Today’s Highlights

On March 27, 2022, Will Smith slapped Chris Rock on stage at the 94th Academy Awards ceremony, winning the Oscar for best actor just minutes later. On this date

1794: Congress approved the “Act to provide a Naval Armament” of six armed ships, which provided the foundation of the permanent U.S. Navy.

1912: In Washington D.C., first lady Helen Herron Taft and the wife of Japan’s ambassador to the United States, Viscountess Chinda, planted the first two of 3,000 cherry trees given to the U.S. as a gift by the mayor of Tokyo.

1964: Alaska was hit by a magnitude 9.2 earthquake and tsunamis that together claimed over 130 lives.

1968: Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, the first man to orbit the Earth in 1961, died when his MiG-15 jet crashed during a routine training flight near Moscow; he was 34.

In 1973, “The Godfather” won the Academy Award for best picture of 1972, but its star, Marlon Brando, refused to accept his Oscar for best actor and, in what would become one of the Oscars’ most famous moments, sent in his place actor and activist Sacheen Littlefeather.

1977: In aviation’s deadliest disaster, 583 people were killed when a KLM Boeing 747, attempting to take off in heavy fog, crashed into a Pan Am 747 on an airport runway on the Canary Island of Tenerife.

Today’s birthdays

Actor Michael York is 83. Film director Quentin Tarantino is 62. Singer Mariah Carey is 56. Actor-singer Halle Bailey is 25.