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LBJ sends federal troops to Alabama to protect a civil rights march

Born on This Day

Fred Rogers

1928 - 2003

Cardigan-wearing host of the long-running children's TV show "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood."

Henrik Ibsen

1828 - 1906

Norwegian playwright who pushed 19th-century theater into grittier realism in dramas like "A Doll's House" and "Hedda Gabler."

Spike Lee

1957 -

Oscar-winning filmmaker who pushed Black perspectives into mainstream Hollywood in films like "Do the Right Thing."

Fred RogersGetty Images

Henrik IbsenCorbis via Getty Images

Spike LeeGetty Images

1973

MAR20

Puerto Rican-born Roberto Clemente, a 15-time All-Star with a .317 career batting average, is elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame, the first Latin American player to receive that honor.

Timeline

Also on This Day in History

Discover more of the major events, famous births, notable deaths and everything else history-making that happened on March 20th

Black Death is created, allegedly

According to scholars at the University of Paris, the Black Death is created on March 20, 1345, from what they call “a triple conjunction of Saturn, Jupiter and Mars in the 40th degree of Aquarius, occurring on the 20th of March 1345.″ The Black Death, also known as the Plague, swept across Europe, the Middle […]

Henry V ascends upon father’s death

King Henry IV, the first English monarch of the Lancastrian dynasty, dies after years of illness, and his eldest son, Henry V, ascends to the English throne. In 1399, Henry Bolingbroke was crowned King Henry IV of England following the forced abdication of King Richard II, who was greatly weakened by internal conflicts stemming from […]

King Louis XVI receives U.S. representatives

Benjamin Franklin, Silas Deane and Arthur Lee present themselves to France’s King Louis XVI as official representatives of the United States on March 20, 1778. Louis XVI was skeptical of the fledgling republic, but his dislike of the British eventually overcame these concerns and France officially recognized the United States in February 1778. Some of […]

“Uncle Tom’s Cabin” is published

Harriet Beecher Stowe’s anti-slavery novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, is published. The novel sold 300,000 copies within three months and was so widely read that when President Abraham Lincoln met Stowe in 1862, he reportedly said, “So this is the little lady who made this big war.” Stowe was born in 1811, the seventh child of […]

Republican Party founded

In Ripon, Wisconsin, former members of the Whig Party meet to establish a new party to oppose the spread of slavery into the western territories. The Whig Party, which was formed in 1834 to oppose the “tyranny” of President Andrew Jackson, had shown itself incapable of coping with the national crisis over slavery. With the […]

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Willie and Tad Lincoln get the measles

On March 20, 1861, President Abraham Lincoln’s sons, Willie and Tad, are diagnosed with the measles, adding to the president’s many troubles. Few U.S. presidents worked as hard in office as Abraham Lincoln did during the Civil War. Besides managing his generals and the war effort, Lincoln had to deal with prospective office-seekers, foreign affairs, […]

Tokyo subways are attacked with sarin gas

Several packages of deadly sarin gas are set off in the Tokyo subway system killing twelve people and injuring over 5,000 on March 20, 1995. Sarin gas was invented by the Nazis and is one of the most lethal nerve gases known to man. Tokyo police quickly learned who had planted the chemical weapons and […]

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