March 21 2003
1556 Death: Thomas Cranmer, first Protestant Archbishop of Canterbury, condemned as a heretic under Catholic queen Mary I and burned at the stake in Oxford. (Bradley)
1737 Andrew Michael Ramsay, a Scotish scholar and Grand Chancellor of the Grand Paris Lodge of Freemasons, makes a speech, now known as Ramsay's Oration, to the Masonic Lodge of St. Thomas in Paris, saying: "Our ancestors, the Crusaders, gathered together from all parts of Christendom in the Holy Land, desired thus to reunite into one sole Fraternity the indivduals of all nations." Ramsay went on to explain that the original Crusader-Masons were not themselves workers in stone, but rather men who had taken vows to restore the Temple of Christians in the Holy Land. Ramsay further stated that lodges of Freemasons were established by returning Crusaders in Germany, Italy, Spain, France and especially Scotland, where the lord stewart of Scotland was Grand Master of a lodge at Kilwinning in 1286. The lodges, he went on, were neglected in every country except Scotland, and although Prince Edward had brought Freemasonry back to England, Scotland clearly had the earliest Masonry in Britain and was the fountainhead of the Masonic spirit. Ramsay urgently appealed to France to take up the cause and "become the centre of the Order." (Born in Blood: The Lost Secrets of Freemasonry, John J. Robinson, 1989)
1806 Birth: Benito Juarez, Mexico's national hero and its first president of Indian descent; will succeed in undermining the power of the Roman Catholic church and the wealthy landlords in order to make Mexico a constitutional democracy; received his degree in law in 1831; served in both state and national legislatures. In 1841 he will become a judge and serve as governor of his state. When liberals defeat conservatives in the elections of 1855, Juarez will become minister of justice and public instruction and create a new, liberal constitution. In 1857 Juarez will be chosen to preside over the Supreme Court and serve as vice-president. During a conservative revolt from 1858 to 1860, he will act as president. Though forced to flee Mexico City, he will manage to hold the government together. (Bradley)
1829 The 60-year-old British Prime Minister, the Duke of Wellington, fights a duel with the Earl of Winchelsea over the Duke's support for catholic emancipation.
1848 German Unification: With Berlin in the hands of the revolutionaries, Kaiser Frederick Wilhelm announces that henceforth "Prussia is merged with Germany." "...Liberal hopes for German unification were not met during the politically turbulent 1848-49 period. A Prussian plan for a smaller union was dropped in late 1850 after Austria threatened Prussia with war. Despite this setback, desire for some kind of German unity, either with or without Austria, grew during the 1850s and 1860s. It was no longer a notion cherished by a few, but had proponents in all social classes. An indication of this wider range of support was the change of mind about German nationalism experienced by an obscure Prussian diplomat, Otto von Bismarck. He had been an adamant opponent of German nationalism in the late 1840s. During the 1850s, however, Bismarck had concluded that Prussia would have to harness German nationalism for its own purposes if it were to thrive. He believed too that Prussia's well-being depended on wresting primacy in Germany from its traditional enemy, Austria..."
1865 US Civil War: The "Richmond Sentinel" announces that a company of "colored troops" will parade on the town square in Richmond.
1911 Death: Johanna Polzl, Adolf Hitler's hunchbacked aunt, after giving him a modest inheritance shortly before her death.
1917 WW1: Another American ship, the Healdon, is sunk off the Dutch coast.
1918 WW1: At 4:40 in the morning, the German army launches another "great offensive" in the Second Battle of the Somme. After a 5-hour bombardment, six thousand German heavy guns open up with high explosives and gas shells along a 100 miles of front as the first of five massive assaults is about to be launched. The stunned British fall back, allowing the German Eighteenth Army to pass the Somme. Over a million German soldiers eagerly await the word to attack. Five hours later, under cover of fog, specially trained Storm Troops lead the way. The German army drives forward on a front nearly a hundred miles wide and overruns the British forward machine gun posts almost unobserved, striking the right flank of the British sector between Arras and La Fere. Within hours the whole British line begins to crumble.
1923 French scientists in Paris declare that smoking is beneficial to health because nicotine works against bacteria.
1933 Church and Reich: Hitler and Hindenburg attend elaborate ceremonies opening the new Reichstag in Potsdam. Hitler and Goebbels intentionally fail to attend special Catholic services. An official communique explains that they feel obliged to absent themselves because Catholic bishops in a number of recent declarations had called Hitler and members of the NSDAP renegades of the Church, who should not be admitted to the sacraments. "To this day, these declarations have not been retracted and the Catholic clergy continues to act accordingly to them." ("Augsburger Postzeitung")
1933 The German Comunist Party (KPD) is eliminated, giving the Nazis an absolute majority in the Reichstag. Several Communists are imprisoned at a munitions plant near Oranienburg, nine miles north of Berlin. This camp will close in 1935.
1933 Germany establishes special courts for political enemies.
1933 Anglo-Italian and Anglo-French meeting in Geneva on the maintenance of peace in Europe. The British plan contains the following proposals: (1) Duration of the pact - five years. (2) Reduction of arms production and prohibition of rearmament. (3) International control to see that each signatory fulfills the conditions. (4) Creation of a permanent organization to seek new methods of limiting armaments. (5) Establishment of fundamental political co-operation among the Great Powers on the basis of a growing mutual trust.
1934 The American Jewish Congress and New York Central Labor Council establish the Joint Boycott Enforcement Council against German goods and services.
1934 Hitler announces the "war on unemployment," emphasizing the need to employ five million jobless Germans during the coming year.
1937 Church and Reich: Mit brennender Sorge is read from the pulpits of all Catholic Churches in Germany on Palm Sunday. It has been smuggled into Germany, secretly printed and distributed by messenger throughout the nation. "With deep anxiety and with ever-growing dismay" Pius XI says he has watched the tribulations of the Catholic Church in Germany. The Concordat of 1933 is now being openly violated, and the conscience of the faithful oppressed as never before. True belief in God, the Pope declares, is irreconcilable with the deification of earthly values such as race, people or the state. Important as these are in the natural order, they can never be the ultimate norm of all things. Belief in a national God or a national religion, similarly is a grave error. The God of Christianity cannot be imprisoned "within the frontiers of a single people, within the pedigree of one single race." (Lewy)
1937 The Polish Senate passes a law making it illegal for Jews to manufacture, distribute or sell Catholic religious materials.
1938 Holocaust: Lichtenburg concentration camp near Prettin (Torgau) reopens
1939 WW2: Nazis seize the Free City of Memel (Lithuania).
1939 WW2: Sir Howard Kennard, British Ambassador in Warsaw, offers in the name of his government, what is called a Pact of Consultation and Resistance that includes Great Britain, France, Poland and the Soviet Union.
1940 WW2: Paul Reynaud forms a new French government.
1941 Holocaust: Adolf Eichmann, in a meeting at the Propaganda Ministry, refers to Reinhard Heydrich as being in charge of the "final evacuation of the Jews" to the Government General. Note: There is only one conceivable way to have a "final evacuation of the Jews" and simultaneously to make the Government General free of Jews. (See March 17) (Architect)
1941 WW2: The South-East of England is hit by the Luftwaffe's new Spring bombing blitz. A deliberate attempt is made to destroy Buckingham Palace by, first dropping incendiary flares, then following with flying bomb runs, but the palace escapes a direct hit.
1945 Death: Arthur Nebe, SS General and head the criminal police (KRIPO) from 1933 to 1945. Nebe was a professional policeman who had already reached the rank of Police Commissioner by 1924. Even before Hitler came to power, he had close connections to the SS group led by Kurt Daluege, and in April 1933, was recommended by Daluege for the position of Chief Executive of the State Police. Nebe quickly set about reorganizing the criminal police in the Third Reich and played a major role in establishing the totalitarian police system. In June 1941, he was given command of Einsatzgruppe B, which was headquartered in Minsk, and during the next five months, was responsible for 46,000 executions in White Russia. Thinking that he was implicated in the July bomb plot, Nebe disappeared in early 1945, and according to official records was executed in Berlin on March 21, 1945. Yet, several sightings and rumors of his activities continued into the late 1960's. Shortly after the war an amateur film showing a gas chamber supplied with gas from the exhaust of a truck was allegedly found in his former Berlin apartment. (Wistrich II)
1958 The London Planetarium is opened.
1960 On the first day of a campaign against South African pass-laws, a crowd of 15,000 converge on the police station in the black township of Sharpeville in the Transvaal. Fifty-six Africans die and 162 are injured when 75 armed police open fire. (Bradley)
1963 Alcatraz Prison in San Francisco Bay closes down after 104 years use and transfers its last prisoners. At its peak period of use during the 1950s, over 200 inmates were housed at the maximum-security facility, also known as The Rock and America's Devil Island. Alcatraz remains notorious for its harsh conditions and record for being inescapable. The 12-acre rocky island, one and a half miles from San Francisco, Cailfornia, featured the most advanced security of the time. Some of the first metal detectors were used at Alcatraz. Strict rules were enforced against the unfortunate inmates serving time there and nearly complete silence was mandated at all times. Juan Manuel de Ayala first explored Alcatraz in 1775, calling it Isla de los Alcatraces (Pelican Island) because of all the birds that lived there. It was taken over in 1849 by the US government. The first lighthouse in California was on Alcatraz. It became a Civil War fort and then a military prison in 1907. The end of its prison days in 1963 did not end the Alcatraz saga. In March 1964, a group of Sioux Indians claimed that the island belonged to them due to a 100-year-old treaty. Their claims were ignored until November 1969, when a group of 89 Native Americans representing the American Indian Movement (AIM) occupied the island illegally. They stayed there until 1971, when AIM was finally forced off the island by federal authorities. The following year, Alcatraz was added to the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. It is now open for tourism. (Bradley)
1965 In Selma, Alabama, a five-day civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, the Alabama state capital is begun by some 3,200 marchers led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., winner of the 1964 Nobel Prize for Peace. Alabama is a centre of the African-American civil rights movement, and, in early 1965, King's civil rights organization, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), planned a march from Selma to the state capitol to protest racial violence in Alabama. A first attempt was made on 7 March, but the march ended on the outskirts of Selma when mounted police using tear gas and clubs attacked and arrested the demonstrators. Two days later, another attempt was made, but the marchers were again blocked by the police. The same evening, Reverend James Reeb, a white minister, was fatally beaten by a group of Selma whites, leading to a national outcry and widespread publicity of the planned march. Under pressure from US President Lyndon B. Johnson, an Alabama court finally gave the marchers permission to proceed. On this day the march begins, and ends after minimal violence on 26 March in Montgomery, where King and his marchers will be joined by some 20,000 demonstrators in front of the Alabama state capitol building. Soon after, Congress will pass the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which gives federal agencies the right to enforce equal voting rights in the South. (Bradley)
1991 Death: Clarence Leo Fender, the inventor of The Telecaster and Stratocaster guitars.
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