Milestones: March 25, 2024

March 25, 2024 Brooklyn Eagle Staff

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BOSSES WERE ARSONISTS — AMERICAN INDUSTRIAL HISTORY AND WOMEN’S RIGHTS AS WORKERS HAD ONE OF ITS DARKEST MOMENTS WHEN the Triangle Shirtwaist Company factory in New York City burned, killing 146 immigrant workers, most of them women. The factory occupied the top three floors of the Asch Building in lower Manhattan. The Triangle Factory’s owners, Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, were already on law enforcement’s radar for their history of suspicious factory fires, including at that location. Moreover, Blanck and Harris’ Diamond Waist Company had already burned twice, in 1907 and 1910. Apparently, the fires were arson so the partners could exploit their insurance policies. While most of the fires broke out before work hours, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire erupted on a Saturday afternoon, with 600 workers in cramped spaces on the eighth floor. Several factors led to the tragedy, including elevators that broke down, sabotaged hoses and the absence of a sprinkler system, and a door that Blanck and Harris had locked to prevent theft.

In the aftermath, a workers’ union organized a march on April 5 to protest the conditions that led to the fire; more than 80,000 people attended.

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A RELIGIOUS REFUGE — THE FIRST COLONISTS IN MARYLAND ARRIVED ON MARCH 25, 1634, AT ST. CLEMENT’S ISLAND on Maryland’s western shore and found the settlement of St. Mary’s, for which King Charles I had granted a charter two years prior to George Calvert, who was the first Lord Baltimore. Named Maryland in honor of Henrietta Maria, Charles I’s queen consort, the territory became a settlement for a carefully vetted group of Catholics and Protestants seeking refuge from the persecution they had experienced in England. But Lord Calvert died before the settlement was completed, and his brother Cecilius is the one who actually sought to repurpose Maryland as the religious haven for Catholics. Religious conflict broke out between the Catholics and a rapidly-populating group of American Puritans who wanted to revoke the colony’s religious freedoms and who later seized the colony.

Anti-Catholic incidents continued until the 19th century. Then, an influx of Catholic immigrants chose to settle in Baltimore; they successfully enacted laws to protect their freedom to practice Catholicism.

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THE TRIPARTITE PACT — YUGOSLAVIA ON MARCH 25, 1941, JOINED THE AXIS POWERS WITH GERMANY, ITALY AND JAPAN, even though the Adriatic Sea nation had earlier declared its neutrality. Following World War I, the nation of Yugoslavia had formed as a response to the collapse of the Ottoman and Hapsburg empires at the end of World War I, becoming an apprehensive federation of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. Yugoslavia was set up as a constitutional monarchy, establishing friendships with France and Czechoslovakia. However, as the Nazis expanded their takeovers of Europe, Yugoslavia’s Prince Paul — fearing a German invasion — decided to sign the Tripartite Pact, which was part friendship treaty and part military alliance.

However, the Yugoslav Cabinet members protested the signing, four of them resigning. An angry coalition of peasants, church leaders and military officers overthrew Yugoslav Prime Minister Cvetkovic’s government. Air Force Gen. Dusan Simovic formed a new government and immediately renounced the Tripartite Pact. Those events led to Germany’s invasion of Yugoslavia.

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NATO FORCES MILOSEVIC’S HAND — HALF A CENTURY LATER, ON MARCH 25, 1999, NATO FORCES ATTACKED YUGOSLAVIA over Serb Leader Slobodan Milosevic’s mistreatment of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo province. The military campaign followed weeks of grueling and unsuccessful negotiations between NATO and Milosevic, who responded to NATO’s bombing by ordering the Serb army to force the eviction of the ethnic Albanians to Albania, Macedonia and Montenegro.

Later that year, NATO and Yugoslav officials signed an agreement, on June 10, 1999, stipulating that Serb troops would withdraw from Kosovo, that Allied air strikes would end, and the refugees could return.

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BED-IN FOR PEACE — BEATLE JOHN LENNON AND HIS NEW BRIDE, YOKO ONO, HELD THEIR FAMOUS BED-IN FOR PEACE marathon from March 25–31, 1969. The bed-in was their honeymoon following a March 20 wedding. The couple received the news media in their honeymoon suite, Room 902 of the Hilton Hotel in Amsterdam. They sat up in bed, sang and talked for a full week with a message to the world: “Choose Peace.”

Buoyed by the experience, the couple held another bed-in May 26–June 2 in Montreal, during which “Give Peace a Chance” was recorded.

See previous milestones, here.