Today is Saturday, March 9, the 68th day of 2013. There are 297 days left in the year. A reminder: Daylight-saving time begins Sunday at 2 a.m. Clocks go forward one hour.
Today’s highlight:
On March 9, 1963, two Los Angeles police officers, Ian Campbell and Karl Hettinger, were disarmed and abducted by ex-convicts Gregory Powell and Jimmy Lee Smith during a traffic stop in Hollywood; the officers were taken to an onion field near Bakersfield, Calif., where Campbell was shot to death while Hettinger managed to escape. (Powell and Smith were sent to prison; the case was detailed in the book “The Onion Field” by Joseph Wambaugh.)
On this date:
In 1661, Cardinal Jules Mazarin, the chief minister of France, died, leaving King Louis XIV in full control.
In 1796, the future emperor of the French, Napoleon Bonaparte, married Josephine de Beauharnais. (The couple later divorced.)
In 1862, during the Civil War, the ironclads USS Monitor and CSS Virginia (formerly USS Merrimac) clashed for five hours to a draw at Hampton Roads, Va.
In 1916, Mexican raiders led by Pancho Villa attacked Columbus, N.M., killing 18 Americans.
In 1933, Congress, called into special session by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, began its “hundred days” of enacting New Deal legislation.
In 1945, during World War II, U.S. B-29 bombers launched incendiary bomb attacks against Japan, resulting in an estimated 100,000 deaths.
In 1954, CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow critically reviewed Wisconsin Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy’s anti-communism campaign on “See It Now.”
In 1962, the science fantasy novel “A Wrinkle in Time” by Madeleine L’Engle was first published by Farrar, Straus &Giroux.
In 1977, about a dozen armed Hanafi Muslims invaded three buildings in Washington, D.C., killing one person and taking more than 130 hostages. (The siege ended two days later.)
In 1983, Margaret Heckler was sworn in as secretary of Health and Human Services, the same day Anne M. Burford resigned as head of the embattled Environmental Protection Agency.
In 1992, former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin died in Tel Aviv at age 78.
In 1997, gangsta rapper The Notorious B.I.G., whose real name was Christopher Wallace, was killed in a still-unsolved drive-by shooting in Los Angeles; he was 24.
Associated Press
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