Milestones: March 5, 2024

March 5, 2024 Brooklyn Eagle Staff

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INTERNATIONAL SNOWBALL FIGHT — THE BOSTON MASSACRE BROKE OUT on March 5, 1770, when American colonists mobbed the Customs House in Boston, taunting and bullying the British soldiers who were on guard. The colonists were protesting what they saw as British occupation of their city to enforce taxation without representation. When the British guards positioned their bayonets, the Patriots taunted and started throwing snowballs at them. During the melee, which broke out in the midst of reduced visibility from a snowstorm, five colonists were dead or dying — Crispus Attucks, Patrick Carr, Samuel Gray, Samuel Maverick and James Caldwell — and three more were injured. Historians consider the five colonists’ deaths to the first fatalities of the American Revolutionary War. The British soldiers were put on trial, which lasted nine months when two British soldiers were found guilty of manslaughter and had their thumbs branded with an “M” for murder as punishment.

March 5, 1770, is also referred to as Crispus Attucks Day, marking the death anniversary. Attucks was a sailor who may have been a former slave.

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FIRST PRESIDENTIAL IMPEACHMENT — THE 17TH U.S. PRESIDENT, ANDREW JOHNSON on March 5, 1868, BECAME THE FIRST TO BE IMPEACHED. Johnson, who had been vice president under Abraham Lincoln’s administration until the latter’s 1865 assassination, was lenient to the South during the Reconstruction, but at the expense of the emancipated slaves who were experiencing broken promises from the government concerning land and voting rights. Johnson reinstated the rights of the former Confederate states, essentially allowing them, through their policies, to preserve slavery. When Johnson vetoed the Republican-led Congress’ bills, they overrode him and passed the “Radical Reconstruction” that established military rule in the Southern states and granted the constitutional right to vote to African American men. After Johnson twice tried to oust Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, the House brought 11 articles of impeachment against him for violations of the Tenure of Office Act; one cited his opposition to the Army Appropriations Act of 1867 (designed to deprive the president of his constitutional position as commander in chief of the U.S. Army).

The Senate came up short on votes to convict Johnson, however, and he was found not guilty. He wisely decided not to run for re-election.

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THE IRON CURTAIN SPEECH — WINSTON CHURCHILL, AT THE TIME BETWEEN STINTS AS BRITAIN’S PRIME MINISTER, DELIVERED HIS FAMOUS IRON CURTAIN SPEECH on March 5, 1946. Speaking at Westminster College, in President Harry S. Truman’s home state of Missouri, Churchill condemned what he saw as Soviet imperialism in Europe — not even a year after Russia, England and the United States functioned as Allies against the Nazis. Churchill had a specific purpose to his speech, which was received warmly but with some criticism: he was trying to nurture a “special relationship” between Great Britain and the United States.” American government officials viewed this statement as a red flag, being that the British Empire seemed to be declining and they didn’t want the United States to become a crutch for England.

Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin. for his part, denounced Churchill’s speech, calling it “war mongering,” and scorning Churchill’s comments about the “English-speaking world” as imperialist “racism.”

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GYRATING WITH A HOOP — THE HULA HOOP CELEBRATES ITS BIRTHDAY ON MARCH 5, HAVING DEBUTED ON THAT DAY IN 1963. The hip-swivel toy, which became an athletic feat to master, was named for the dances of the Hawaiian islands, which had just become a U.S. state. However, the hoop was used in many other cultures as diverse as the Native Americans and the Swedes. The toy company Wham-O produced both the hula hoop and the Frisbee, which were both inventions of Richard Knerr (1925-2008).

Even though at the time the hula hoop’s popularity was short-lived; it experienced a revival in the current century. “Ripley’s Believe It or Not” claims that in April 2004, a performer at the Big Apple Circus in Boston simultaneously spun 100 hoops around her body.

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WON TONY AND OSCAR FOR SAME ROLE — BRITISH HEARTTHROB ACTOR, SIR REX HARRISON was born as Reginald Carey on March 5, 1908, at Huyton, near Liverpool. His career included more than 40 films and dozens of plays, winning him both a Tony Award and an Academy Award for the stage and screen productions of the musical “My Fair Lady.” He also played the title role of Dr. Doolittle, a veterinarian doctor who has the unusual gift of being able to talk with the animals and who finds himself mired in controversy. Before that, he played Captain Daniel Gregg, an alluring seaman who dies accidentally at home — in his prime — and as a ghost falls in love with a young widow (played by Gene Tierney). Together they write a best-seller, titled ‘Blood and Swash,” about his seafaring adventures.

Vowing never to retire from acting, Rex Harrison was playing in a Broadway revival of Somerset Maugham’s “The Circle” just three weeks before he died in his adopted home of New York City in 1990.

See previous milestones, here.