Today’s Highlights

Today in history:

On March 2, 1962, Wilt Chamberlain scored 100 points for the Philadelphia Warriors against the New York Knicks, a single-game NBA record that still stands.

Also on this date:

1807: The Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves was signed by President Thomas Jefferson. (The domestic trade of enslaved people was not affected.)

1861: The state of Texas, having seceded from the Union, was admitted to the Confederacy.

1877: Republican Rutherford B. Hayes was declared the winner of the 1876 presidential election over Democrat Samuel J. Tilden, despite Tilden winning the popular vote.

1943: The three-day Battle of the Bismarck Sea began in the southwest Pacific during World War II.

1955: Nine months before Rosa Parks’ more famous act of defiance, Claudette Colvin, a Black high school student in Montgomery, Alabama, was arrested after refusing to give up her seat on a public bus to a white passenger.

1985: The U.S. government approved a screening test for AIDS that detected antibodies to the virus.

2011: The Supreme Court ruled, 8-1, that a grieving father’s pain over mocking protests near his Marine son’s funeral had to yield to First Amendment protections for free speech in a decision favoring the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas.

Today’s birthdays

Author John Irving is 83. Actor-comedian Laraine Newman is 73. Golf Hall of Famer Ian Woosnam is 67. Musician Jon Bon Jovi is 63.

Actor Daniel Craig is 57. Rapper-actor Method Man is 54.