Calendar for March 24th, 2011

2001: Palm Sunday

Died 1603: Queen Elizabeth I (English monarch)

1644: Roger Williams granted charter for colony Rhode Island

Born 1828: Horace Gray (Supreme Court justice)

Born 1834: John Wesley Powell (explorer)

Born 1874: Harry Houdini (magician)

Born 1886: Edward Weston (photographer)

Born 1887: Fatty Arbuckle (comedian)

Born 1893: George Sisler (baseball player)

1900: NYC Mayor Robert A. Van Wyck formally broke ground for construction of the NYC subway system

Born 1901: Ub Iwerks (animator, cartoonist)

Born 1902: Thomas E. Dewey (politician)

Died 1905: Jules Verne (author)

Born 1909: Clyde Barrow (bank robber)

Born 1911: Joseph Barbera (cartoonist, producer)

Born 1930: Steve McQueen (actor)

Born 1937: Billy Stewart (singer)

1944: President FDR issued statement appealing to Hungarians to help Jews escape from Nazis (WWII)

Born 1951: Tommy Hilfiger (fashion designer)

1955: The Tennessee Williams play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof opened on Broadway, with Barbara Bel Geddes as Maggie, Ben Gazarra as Brick, and Burl Ives as Big Daddy

1958: Entertainer Elvis Presley was inducted into the U.S. Army

1965: U.S. spacecraft Ranger 9 crash-landed precisely on target in the Alphonsus crater of the moon after transmitting to Earth 5,814 photographs of the crater region

1965: Senator Robert Kennedy was first to reach summit of Mt. Kennedy in Yukon Territory

Born 1976: Peyton Manning (football player)

Died 1980: Archbishop Oscar Romero (Salvadorian human rights activist)

1986: Libyan and U.S. forces exchanged gunfire after U.S. naval planes entered a restricted area across the Gulf of Sidra

1987: French premier Jacques Chirac signed a contract to build the first Disneyland-type amusement park in Europe, on the outskirts of Paris

1989: The largest oil spill in U.S. history, initially estimated at 240,000 barrels, occurred after the Exxon Valdez struck Bligh Reef in Alaska's Prince William Sound

Born 1990: Keisha Castle-Hughes (actress)

2006: Boston archbishop Sean O'Malley was elevated to cardinal at a ceremony in St. Peter's Square in Rome

Died 2008: Richard Widmark (actor)

Died 2010: Robert Culp (actor)