Paradise Driver

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Today is Thursday, March 11th.

The 71st day of 2004.

There are 295 days left in the year.



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Today's Highlight in History:



Fifty years ago, on March 11, 1954, the U.S. Army charged that Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy, R-Wis., and his subcommittee's chief counsel, Roy Cohn, had exerted pressure to obtain favored treatment for Pvt. G. David Schine, a former consultant to the subcommittee. (The confrontation culminated in the famous Senate Army-McCarthy hearings.)



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On this date:



In 1302, The characters Romeo Monteveccio and Juliet Cappelleto were married this day according to William Shakespeare.



In 1619, Margaret and Philippa Flower were burned at the stake for practicing witchcraft in Lincoln, England. Known as the flower sisters, the two women, along with their mother, Joan, had cast spells upon various members of their employer's family. Joan didn't help things during the trial when she picked up a piece of bread and said "May this cake choke me if I am guilty." Then she took a bite of the bread and dropped dead.



In 1789, Benjamin Banneker with L'Enfant begin to lay out Washington DC.



In 1791, Samuel Mulliken of Philadelphia, PA became the first person to receive more than one patent from the U.S. Patent Office.



In 1810, Emperor Napoleon of France was married by proxy to Archduchess Marie Louise of Austria.



In 1811, The wedding of President Madison's sister-in-law is the first to be held in the White House.



In 1824, the Bureau Of Indian Affairs was created in the U.S. War Dept.



In 1847, John 'Johnny Appleseed' Chapman died in Allen County, Indiana. This day became known as Johnny Appleseed Day.



In 1850, the Women's Medical College of Pennsylvania, the first medical school entirely for women, is incorporated.



In 1861, the Confederate convention in Montgomery, Ala., adopted a constitution.



In 1865, General William T. Sherman takes Fayetteville, North Carolina, and destroys the arsenal there.



In 1888, the famous "Blizzard of '88" struck the northeastern United States, resulting in some 400 deaths.



In 1903, American accordion player and orchestra leader, Lawrence Welk, was born in Strasburg, North Dakota. He died on May 17, 1992, in Santa Monica, California, of pneumonia.



In 1907, U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt induced California to revoke its anti-Japanese legislation.



In 1918, The so-called Spanish influenza pandemic of 1918 arrived in the United States. By 1920, the virus had killed as many as 22 million people worldwide, 500,000 in the United States alone.



In 1927, the Flatheads Gang was responsible for the first armored car robbery which took place near Pittsburgh, PA. It was reported that $104,250 was taken in the heist.



In 1927, Samuel Roxy Rothafel opens the famous Roxy Theatre in New York City.



In 1930, former President and Chief Justice William Howard Taft was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.



In 1935, Hermann Goering officially created the Luftwaffe, the German Air Force.



In 1941, President Franklin Roosevelt signed into law the Lend-Lease Bill, providing war supplies to countries fighting the Axis.



In 1942, as Japanese forces continued to advance in the Pacific during World War II, Gen. Douglas MacArthur left the Philippines for Australia, vowing: "I shall return." (He kept that promise nearly three years later.)



In 1947, The DuMont network aired "Movies For Small Fry." It was network television's first successful children's program.



In 1953, first woman doctor commissioned in regular army - F. M. Adams



In 1958, an American B-47 bomber accidentally drops an unarmed atom bomb on a South Carolina farm. The bomb's conventional explosives injure six, level a farm house, and produce a thirty-five-foot-deep crater.



In 1959, the Lorraine Hansberry drama "A Raisin in the Sun" opened at New York's Ethel Barrymore Theater. It is the first play by an African-American woman to run on Broadway.



In 1965, the Rev. James J. Reeb, a white minister from Boston, died after being beaten by whites during civil rights disturbances in Selma, Ala.



In 1966, Three men were convicted of the murder of Malcolm X.



In 1969, Levi-Strauss starts selling the popular bell-bottomed style jeans.



In 1977, more than 130 hostages held in Washington, D.C., by Hanafi Muslims were freed after ambassadors from three Islamic nations joined the negotiations.



In 1978, Bobby Hull joins hockey great Gordy Howe in the record books by scoring his 1,000th career goal.



In 1985, Mikhail S. Gorbachev was chosen to succeed the late Soviet President Konstantin U. Chernenko.



In 1986, 1 million days since traditional foundation of Rome, 4/21/753 BC.



In 1986, Popsicle announced its plan to end the traditional twin-stick frozen treat for a flatter, one-stick model.



In 1988, A cease-fire was declared in the war between Iran and Iraq.



In 1990, Lithuania declared its independence from the Soviet Union. It was the first Soviet republic to break away from Communist control.



In 1990, In Chile, Patricio Aylwin was sworn in as the first democratically elected president since 1973.



In 1991, In South Africa a curfew was imposed on black townships after fighting between political gangs had left 49 dead.



In 1992, Former U.S. President Nixon said that the Bush administration was not giving enough economic aid to Russia.



In 1993, Janet Reno was unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate to become the first female attorney general.



In 1993, North Korea withdrew from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty refusing to open sites for inspection.



In 1994, In Chile, Eduardo Frei was sworn in as President. It was the first peaceful transfer of power in Chile since 1970.



In 1997, An explosion at a nuclear waste reprocessing plant caused 35 workers to be exposed to low levels of radioactivity. The incident was the worst in Japan's history.



In 1998, The International Astronomical Union issued an alert that said that a mile-wide asteroid could come very close to, and possibly hit, Earth on Oct. 26, 2028. The next day NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory announced that there was no chance the asteroid would hit Earth.



In 2001, Masked Zapatista rebels urged passage of an Indian rights bill after riding triumphantly into the heart of Mexico's capital in a march supported by the president and welcomed by 75,000 cheering supporters.



In 2002, Two columns of light soared skyward from Ground Zero in New York City as a temporary memorial to the victims of the September 11 attacks.



Ten years ago (1994):



Secretary of State Warren Christopher arrived in Beijing, the mood of his trip already soured by a fresh government crackdown on Chinese dissidents.



Five years ago (1999):



The House voted 219-191 to conditionally support President Clinton's plan to send U.S. troops to Kosovo if a peace agreement were reached.



U.S. President Bill Clinton completed a four-day, four-nation visit to Central America.



One year ago (2003):



A U.S. Army helicopter crashed near Fort Drum in upstate New York, killing 11 soldiers.



Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the leader of Turkey's governing party, was named prime minister.



After a four-day walkout that cost the city $10 million, Broadway musicians settled the first strike on the Great White Way in nearly 30 years.



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Today's Birthdays:



Actor Terence Alexander is 81.



Media mogul Rupert Murdoch is 73.



ABC News correspondent Sam Donaldson is 70.



Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia is 68.



Musician Flaco Jimenez is 65.



Actress Tricia O'Neil is 59.



Rock singer-musician Mark Stein (Vanilla Fudge) is 57.



Singer Bobby McFerrin ("Don't Worry, Be Happy" Grammy 1989) is 54.



Movie director Jerry Zucker is 54.



Actress Susan Richardson is 52.



Singer Nina Hagen is 49.



Country singer Jimmy Fortune (The Statler Brothers) is 49.



Singer Cheryl Lynn is 47.



Actress Alex Kingston is 41.



Actor Wallace Langham is 39.



Singer Lisa Loeb is 36.



Singer Pete Droge is 35.



Rock musician Rami Jaffee (Wallflowers) is 35.



Actor Johnny Knoxville is 33.



Rock singer-musicians Benji and Joel Madden (Good Charlotte) are 25.



Actor David Anders is 23.



Actress Thora Birch is 22.



Actor Anton Yelchin is 15.



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Thought for Today:

"Because things are the way they are, things will not stay the way they are." -

- Bertholt Brecht, German poet and dramatist (1898-1956).

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