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more events on March 23
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1981
U.S. Supreme Court upholds a law making statutory rape a crime for men but not women.
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1972
The United States calls a halt to the peace talks on Vietnam being held in Paris.
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1970
Mafia boss Carlo Gambino is arrested for plotting to steal $3 million.
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1967
Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. calls the Vietnam War the biggest obstacle to the civil rights movement.
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1956
Pakistan becomes the first Islamic republic, although it is still within the British Commonwealth.
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1951
U.S. paratroopers descend from flying boxcars in a surprise attack in Korea.
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1942
The Japanese occupy the Anadaman Islands in the Indian Ocean.
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1933
The Reichstag gives Adolf Hitler the power to rule by decree.
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1929
Sir Roger Bannister, the first man to run the mile in less than four minutes.
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1927
Captain Hawthorne Gray sets a new balloon record soaring to 28,510 feet.
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1921
Arthur G. Hamilton sets a new parachute record, safely jumping 24,400 feet.
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1920
Great Britain denounces the United States because of its delay in joining the League of Nations.
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1917
Austrian Emperor Charles I makes a peace proposal to French President Poincare.
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1912
Werner von Braun, German-born rocket pioneer.
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1910
Akira Kurosawa, film director (Rashomon, The Seven Samurai).