The Week in History March 12-17
March 12
1912: The Girl Scouts of the USA had its beginnings as Juliette Gordon Low of Savannah, Ga., founded the first American troop of the Girl Guides, a movement which had originated in Britain along with the Boy Scouts.
1932: The so-called ''Swedish Match King,'' Ivar Kreuger, was found shot dead in his Paris apartment, an apparent suicide, leaving behind a financial empire that turned out to be worthless.
1933: President Franklin D. Roosevelt delivered the first of his 30 radio ''fireside chats,'' telling Americans what was being done to deal with the nation's economic crisis.
1968: President Lyndon B. Johnson won the New Hampshire Democratic primary, but Sen. Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota placed a strong second.
1980: A Chicago jury found John Wayne Gacy Jr. guilty of the murders of 33 men and boys. (The next day, Gacy was sentenced to death; he was executed in May 1994.)
1987: The musical ''Les Miserables'' opened on Broadway.
March 13
1639: New College was renamed Harvard College for clergyman John Harvard.
1925: The Tennessee General Assembly approved a bill prohibiting the teaching of the theory of evolution. Gov. Austin Peay signed the measure on March 21.
1969: The Apollo 9 astronauts splashed down, ending a mission that included the successful testing of the Lunar Module.
1971: The South Dakota House of Representatives killed a proposal from Gov. Richard Kneip that called for the implementation of a state income tax.
1974: Vehicles for sale at Biegler Motors in Aberdeen included a Gremlin for $2,309 or a Hornet Hatchback for $2,649.
1980: Ford Motor Chairman Henry Ford II announced he was stepping down, the same day a jury in Winamac, Ind., found the company not guilty of reckless homicide in the fiery deaths of three young women in a Ford Pinto.
March 14
1794: Eli Whitney received a patent for his cotton gin, an invention that revolutionized America's cotton industry.
1885: The Gilbert and Sullivan comic opera ''The Mikado'' premiered at the Savoy Theatre in London.
1932: Photography pioneer George Eastman, founder of Eastman Kodak Co., died by suicide at age 77 in Rochester, N.Y.
1962: Democrat Edward M. Kennedy officially launched in Boston his successful candidacy for the U.S. Senate seat from Massachusetts once held by his brother, President John F. Kennedy. (Edward Kennedy served in the Senate for nearly 47 years.)
1965: Lee Park golf rates for the season were: $25 for men, $20 for women and $12 for youth. Daily fees were $1.50 on Saturdays, Sundays and holidays, and $1 weekdays.
1980: A two-year $500 investment at Aberdeen's First National Bank would earn 11.75% interest.
March 15
44 B.C.: Roman dictator Julius Caesar was assassinated by a group of nobles that included Brutus and Cassius.
1965: Among those representing Aberdeen Central at Boys State were Rory King and Gary Sharp.
1972: ''The Godfather,'' Francis Ford Coppola's epic gangster movie based on the Mario Puzo novel and starring Marlon Brando and Al Pacino, premiered in New York.
1980: No. 1 spring wheat was selling for $3.53 at local elevators.
1985: The first Internet domain name, symbolics.com, was registered by the Symbolics Computer Corp. of Massachusetts.
2002: A Houston jury spared Andrea Yates' life after prosecutors stopped short of demanding the death penalty for the tormented mother who'd drowned her five children in the bathtub. The 37-year-old Yates was sentenced to life in prison; however, she was later acquitted by reason of insanity in a retrial.
2004: Ten days after being convicted in a stock scandal, Martha Stewart resigned from the board of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia. Stewart rejoined the board in September 2011.
March 16
1802: President Thomas Jefferson signed a measure authorizing the establishment of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y.
1850: Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel ''The Scarlet Letter'' was first published.
1972: In a nationally broadcast address, President Richard M. Nixon called for a moratorium on court-ordered school busing to achieve racial desegregation.
1977: “Good Time City, Aberdeen” was the new slogan being used by the Chamber of Commerce to promote Aberdeen.
1982: Claus Von Bulow was found guilty in Newport, R.I., of trying to kill his comatose wife, Martha, with insulin. Von Bulow was acquitted in a retrial; his former wife, who was also known as ''Sunny,'' died in December 2008.
2003: Vice President Dick Cheney predicted on NBC's "Meet the Press" that American troops would be "greeted as liberators" by the Iraqi people.
2005: A judge in Redwood City, Calif., sent Scott Peterson to death row for the slaying of his pregnant wife, Laci.
March 17
1959: The Dalai Lama fled Tibet for India in the wake of a failed uprising by Tibetans against Chinese rule.
1969: The Newman Center at Northern State was scheduled to be completed and ready for use by the fall.
1987: Around 80 men worked for 22 contractors on Northern State University's new Barnett Center. The facility was scheduled for completion on Sept. 1.
2003: Edging to the brink of war, President George W. Bush gave Saddam Hussein 48 hours to leave his country. Iraq rejected the ultimatum.
2005: Baseball players Rafael Palmeiro and Sammy Sosa testified before Congress that they hadn't used steroids; Mark McGwire refused to say whether he had.
2009: The Seattle Post-Intelligencer published its final print edition.
March 18
1766: Britain repealed the Stamp Act of 1765.
1959: President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the Hawaii statehood bill. (Hawaii became a state on Aug. 21, 1959.)
1962: Aberdak Travel had a package trip to the Seattle World's Fair: $21 for three days or $49.25 for the five-day excursion.
1965: The first spacewalk took place as Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov went outside his Voskhod 2 capsule, secured by a tether.
1980: Frank Gotti, the 12-year-old youngest son of mobster John Gotti, was struck and killed by a car driven by John Favara, a neighbor in Queens, N.Y. (The following July, Favara vanished, the apparent victim of a gang hit.)
1987: The Claremont post office celebrated its 100th birthday.
This article originally appeared on Aberdeen News: The Week in History March 12-17
