 - Fire did “slight damage” to the roof of the Methodist parsonage in Evergreen, Ala. on this Sunday morning. Sparks from a chimney ignited the shingles, but the blaze was soon discovered and extinguished before any serious damage was done.

March 25, 1925 - Novelist and short-story writer Flannery O’Connor was born Mary Flannery O’Connor in Savannah, Georgia. Her first novel was “Wise Blood” (1952).

March 25, 1925 – In Lovecraftian fiction, a group of sailors had the misfortune to land up the island of R’lyeh and encountered Cthulhu itself.

March 25, 1930 – John Keel, the author of “The Mothman Prophecies,” was born in Hornell, N.Y.

March 25, 1930 – Italian mountaineer and explorer Carlo Mauri was born in Lecco, Italy.

March 25, 1931 - Nine black youths, soon to be known as the Scottsboro Boys, were arrested in Paint Rock, Ala. and jailed in Scottsboro, the Jackson County seat. Charged with raping two white women on a freight train from Chattanooga, the sheriff had to protect them from mob violence that night. Within a month, eight of the nine were sentenced to death. Based on questionable evidence, the convictions by an all-white jury generated international outrage.

March 25, 1932 - The Supreme Court handed down its decision in the case of Powell v. Alabama. The case arose out of the infamous Scottsboro case. Nine young black men were arrested and accused of raping two white women on train in Alabama. The boys were fortunate to barely escape a lynch mob sent to kill them, but were railroaded into convictions and death sentences. The Supreme Court overturned the convictions on the basis that they did not have effective representation.

March 25, 1934 - Feminist writer and activist Gloria Steinem was born in Toledo, Ohio.

March 25, 1936 – Confederate soldier Arthur B. Hale, who served with Co. F of the 36th Alabama Infantry, passed away at the age of 96. He is buried in the Pleasant Hill Baptist Church Cemetery off Shiloh Road in Monroe County.

March 25, 1951 – National Baseball Hall of Fame second baseman Eddie Collins passed away at the age of 63 in Boston, Mass. During his career, he played for the Philadelphia Athletics and the Chicago White Sox. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1939.

March 25, 1954 – The Evergreen Courant reported that the Conecuh County Training School girls basketball team improved to 39-0 by beating Westfield High School of Birmingham, 34-25, in the state basketball finals at Alabama State College in Montgomery. Mike Cheatham was CCTS’s head coach. Clementine Dukes, Ellen Stallworth, Etta Avant and Betty Jones were selected on the All State Girls Basketball Team.

March 25, 1954 – The Evergreen Courant reported that Alabama Public Service Commission had granted the L&N Railroad Co. permission to retire and dismantle its combination passenger and freight station building at Deer Range in Conecuh County, Ala.

March 25, 1957 – United States Customs seized copies of Allen Ginsberg's poem “Howl” on obscenity grounds.

March 25, 1965 – Civil rights activists led by Martin Luther King Jr. successfully completed their 4-day 50-mile march from Selma to the capitol in Montgomery, Ala.

March 25, 1966 – National Baseball Hall of Fame pitcher Tom Glavine was born in Concord, Mass. He would go on to play for the Atlanta Braves and the New York Mets. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2014.

March 25, 1967 - The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. led a march of 5,000 antiwar demonstrators in Chicago. In an address to the demonstrators, King declared that the Vietnam War was “a blasphemy against all that America stands for.” King first began speaking out against American involvement in Vietnam in the summer of 1965. In addition to his moral objections to the war, he argued that the war diverted money and attention from domestic programs to aid the black poor. He was strongly criticized by other prominent civil rights leaders for attempting to link civil rights and the antiwar movement.

March 25, 1968 - After being told by Defense Secretary Clark Clifford that the Vietnam War was a “real loser,” President Johnson, still uncertain about his course of action, decided to convene a nine-man panel of retired presidential advisors. The group, which became known as the “Wise Men,” included the respected generals Omar Bradley and Matthew Ridgway, distinguished State Department figures like Dean Acheson and George Ball, and McGeorge Bundy, National Security advisor to both the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. After two days of deliberation the group reached a consensus: they advised against any further troop increases and recommended that the administration seek a negotiated peace. Although Johnson was initially furious at their conclusions, he quickly came to believe that they were right.

March 25, 1968 - A Harris Poll reported that in the past six weeks “basic” support for the war among Americans declined from 74 percent to 54 percent. The poll also revealed that 60 percent of those questioned regarded the Tet Offensive as a defeat of U.S. objectives in Vietnam. Despite Gen. William Westmoreland’s assurances in late 1967 that the United States was making headway in the war, the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong had launched a massive offensive during the Tet holiday that began in late January 1968. Although the communist forces were soundly defeated during this offensive, the scope and extent of the attacks won the communists a major psychological victory in the United States, where the events of Tet confirmed a growing disenchantment with the seemingly never-ending war for increasing numbers of Americans.

March 25, 1971 - The Boston Patriots became the New England Patriots.

March 25, 1971 – The Army of the Republic of Vietnam abandoned an attempt to cut off the Ho Chi Minh trail in Laos.

March 25, 1976 – White Columns (Tait-Starr Plantation) near Camden, Ala. was added to the Alabama Register of Landmarks and Heritage.

March 25, 1980 – In Lovecraftian fiction, the Wilmarth Foundation instituted Project Cthylla.

March 25, 1983 – Pro Football Hall of Fame quarterback Bob Waterfield died at the age of 62 in Burbank, Calif. During his career, he played for UCLA and the Cleveland/Los Angeles Rams. He also coached the Rams from 1960 to 1962. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1965.

March 25, 1982 – St. Luke’s Episcopal Church at Cahaba, Ala. was added to the National Register of Historic Places.

March 25, 2004 – The Milner-Boone House in Georgiana, Ala. was added to the Alabama Register of Landmarks and Heritage.

March 25, 2005 – The Coleman-Crenshaw House near Greenville, Ala. was added to the Alabama Register of Landmarks and History.

March 25, 2006 - Shortly before leaving the Natalee Holloway disappearance case, Police Commissioner Gerald Dompig gave an interview to CBS correspondent Troy Roberts, which was broadcast on this day. In that interview, Dompig stated that he believed Holloway probably died from self-consumed alcohol and/or drug poisoning, was not murdered, and that someone later hid her body.