26 March 2023 (MIA)

1804 – The Louisiana Purchase was divided into the Territory of Orleans and the District of Louisiana.

1827 – Composer Ludwig van Beethoven died in Vienna.

1875 – Poet Robert Frost was born in San Francisco.

1982 – Groundbreaking ceremonies took place in Washington, D.C., for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

1885 – The Eastman Dry Plate and Film Co. of Rochester, N.Y., manufactured the first commercial motion picture film.

1892 – Poet Walt Whitman died in Camden, N.J.

1901 – Lazar Licenoski, distinguished Macedonian painter was born in Galicnik. He was one of the most expressive landscape painters in Macedonia, involving some folklore elements in all of his paintings. There were other topics too among his paintings, such as still life, portraits and mosaics. Died on April 10, 1964 in Skopje.

1911 – Playwright Tennessee Williams was born in Columbus, Miss.

1962 – The U.S. Supreme Court gave federal courts the power to order reapportionment of seats in a state legislature, a decision that eventually led to the doctrine of “one man, one vote.”

1964 – The musical play “Funny Girl” opened on Broadway.

1971 – East Pakistan proclaimed its independence, taking the name Bangladesh.

1979 – The Camp David peace treaty was signed by Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat at the White House.

1992 – A judge in Indianapolis sentenced former heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson to six years in prison for raping a Miss Black America contestant. (Tyson ended up serving three years.)

1997 – The bodies of 39 members of the Heaven’s Gate techno-religious cult who’d committed suicide were found inside a mansion in Rancho Santa Fe, Calif. Former drug counselor John G. Bennett Jr. pleaded no contest in Philadelphia to charges stemming from a $100 million charity fraud.

2001 – Comair pilots walked off the job, beginning a three-month strike after contract talks with the regional airline broke off. A fire in a Kenyan secondary school dormitory killed 67 students.