Moments in Time – March 14, 2018

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• On March 30, 1775, King George III formally endorses the New England Restraining Act, requiring New England colonies to trade exclusively with Great Britain. Another rule banned colonists from fishing in the North Atlantic.
• On March 28, 1814, the funeral of Guillotin, the inventor and namesake of the infamous execution device, takes place in France. The machine was intended to show the intellectual and social progress of the Revolution: By killing aristocrats and journeymen the same way, equality in death was ensured.
• On March 31, 1836, the first monthly installment of “The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club,” by 24-year-old writer Charles Dickens, is published under the pseudonym Boz. Only 400 copies were printed, but by the 15th episode, 40,000 copies were printed.
• On March 27, 1912, two Yoshina cherry trees are planted on the bank of the Potomac River, as part of a gift of 3,020 cherry trees from Japan to the United States. After World War II, cuttings were sent back to Japan to restore the Tokyo collection that was decimated by American bombing attacks during the war.
• On April 1, 1984, Motown singer Marvin Gaye is shot and killed by his father as a result of a longstanding feud. The father, a preacher, was a hard-drinking cross-dresser who envied his son’s success, and Marvin Jr. clearly harbored unresolved feelings toward his abusive father.
• On March 26, 1997, police in Rancho Santa Fe, California, discover 39 victims of a mass suicide. They were members of the “Heaven’s Gate” religious cult, whose leaders preached that suicide would allow them to leave their bodily “containers” and enter an alien spacecraft hidden behind the Hale-Bopp comet.
• On March 29, 1999, the Dow Jones industrial average closes above 10,000 for the first time, at 10,006.78.

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