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. 

Voice of America is an international broadcasting state media
network funded by the federal government of the United States
of America. It is the largest and oldest of the U.S. international broadcasters. VOA produces digital, TV, and radio content in 48 languages, which it distributes to affiliate stations around the
world.

Its targeted and primary audience is non-American outside the
US borders. As of November 2022, its reporting reached 326
million adults per week across all platforms. It is financed by
the U.S. Agency for Global Media after approval by Congress.    

VOA was established in 1942, and on February 24, 1942, the
Foreign Information Service, precursor to the Voice of America,
made its first broadcast from New York City to Europe. 

The VOA charter was signed into law in 1976 by U.S. President
Gerald Ford. It is headquartered in Washington, D.C.

As of 2022, VOA had a weekly worldwide audience of about
326 million (up from 237 million in 2016) and employed 961
staff with an annual budget of $267.5 million.

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Gerald Rudolph Ford Jr. (1913 – 2006)

Voice of America headquarters.

Louis Armstrong being interviewed in the Voice of America Studio.

Battle Of New Orleans.

Future seventh president of the United States, Andrew Jackson 
was born in a backwoods region between North and South
Carolina to Irish immigrant parents on March 15, 1767.
 

This colorful and controversial president is pictured on the
$20 bill and was briefly immortalized on the Confederate
$1,000 bill.