Today’s Highlights

On March 5, 1770, the Boston Massacre took place as British soldiers who’d been taunted by a crowd of colonists opened fire, killing five people.

On this date

1933: In German parliamentary elections six days after the Reichstag fire, the Nazi Party won 44% of the vote.

1946: Winston Churchill delivered a speech at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, in which he said: “From Stettin in the Baltic, to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent.”

1963: Country music performers Patsy Cline, Cowboy Copas and Hawkshaw Hawkins died in the crash of their plane, a Piper Comanche, near Camden, Tennessee, along with pilot Randy Hughes (Cline’s manager).

1979: NASA’s Voyager 1 space probe made its closest approach to Jupiter, sending back photographs of the planet and its moons.

1982: Comedian John Belushi was found dead of a drug overdose in a rented bungalow at Hollywood’s Chateau Marmont hotel; he was 33.

2004: Martha Stewart was convicted in New York of conspiracy, obstructing justice and lying to the government about why she’d sold her Imclone stock just before the stock’s price plummeted; her ex-stockbroker, Peter Bacanovic, also was found guilty in the stock scandal. (Each later received a five-month prison sentence.)

Today’s birthdays

Actor Fred Williamson is 87. Magician Penn Jillette is 70. Actor Adriana Barraza is 69. Football Hall of Famer Michael Irvin is 59.