Moments in Time – March 16, 2022

#Middlebury

• On April 3, 1776, the Continental Congress, lacking sufficient funds to build a strong navy, gives privateers permission to attack all British ships. Any goods captured by the privateer were divided between the ship’s owner and the government.
• On March 28, 1814, the funeral of Guillotin, the inventor and namesake of the infamous execution device, takes place outside of Paris. Guillotin had built the guillotine to show the intellectual and social progress of the Revolution; by killing aristocrats and journeymen in the same way, equality in death was ensured.
• On March 30, 1820, Anna Sewell, author of “Black Beauty,” is born. “Black Beauty,” the first significant children’s story in the English language to focus on animal characters, established the precedent for countless other works. The story, narrated by the horse, showed Black Beauty’s progression through a series of increasingly cruel owners.
• On April 2, 1863, responding to acute food shortages, hundreds of angry women riot in Richmond, Virginia, demanding that the government release emergency supplies, breaking windows and looting stores. Confederate President Jefferson Davis threw his pocket change at them from the top of a wagon.
• On March 29, 1927, Major Henry O’Neil de Hane Segrave becomes the first man to break the 200 mph barrier. Driving a 1,000 horsepower Mystery Sunbeam, Segrave averaged 203.79 mph on the course at Daytona Beach, Florida.
• On March 31, 1959, the Dalai Lama, fleeing the Chinese suppression of a national uprising in Tibet, crosses into India, where he is granted political asylum. With the beginning of the Cultural Revolution in China, suppression of Tibetan Buddhism escalated, and practice of the religion was banned and thousands of monasteries were destroyed.
• On April 1, 1963, the ABC television network airs the premiere episode of the daytime drama “General Hospital.” The enduring soap opera would become the longest-running serial program produced in Hollywood.

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