Today in History

Today is Tuesday, March 22, the 82nd day of 2016. There are 284 days left in the year.

Today's Highlight in History:

On March 22, 1941, the Grand Coulee hydroelectric dam in Washington state officially went into operation.

On this date:

In 1638, religious dissident Anne Hutchinson was expelled from the Massachusetts Bay Colony for defying Puritan orthodoxy.

In 1765, the British Parliament passed the Stamp Act to raise money from the American colonies, which fiercely resisted the tax. (The Stamp Act was repealed a year later.)

In 1894, hockey's first Stanley Cup championship game was played; home team Montreal defeated Ottawa, 3-1.

In 1929, a U.S. Coast Guard vessel sank a Canadian-registered schooner, the I'm Alone, in the Gulf of Mexico. (The schooner was suspected of carrying bootleg liquor.)

In 1933, during Prohibition, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed a measure to make wine and beer containing up to 3.2 percent alcohol legal.

In 1945, the Arab League was formed with the adoption of a charter in Cairo, Egypt.

In 1958, movie producer Mike Todd, the husband of actress Elizabeth Taylor, and three other people were killed in the crash of Todd's private plane near Grants, New Mexico.

In 1963, The Beatles' debut album, "Please Please Me," was released in the United Kingdom by Parlophone.

In 1976, principal photography for the first "Star Wars" movie, directed by George Lucas, began in Tunisia.

In 1986, world financier Michele Sindona died two days after ingesting cyanide in his Italian prison cell in what authorities later ruled was a suicide. (Sindona was serving a life sentence for ordering the death of a bank examiner investigating his tangled financial affairs.)

In 1991, high school instructor Pamela Smart, accused of recruiting her teenage lover and his friends to kill her husband, Gregory, was convicted in Exeter, New Hampshire, of murder-conspiracy and being an accomplice to murder and was sentenced to life in prison without parole.

In 1995, convicted Long Island Rail Road gunman Colin Ferguson was sentenced to life in prison for killing six people.

Ten years ago: More than 125,000 hourly workers of General Motors Corp. and auto supplier Delphi Corp. were offered buyouts to help cut the companies' huge labor costs. The Basque separatist group ETA announced a permanent cease-fire with Spain. A Gabon-bound ferry sank off the coast of Cameroon; more than 120 people are believed to have died. A bus carrying cruise ship tourists plunged off a highway in northern Chile and tumbled down a mountainside, killing 12 Americans.

Five years ago: Yemen's U.S.-backed president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, his support crumbling among political allies and the army, warned that the country could slide into civil war as the opposition rejected his offer to step down by the end of the year. NFL owners meeting in New Orleans voted to make all scoring plays reviewable by the replay official and referee; also, kickoffs would be moved up 5 yards to the 35-yard line.

One year ago: CIA Director John Brennan, in an interview on Fox News Sunday, said the leader of Iran's elite Quds Force was contributing to instability in Iraq and complicating the U.S. mission against terrorism. The U.N. special envoy for Yemen, Jamal Benomar, warned an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council in a video briefing from Qatar that events were pushing the Arab country "to the edge of civil war."

Today's Birthdays: Composer-lyricist Stephen Sondheim is 86. Evangelist broadcaster Pat Robertson is 86. Actor William Shatner is 85. Senate President Pro Tempore Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, is 82. Actor M. Emmet Walsh is 81. Actor-singer Jeremy Clyde is 75. Singer-guitarist George Benson is 73. Writer James Patterson is 69. CNN newscaster Wolf Blitzer is 68. Composer Andrew Lloyd Webber is 68. Actress Fanny Ardant is 67. Sportscaster Bob Costas is 64. Country singer James House is 61. Actress Lena Olin is 61. Singer-actress Stephanie Mills is 59. Actor Matthew Modine is 57. Country musician Tim Beeler is 48. Actor-comedian Keegan-Michael Key is 45. Olympic silver medal figure skater Elvis Stokjo is 44. Actor Guillermo Diaz is 41. Actress Anne Dudek is 41. Actor Cole Hauser is 41. Actress Kellie Williams is 40. Actress Reese Witherspoon is 40. Rock musician John Otto (Limp Bizkit) is 39. Rapper Mims is 35. Actress Constance Wu (TV: "Fresh Off the Boat") is 34. Actor James Wolk is 31. Rock musician Lincoln Parish (Cage the Elephant) is 26.

Thought for Today: "Happiness does not lie in happiness, but in the achievement of it." -- Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Russian author (1821-1881).