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March 21 (UPI) — On this date in history:
In 1413, Henry V was crowned king of England.
In 1617, Pocahontas died in England at about age 22. Three years earlier, she converted to Christianity, took the name Rebecca and married Englishman John Rolfe.
In 1790, Thomas Jefferson of Virginia became the first U.S. secretary of state.
In 1857, 100,000 people were killed in an earthquake in Tokyo.
In 1945, 7,000 Allied planes dropped more than 12,000 tons of explosives on Germany during a single World War II daytime bombing raid.
In 1952, Cleveland disc jockey Alan Freed organized the first rock ‘n’ roll concert — the Moondog Coronation Ball.
In 1962, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev pledged that Russia would cooperate with the United States in the peaceful exploration of space.
In 1963, the U.S. prison on San Francisco Bay’s Alcatraz Island was closed.
In 1965, more than 300 civil rights demonstrators, led by Martin Luther King Jr. and protected by Army and federalized National Guard troops, began a four-day march from Selma to Montgomery, Ala., to demand federal protection of voting rights. This was the main Selma-Montgomery march. Two previous attempts had stopped in Selma — one blocked by state troopers on March 7 (“Bloody Sunday”); the other halted voluntarily on March 9.
UPI File Photo
In 1984, a nuclear-powered Soviet submarine collided with the U.S. aircraft carrier, the USS Kitty Hawk, in the Sea of Japan but no significant damage was reported.
In 1989, Dick Clark retired from hosting the TV show American Bandstand after 33 years.
In 1999, Bertrand Piccard and Brian Jones landed near Cairo after becoming the first people to circle the globe by balloon.
In 2005, a 17-year-old boy at the Red Lake Indian Reservation in Minnesota killed nine people, injured several others and then killed himself.
In 2019, New Zealand banned military-style semi-automatic weapons less than a week after a gunman killed 50 people at two mosques in Christchurch.
File Photo courtesy SNPA/EPA-EFE
