Today in History

Today is Saturday, March 22, the 81st day of 2024. There are 284 days left in the year. Today in history On March 22, 1963, The Beatles' debut album, "Please Please Me," was released in the United Kingdom on the Parlophone record label. Also on this date In 1765, the British Parliament passed the Stamp Act to raise money from the American colonies, which fiercely resisted the tax. (The Stamp Act was repealed a year later.) In 1894, ice hockey's first Stanley Cup championship game was played, in which the Montreal Hockey Club defeated the Ottawa Hockey Club, 3-1. In 1933, during the Prohibition Era, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Cullen-Harrison Act, which allowed the sale of beer and wine with an alcohol content of 3.2%. (Prohibition would be fully repealed nine months later with the ratification of the 21st Amendment.) In 1941, the Grand Coulee hydroelectric dam in Washington state officially went into operation; it remains the largest capacity power station in the United States. In 1945, the Arab League was formed with the adoption of a charter in Cairo, Egypt. In 1972, in the Eisenstadt vs. Baird decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that unmarried people had the same right to possess and use contraception as did married people. In 1978, Karl Wallenda, the 73-year-old patriarch of "The Flying Wallendas" high-wire act, fell to his death while attempting to walk a cable strung between two hotel towers in San Juan, Puerto Rico. In 1993, Intel Corp. unveiled the original Pentium computer chip. In 2019, former President Jimmy Carter became the longest-living chief executive in American history; at 94 years and 172 days, he exceeded the lifespan of the late former President George H.W. Bush. (Carter would die at age 100 in December 2024.) In 2021, 10 people were killed in a mass shooting at a King Soopers supermarket in Boulder, Colorado. (The shooter, Ahmad Alissa, was sentenced to life in prison without parole in September 2024.) Today's Birthdays Artist Yayoi Kusama is 96. Actor William Shatner is 94. Former U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins is 84. Musician George Benson is 82. Writer James Patterson is 78. TV journalist Wolf Blitzer is 77. Composer Andrew Lloyd Webber is 77. Sportscaster Bob Costas is 73. Actor Lena Olin is 70. Singer-actor Stephanie Mills is 68. Actor Matthew Modine is 66. Football Hall of Famer Jim Covert is 65. Actor-comedian Keegan-Michael Key is 54. Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., is 52. Actor Reese Witherspoon is 49. Actor Constance Wu is 43. Former NFL defensive end J.J. Watt is 36.