The Week in History for March 5-11

March 5

1770: The Boston Massacre took place as British soldiers who'd been taunted by a crowd of colonists opened fire, killing five people.

1946: Winston Churchill delivered his ''Iron Curtain'' speech at Westminster College in Fulton, Mo.

1960: Cuban newspaper photographer Alberto Korda took the now-famous picture of guerrilla leader Ernesto ''Che'' Guevara during a memorial service in Havana for victims of a ship explosion.

1963: Country music performers Patsy Cline, ''Cowboy'' Copas and ''Hawkshaw'' Hawkins died in a plane crash near Camden, Tenn., that also claimed the life of pilot Randy Hughes (Cline's manager).

1982: Comedian John Belushi was found dead of a drug overdose in a rented bungalow in Hollywood; he was 33.

2002: California Rep. Gary Condit, dogged by the Chandra Levy scandal, lost a Democratic primary election to Dennis Cardoza. (In November 2010, Ingmar Guandique was convicted of killing Levy and was later sentenced to 60 years in prison.)

March 6

1853: Verdi's opera ''La Traviata'' premiered in Venice, Italy.

1912: Oreo sandwich cookies (originally called ''biscuits'') were first introduced by Nabisco.

1960: Dennis Maloney became the new president of the Aberdeen Jaycees.

1962: What became known as the Ash Wednesday Storm began pounding the mid-Atlantic coast; over a three-day period, the storm resulted in 40 deaths and caused more than $200 million in property damage.

1968: Construction progressed north of town on a second Aberdeen hospital, Dakota Midland.

1970: A bomb being built inside a Greenwich Village townhouse by the radical Weathermen accidentally went off, destroying the house and killing three group members.

March 7

1876: Alexander Graham Bell received a patent for his telephone.

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

1960: Jack Paar returned as host of NBC's ''Tonight Show'' nearly a month after walking off in a censorship dispute with the network.

1960: Guy Lombardo and his orchestra were scheduled to play at the Aberdeen Civic Arena in a week.

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

1984: Gov. Bill Janklow signed a bill calling for a contribution of $25,000 from South Dakota to help restore the Statue of Liberty.

March 8

1702: England's Queen Anne acceded to the throne upon the death of King William III.

1854: U.S. Commodore Matthew C. Perry made his second landing in Japan; within a month, he concluded a treaty with the Japanese.

1960: Democrat John F. Kennedy and Republican Richard M. Nixon won the New Hampshire presidential primary.

1967: Voters in Milbank were considering whether or not to approve fluoridation of the city's water supply.

1971: Joe Frazier defeated Muhammad Ali by decision in what was billed as ''The Fight of the Century'' at Madison Square Garden in New York.

1974: Aberdeen voters were considering a bond issue of nearly $9 million to construct two new high schools — one on the south side of town and one on the north side — and a new building to replace the existing Lincoln elementary.

March 9

1796: The future emperor of the French, Napoleon Bonaparte, married Josephine de Beauharnais. (The couple later divorced.)

1861: The Confederate Congress, meeting in Montgomery, Ala., authorized the issuing of paper currency, in the form of interest-bearing notes.

1916: Mexican raiders led by Pancho Villa attacked Columbus, N.M., killing 18 Americans.

1965: The Hecla Red Rocket basketball team was ready to play in the state B tournament for the first time in 25 years.

1977: About a dozen armed Hanafi Muslims invaded three buildings in Washington, D.C., killing one person and taking more than 130 hostages. (The siege ended two days later.)

1997: Rapper The Notorious B.I.G., whose real name was Christopher Wallace, was killed in a still-unsolved drive-by shooting in Los Angeles; he was 24.

March 10

1785: Thomas Jefferson was appointed minister to France, succeeding Benjamin Franklin.

1960: South Dakota had 7,041 men on active duty in the military service — about 1% of the state's population.

1984: Aberdeen's Loren Steele, president of Super 8 Motels, announced the company opened 48 new motels in 1983 and hoped to open 70 more in 1984.

2004: Teenage sniper Lee Boyd Malvo was sentenced in Chesapeake, Va., to life in prison.

2008: New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer apologized after allegations surfaced that he had paid thousands of dollars for a high-end call girl, a scandal which eventually led to his resignation.

March 11

1862: During the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln removed Gen. George B. McClellan as general-in-chief of the Union armies, leaving him in command of the Army of the Potomac, a post McClellan also ended up losing.

1888: The famous Blizzard of '88 began inundating the northeastern United States, resulting in some 400 deaths.

1959: The Lorraine Hansberry drama ''A Raisin in the Sun'' opened at New York's Ethel Barrymore Theater.

1962: First lady Jacqueline Kennedy met with Pope John XXIII at the Vatican.

1965: South Dakota Rep. Ben Reifel announced that the Veteran's Administration planned to build a 75-bed nursing care facility in Sioux Falls.

1974: The Aberdeen city commission voted down the proposed plat of Jobee Acres due to its proximity to the airport. Airport officials worried that further development of the area would have adverse effects on future lengthening of existing runways.

This article originally appeared on Aberdeen News: Historical happenings for March 5 to March 11