Today is Friday, March 6, the 65th day of 2026. There are 300 days left in the year.
Today in history:
On March 6, 1981, Walter Cronkite signed off for the last time after nearly two decades as anchor of “The CBS Evening News.”
And on this day:
In 1820, President James Monroe signed the Missouri Compromise, which allowed Missouri to join the Union as a slave and Maine to join as a free state, while banning slavery in the northern part of the Louisiana Territory.
In 1836, the Alamo in San Antonio, Texas, fell as Mexican forces led by General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna attacked the fort after a 13-day siege; the war claimed the lives of all Texian defenders, including William Travis, James Bowie and Davy Crockett.
In 1857, the US Supreme Court, in the decision of Dred Scott v. Sandford, ruled 7-2 that Scott, a slave, was not a US citizen and therefore could not sue for his freedom in federal court; it also decided that slavery could not be prohibited in any part of the federation. This decision deepened the country’s division over slavery in the years leading up to the Civil War.
In 1869, chemist Dmitri Mendeleev presented his concept of the periodic table at a meeting of the Russian Chemical Society in St.
In 1912, Oreo cookies were first introduced by the National Biscuit Company (later known as Nabisco).
In 1951, the trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg on federal espionage charges began in New York. (Both were found guilty, sentenced to death and executed in 1953).
In 1964, heavyweight boxing champion Cassius Clay took a new name given to him by Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammed: Muhammad Ali.
In 1970, a bomb exploded in a townhouse in New York’s Greenwich Village by members of the rebel group Weather Underground accidentally exploded, destroying the house and killing three members of the group.
In 1990, Ed Yeilding and Joseph T. Vida flew a Lockheed SR-71 “Blackbird” spy plane across the US from coast to coast in a record time of 67 minutes, 54 seconds. (The US Air Force has since retired and played a major role in the American military and intelligence community since 1968.)
In 2009, NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope traveled through space from Cape Canaveral, Florida, to hunt for Earth-sized planets orbiting distant stars. The spacecraft discovered 2,681 exoplanets outside the solar system before running out of fuel and retiring in 2018 after 9 1/2 years of searching for the exoplanet.
In 2021, Pope Francis met with Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, one of the top clerics of Shiite Islam, in Iraq’s holy city of Najaf to deliver a message of peaceful coexistence, urging Muslims to accept Iraq’s long-suffering Christian minority. The historic meeting followed months of negotiations between the ayatollah’s office and the Vatican.
Today’s birthdays:
- Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan is 100 years old.
- Former Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova is 89 years old.
- Opera singer Kiri Te Kanawa is 82 years old.
- Rock singer David Gilmour (Pink Floyd) is 80 years old.
- Actor-comedian Tom Arnold is 67 years old.
- Actor and comedian DL Hughley is 63.
- Actress Connie Britton is 59 years old.
- Basketball Hall of Famer Shaquille O’Neal is 54 years old.
- Rapper producer Tyler, the Creator is 35 years old.
- Actress Millicent Simmonds is 23 years old.
