Today’s Highlights

On March 14, 1879, Albert Einstein, who would revolutionize physics and the human understanding of the universe, was born in Ulm, Germany.

On this date

1794: Eli Whitney received a patent for his cotton gin.

1964: A jury in Dallas found Jack Ruby guilty of murdering Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused assassin of President John F. Kennedy, and sentenced Ruby to death.

1973: Future U.S. senator and presidential candidate John McCain was released from North Vietnamese captivity after being held as a prisoner of war for over five years.

1980: A LOT Polish Airlines jet crashed while attempting to land in Warsaw, killing all 87 people aboard, including 22 athletes and staff members of the U.S. boxing team.

2015: Robert Durst, a wealthy eccentric linked to two killings and his wife’s disappearance, was arrested by the FBI in New Orleans on a murder warrant a day before HBO aired the final episode of a serial documentary about his life. (Durst would be convicted in the shooting death of his friend, Susan Berman; he died in January 2022 while serving a life sentence in California.)

2018: Stephen Hawking, the best-known theoretical physicist of his time, died at his home in Cambridge, England, at the age of 76.

Today’s birthdays

Actor Michael Caine is 92. Country musician Michael Martin Murphey is 80. Actor-comedian Billy Crystal is 77. Country singer Kristian Bush is 55. Actor Betsy Brandt is 52.