MIKE GRACIA

Sir Elton Hercules John (Reginald Kenneth Dwight) is a British
singer, songwriter and pianist. His music and showmanship
have had a significant, lasting impact on the music industry,
and his songwriting partnership with lyricist Bernie Taupin is
one of the most successful in history. John was the 19th
EGOT winner in history. He has sold over 300 million records
worldwide, making him one of the best-selling music artists
of all time. Elton John is 78 years old today.

On March 20, 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson notified
Alabama’s Governor George Wallace that he will use federal
authority to call up the Alabama National Guard in order to
supervise a planned civil rights march from Selma to
Montgomery.

President Lyndon B. Johnson meets with Martin Luther
King, Jr.
   

On March 19, 2003, the United States, along with coalition
forces primarily from the United Kingdom, initiated war on
Iraq. Just after explosions began to rock Baghdad, Iraq’s
capital, U.S. President George W. Bush announced in a
televised address, “At this hour, American and coalition
forces are in the early stages of military operations to
disarm Iraq, to free its people and to defend the world
from grave danger.”

President Bush and his advisors built much of their case
for war on the specious claim that Iraq, under dictator
Saddam Hussein, possessed or was in the process of
building weapons of mass destruction.

No weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq. The
U.S. declared an end to the war in Iraq on December 15,
2011, nearly ten years after the fighting began. 

President George Bush (right) speaks to Donald Rumsfeld
and Paul Wolfowitz during a visit at the Pentagon on March
25, 2003.

On March 17, 1992, white South Africans vote overwhelmingly
in a referendum to end minority rule, by a margin of 68.7
percent to 31.2 percent. Thus ended the turbulent period
called apartheid, a racial segregation policy that separated
the minority white population by designating areas and
activities prohibited to Black people.

Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela (18 July 1918 – 5 December 2013)

March 16, 1751, James Madison, drafter of the Constitution,
recorder of the Constitutional Convention, author of the
Federalist Papers and fourth president of the United States,
was born on a plantation in Virginia.       

Madison first distinguished himself as a student at the College
of New Jersey (now Princeton University), where he successfully completed a four-year course of study in two years and, in 1769,
helped found the American Whig Society, the second literary and
debate society at Princeton (and the world), to rival the previously established Cliosophic Society.

After retiring from official political positions, Madison served
Thomas Jefferson’s beloved University of Virginia first as a
member of the board of visitors and then as rector. In 1938,
the State Teachers College at Harrisonburg, Virginia, was
renamed in Madison’s honor as Madison College; in 1976,
it became James Madison University.

The constitutional convention in Virginia.