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| On this date in: | |
| 1783 | Gen. George Washington said farewell to his officers at Fraunces Tavern in New York. |
| 1816 | James Monroe of Virginia was elected the fifth president of the United States. |
| 1918 | President Woodrow Wilson set sail for France to attend the Versailles peace conference. |
| 1942 | President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered the dismantling of the Works Progress Administration, which had been created to provide jobs during the Depression. |
| 1942 | U.S. bombers struck the Italian mainland for the first time in World War II. |
| 1978 | Dianne Feinstein became San Francisco's first woman mayor when she was named to replace George Moscone, who had been assassinated. |
| 1980 | The bodies of four American nuns slain in El Salvador two days earlier were unearthed. (Five national guardsmen were later convicted of murder.) |
| 1991 | Associated Press correspondent Terry Anderson, the longest-held Western hostage in Lebanon, was released after nearly seven years in captivity. |
| 1992 | President George H.W. Bush ordered American troops to lead a mercy mission to Somalia, threatening military action against warlords and gangs who were blocking food for starving millions. |
| 1993 | Rock musician Frank Zappa died at age 52. |
| 1995 | The first NATO troops landed in the Balkans to begin setting up a peace mission. |
| 1997 | The NBA suspended Latrell Sprewell of the Golden State Warriors for one year for choking and threatening to kill his coach, P.J. Carlesimo. (An arbitrator later reduced the suspension and reinstated Sprewell to the Warriors, which had terminated his contract.) |
| 2000 | A Florida state judge refused to overturn Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush's certified victory in Florida, and the U.S. Supreme Court set aside a ruling that had allowed manual recounts. |
| 2001 | The United States froze the financial assets of organizations allegedly linked to the terrorist group Hamas. |
| 2006 | Lacking the Senate votes to keep his job, embattled U.N. Ambassador John Bolton offered his resignation to President George W. Bush, who accepted it. |
Article of the day
Hostage Terry Anderson freed in Lebanon
On this day in 1991, Islamic militants in Lebanon release kidnapped American journalist Terry Anderson after 2,454 days in captivity.
As chief Middle East correspondent for the Associated Press, Anderson covered the long-running civil war in Lebanon (1975-1990). On March 16, 1985, he was kidnapped on a west Beirut street while leaving a tennis court. His captors took him to the southern suburbs of the city, where he was held prisoner in an underground dungeon for the next six-and-a-half years.
Anderson was one of 92 foreigners (including 17 Americans) abducted during Lebanon's bitter civil war. The kidnappings were linked to Hezbollah, or the Party of God, a militant Shiite Muslim organization formed in 1982 in reaction to Israel’s military presence in Lebanon. They seized several Americans, including Anderson, soon after Kuwaiti courts jailed 17 Shiites found guilty of bombing the American and French embassies there in 1983. Hezbollah in Lebanon received financial and spiritual support from Iran, where prominent leaders praised the bombers and kidnappers for performing their duty to Islam.
U.S. relations with Iran--and with Syria, the other major foreign influence in Lebanon--showed signs of improving by 1990, when the civil war drew to a close, aided by Syria's intervention on behalf of the Lebanese army. Eager to win favor from the U.S. in order to promote its own economic goals, Iran used its influence in Lebanon to engineer the release of nearly all the hostages over the course of 1991.
Anderson returned to the U.S. and was reunited with his family, including his daughter Suleme, born three months after his capture. In 1999, he sued the Iranian government for $100 million, accusing it of sponsoring his kidnappers; he received a multi-million dollar settlement.Today Birthdays
| Jeff Bridges turns 59 years old today. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 AP Photo/Evan Agostini Actor Jeff Bridges turns 59 years old today.
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