Milestones: March 28, 2024

March 28, 2024 Brooklyn Eagle Staff

Share this:

NUCLEAR ACCIDENT— THE THREE MILE ISLAND NUCLEAR POWER PLANT, BUILT IN 1974 NEAR HARRISBURG, PENNSYLVANIA, SUFFERED ONE OF THE NATION’S WORST ACCIDENTS OF THE INDUSTRY WHEN, AT 4 A.M. on March 28, 1979, a pressure valve in the Unit 2 Reactor failed to close. This set off a sequence of events, complicated by human error, that threatened an entire community with fatal radiation. However, that worst-case scenario was averted. After the pressure valve failure, cooling water with radiation contamination drained into adjoining buildings, causing the core to overheat, and cooling pumps were activated. The staff, confused by contradictory sensor readings, erroneously shut off the emergency water system while heat was still being released, thus causing an almost complete meltdown before they rectified that situation. However, the crisis was not over, and a bubble of highly flammable hydrogen gas that had formed was discovered two days later within the reactor building. A panic ensued.

President Jimmy Carter, who was trained in nuclear engineering while in the U.S. Navy, visited the plant on April 1, and ascertained that the bubble was not in danger of exploding. Preventive steps were taken, but the crisis caused the public to lose trust in nuclear energy.

✰✰✰

SPAIN GOES FASCIST — THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR ENDED ON MARCH 28, 1939, WHEN GENERAL FRANCISCO FRANCO AND HIS NATIONALIST FORCES brought fascism to Spain. In 1931, Spanish King Alfonso XIII approved elections to decide the government of Spain, and voters overwhelmingly chose to abolish the monarchy in favor of a liberal republic, and reforms favoring labor and autonomy for several regions of Spain, including in the Basque and Catalonia regions. However, opponents to the Second Republic, which included the Spanish aristocracy, the church and a growing military clique, resorted to violence. In July 1936, Franco led a right-wing army revolt in Morocco, and Spain was divided between the Nationalists who supported his autocratic style, and helped form the fascist Falange and the Republicans, mostly in northern Spain, who opposed them. Both sides received international aid: with Germany and Italy siding with Franco. and the Soviet Union and the International Brigades helping the Republicans and protecting Madrid as a Republican stronghold.

But on March 28, 1939, the Republicans waved the white flag, and the victorious Franco ruled Spain as a fascist country until 1975.

✰✰✰

BRILLIANT ALLIED COMMANDER — ON THIS DATE, DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER, THE WIDELY-RESPECTED 34TH PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES and one of the most highly regarded American generals of World War II, died in Washington, D.C., on March 28, 1969 at age 78. Born in 1890, Eisenhower graduated from the United States Military Academy in 1915, and after World War I he steadily rose in the peacetime ranks of the U.S. Army. He became a brilliant military strategist and organizer during World War II and was appointed commanding general of the European theater of operations, overseeing U.S. troops massing in Great Britain. Even though he had never commanded troops in the field, Eisenhower was placed in charge of Operation Torch, the Anglo-American landings in Morocco and Algeria. Eisenhower, who designed a system of unified command, quickly won the respect of his British and Canadian subordinates. By January 1944 he was appointed supreme Allied commander of Operation Overlord, the Allied invasion of northwestern Europe. He later served as supreme commander of the combined land and air forces of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

However, Eisenhower was urged to run for President on the Republican ticket, with that party’s launch of the slogan, “I like Ike.” He won the 1952 election and a landslide re-election in 1956.

✰✰✰

FAMOUS CHILD ACTOR — FREDERICK CECIL BARTHOLOMEW WAS BORN IN LONDON A CENTURY AGO, on March 28, 1924. Known as Freddie Bartholomew, he immigrated to the U.S. to star in the title role of MGM’S production of the Charles Dickens classic, David Copperfield. But his most famous starring roles were in “Captains Courageous” (1937) and “Little Lord Fauntleroy” (1936). Having arrived in the States at age 10, he became a U.S. citizen in 1943.

Bartholomew’s fortunes from child stardom were disrupted by legal and financial battles. He later switched from film acting to directing and producing in the television industry.

✰✰✰

ADDOLORATA PROCESSION — THE ITALIAN SEAPORT CITY OF TARANTO HOLDS ITS ANNUAL HOLY THURSDAY PROCESSION OF THE ADDOLORATA AND GOOD FRIDAY PROCESSION OF THE MYSTERIES, this year on March 28–29. Both are slow-paced events with participants in unusual costumes. Taranto is in the heel of Italy’s peninsula but bordering the Ionian Sea. Not too far away is the port city of Bari, on the Adriatic Sea. Many people from Bari immigrated to the United States.

Sacred Hearts-St. Stephen Church in Brooklyn’s Carroll Gardens neighborhood became a refuge of many immigrants from Mola di Bari. The parish holds a Good Friday Addolorata (Mother of Sorrows) Procession each year throughout Carroll Gardens and will do so this Friday, March 29, 2024.

See previous milestones, here.