March seventh

Today's Highlight in History:
On March seventh, 1850, in a three-hour speech to the US Senate, Daniel Webster endorsed the Compromise of 1850 as a means of preserving the Union.

On this date:
In 1849, horticulturist Luther Burbank was born in Lancaster, Massachusetts.

In 1875, composer Maurice Ravel was born in Cibourne, France.

In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell received a patent for his telephone.

In 1911, the United States sent 20,000 troops to the Mexican border as a precaution in the wake of the Mexican Revolution.

In 1926, the first successful trans-Atlantic radio-telephone conversation took place, between New York and London.

In 1936, Adolf Hitler ordered his troops to march into the Rhineland, thereby breaking the Treaty of Versailles and the Locarno Pact.

In 1945, during World War Two, US forces crossed the Rhine River at Remagen, Germany, using the damaged but still usable Ludendorff Bridge.

In 1965, a march by civil rights demonstrators was broken up in Selma, Alabama, by state troopers and a sheriff's posse.

In 1975, the Senate revised its filibuster rule, allowing 60 senators to limit debate in most cases, instead of the previously required two-thirds of senators present.

In 1994, the Supreme Court ruled that parodies that poke fun at an original work can be considered "fair use" that doesn't require permission from the copyright holder.

Ten years ago: Health and Human Services Secretary Louis Sullivan announced the government would propose a more informative food-labeling system that would require the disclosure of the fat, fiber and cholesterol content of nearly all packaged foods.

Five years ago: New York Governor George Pataki signed a death penalty bill into law. In a near-party-line vote, the House passed, 232-to-193, a business-backed measure designed to pressure combatants in lawsuits to settle their differences short of costly trials.

One year ago: Movie director Stanley Kubrick, whose films included "Dr. Strangelove," "A Clockwork Orange" and "2001: A Space Odyssey," died in Hertfordshire, England, at age 70.

"More tears are shed over answered prayers than unanswered ones."

-- St. Teresa of Avila (1515-1582).