The week of March 10-16

March 10:

1785, Thomas Jefferson was appointed America's minister to France, succeeding Benjamin Franklin.

1913, former slave, abolitionist and Underground Railroad "conductor" Harriet Tubman died in Auburn, New York; she was in her 90s.

1969, James Earl Ray pleaded guilty in Memphis, Tennessee, to assassinating civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. (Ray later repudiated that plea, maintaining his innocence until his death.)

2021, the House gave final congressional approval to a landmark $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill against the opposition of Republicans.

March 11:

1918, what were believed to be the first confirmed U.S. cases of a deadly global flu pandemic were reported among U.S. Army soldiers stationed at Fort Riley, Kansas; 46 soldiers would die. (The worldwide outbreak of influenza claimed an estimated 20 to 40 million lives.)

2004, ten bombs exploded in quick succession across the commuter rail network in Madrid, Spain, killing 191 people in an attack linked to al-Qaida-inspired militants.

2011, a magnitude-9.0 earthquake and resulting tsunami struck Japan's northeastern coast, killing nearly 20,000 people and severely damaging the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power station.

2020, the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic.

March 12:

1864, Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant assumed command as General-in-Chief of the Union armies in the Civil War.

1947, President Harry S. Truman announced what became known as the "Truman Doctrine" to help Greece and Turkey resist Communism.

1994, the Church of England ordained its first women priests.

2020, as the coronavirus crisis deepened in the U.S., the stock market had its biggest drop since the Black Monday crash of 1987, the NCAA canceled its basketball tournaments after earlier planning to play in empty arenas and the NHL joined the NBA in suspending play.

March 13:

1862, President Abraham Lincoln signed a measure prohibiting Union military officers from returning fugitive slaves to their owners.

1925, the Tennessee General Assembly approved a bill prohibiting the teaching of the theory of evolution. (Gov. Austin Peay signed the measure on March 21; Tennessee repealed the law in 1967.

1996, a gunman burst into an elementary school in Dunblane, Scotland, and opened fire, killing 16 children and one teacher before killing himself.

2013, Jorge Bergoglio of Argentina was elected pope, choosing the name Francis. he was the first pontiff from the Americas and the first from outside Europe in more than a millennium.

March 14:

1794, Eli Whitney received a patent for his cotton gin, an invention that revolutionized America's cotton industry.

1951, during the Korean War, United Nations forces recaptured Seoul.

1967, the body of President John F. Kennedy was moved from a temporary grave to a permanent memorial site at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.

2018, Stephen Hawking, the best-known theoretical physicist of his time, died at his home in Cambridge, England, at the age of 76; he had stunned doctors by living with the normally fatal illness ALS for more than 50 years.

March 15:

44 B.C., Roman dictator Julius Caesar was assassinated by a group of nobles that included Brutus and Cassius.

1919, members of the American Expeditionary Force from World War I convened in Paris for a three-day meeting to found the American Legion.

1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson, addressing a joint session of Congress, called for new legislation to guarantee every American's right to vote; the result was passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

2019, a gunman killed 51 people at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, streaming the massacre live on Facebook. (Brenton Tarrant, an Australian white supremacist, was sentenced to life in prison without parole after pleading guilty to 51 counts of murder and other charges.)

March 16:

1802, President Thomas Jefferson signed a measure authorizing the establishment of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York.

1935, Adolf Hitler decided to break the military terms set by the Treaty of Versailles by ordering the rearming of Germany.

1968, the My Lai massacre took place during the Vietnam War as U.S. Army soldiers hunting for Viet Cong fighters and sympathizers killed unarmed villagers in two hamlets of Son My (suhn mee) village; estimates of the death toll vary from 347 to 504.

2020, amid coronavirus concerns, global stocks plunged again with Wall Street seeing a 12% decline, its worst in more than 30 years, and Ohio called off its presidential primary just hours before polls were to open while Arizona, Florida and Illinois went ahead with their plans.

-- Associated Press