This day in history — March 6
Today’s highlight in history
On March 6, 1836, the Alamo in San Antonio fell as Mexican forces led by General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna stormed the fortress after a 13-day siege; the battle claimed the lives of all the Texan defenders, nearly 200 strong, including William Travis, James Bowie and Davy Crockett.
On this date
In 1857, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Dred Scott vs. Sandford, ruled 7-2 that Scott, a slave, was not an American citizen and therefore could not sue for his freedom in federal court.
In 1933, a national bank holiday declared by President Franklin D. Roosevelt aimed at calming panicked depositors went into effect.
In 1953, Georgy Malenkov was named premier of the Soviet Union a day after the death of Josef Stalin.
In 1967, the daughter of Josef Stalin, Svetlana Alliluyeva, appeared at the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi and declared her intention to defect to the West. (Alliluyeva settled in Wisconsin in 1970, and died in Richland Center in 2011 at age 85.)
In 1970, a bomb being built inside a Greenwich Village townhouse by the radical Weather Underground accidentally went off, destroying the house and killing three group members.
In 1998, the U.S. Army honored three Americans who risked their lives and turned their weapons on fellow soldiers to stop the slaughter of Vietnamese villagers at My Lai in 1968.
In 2016, former first lady Nancy Reagan died in Los Angeles at age 94.
Ten years ago: Twin bombings in a shopping district in Baghdad killed at least 68 people and wounded 130 others.
Five years ago: Syria’s accelerating humanitarian crisis hit a grim milestone as the number of U.N.-registered refugees topped 1 million, half of them children.
One year ago: Robert Osborne, the genial face of Turner Classic Movies and a walking encyclopedia of classic Hollywood, died in New York at age 84.
"Beauty is the purgation of superfluities."
Italian artist and poet, born on this date in 1475