more events on March 26
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1992
An Indianapolis court finds heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson guilty of rape.
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1989
The first free elections take place in the Soviet Union. Boris Yeltsin is elected.
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1982
Ground is broken in Washington D.C. for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
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1979
The Camp David treaty is signed between Israel and Egypt.
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1969
Writer John Kennedy Toole commits suicide at the age of 32. His mother helps get his first and only novel, A Confederacy of Dunces, published. It goes on to win the 1981 Pulitzer Prize.
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The Soviet weather Satellite Meteor 1 is launched.
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1961
John F. Kennedy meets with British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan in Washington to discuss increased Communist involvement in Laos.
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1954
The United States sets off an H-bomb blast in the Marshall Islands, the second in four weeks.
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1953
Dr. Jonas Salk announces a new vaccine against polio.
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Eisenhower offers increased aid to the French fighting in Indochina.
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1951
The United States Air Force flag design is approved.
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1950
Senator Joe McCarthy names Owen Lattimore, an ex-State Department adviser, as a Soviet spy.
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1942
Erica Jong, poet, novelist (Fear of Flying, How to Save Your Own Life).
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The Germans begin sending Jews to Auschwitz in Poland.
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1938
Hermann Goering warns all Jews to leave Austria.
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1933
Vine Deloria, Jr., writer, activist.
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1930
Sandra Day O’Connor, U.S. Supreme Court Justice.
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Gregory Corso, beat poet, discovered literature in prison.
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1923
Bob Elliot, radio comedian, one half of Bob and Ray.
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1918
On the Western Front, the Germans take the French towns Noyon, Roye and Lihons.
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1914
William Westmoreland, U.S. army general during the Vietnam War.
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1913
The Balkan allies take Adrianople.
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1911
Tennessee Williams, American dramatist (Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, A Streetcar Named Desire).
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1904
Joseph Campbell, folklorist and writer.
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1885
Eastman Film Co. manufactures the first commercial motion picture film.
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1880
Duncan Hines, U.S. restaurant guide author
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1874
Robert Frost, poet, multiple Pulitzer Prize-winner.
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1859
A.E. Houseman, poet (A Shropshire Lad).
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1850
Edward Bellamy, writer (Looking Backward).
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1832
Famed western artist George Catlin begins his voyage up the Missouri River aboard the American Fur Company steamship Yellowstone.
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1827
German composer Ludwig Van Beethoven dies in Vienna. He had been deaf for the later part of his life, but said on his death bed “I shall hear in heaven.”
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1819
Louise Otto, German author.
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1804
The territory of New Orleans is organized in the Louisiana Purchase.
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Congress orders the removal of Indians east of the Mississippi River to Louisiana.
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1799
Napoleon Bonaparte captures Jaffa, Palestine.
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1517
The famous Flemish composer Heinrich Issac dies.