Today’s highlight

On March 28, 1979, America’s worst commercial nuclear accident occurred with a partial meltdown inside the Unit 2 reactor at the Three Mile Island plant near Middletown, Pennsylvania.

On this date

1797: Nathaniel Briggs of New Hampshire received a patent for a washing machine.

1854: During the Crimean War, Britain and France declared war on Russia.

1898: The U.S. Supreme Court, in United States v. Wong Kim Ark, ruled 6-2 that Wong, who was born in the United States to Chinese immigrants, was an American citizen.

1935: The notorious Nazi propaganda film “Triumph des Willens”, directed by Leni Riefenstahl, premiered in Berlin with Adolf Hitler present.

1939: The Spanish Civil War neared its end as Madrid fell to the forces of Francisco Franco.

1941: Novelist and critic Virginia Woolf, 59, drowned herself near her home in Lewes, East Sussex, England.

1942: During World War II, British naval forces staged a successful raid on the Nazi-occupied French port of St. Nazaire in Operation Chariot, destroying the only dry dock on the Atlantic coast capable of repairing the German battleship Tirpitz.

1969: The 34th president of the United States, Dwight D. Eisenhower, died in Washington, D.C., at age 78.