On This Day
March 11th, 1993 – Janet Reno is
confirmed as first U.S. female attorney general, under President Bill Clinton.
After graduating from Harvard Law School in 1963, Reno was named staff director
of the Judiciary Committee of the Florida House of Representatives in 1971 and
accepted a position with the Dade County State's Attorney's Office two years
later. In 1978, Reno was appointed state attorney for Dade County (now called
Miami-Dade County), where she helped reform the juvenile justice system,
pursued delinquent fathers for child support payments, and established the
Miami Drug Court. In 1995, Reno was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease.
March 21, 1985 --Rick Hansen (born August 26, 1957)
is a Canadian paraplegic athlete and activist for people with spinal cord
injuries. Following a car crash at the age of 15, Hansen sustained a spinal
cord injury that paralyzed him from the belly button down. Hansen is most
famous for his Man in Motion world tour. He started his Man in Motion
tour on March 21, 1985 from Oakridge Mall in Vancouver. Although public
attention was low at the beginning of the tour, he soon attracted international
media attention as he progressed on a 26-month trek, logging over 40,000 km
through 34 countries on four continents before crossing Canada. He returned to
Vancouver's BC Place Stadium to cheering crowds of thousands on May 22, 1987
after raising $26 million for spinal cord research and quality of life
initiatives. Like Terry Fox, he was hailed as a national hero
March 18th, 2003 -- British Sign
Language is officially recognized as a language. Although the United Kingdom
and the United States share English as the predominant spoken language, British
Sign Language is quite distinct from American Sign Language (ASL). BSL finger
spelling is also different from ASL, as it uses two hands, whereas ASL uses
one. BSL is also distinct from Signed English, a manually coded method
expressed to represent the English language. The sign languages used in
Australia and New Zealand, Auslan and New Zealand Sign Language, respectively,
evolved largely from 19th-century BSL and retain the same manual
alphabet and grammar. BSL, Auslan and NZSL together may be called BANZSL.
Makaton, a communication system for people with cognitive impairments or other
communication difficulties, was originally developed with signs borrowed from
British Sign Language.
March 18th, 2005 – Terri Schiavo's
feeding tube is ordered removed by a Florida court. Judge George Greer, a
Florida District Court judge, deemed a feeding tube to be an extraordinary
life-saving medical procedure, even though Schiavo's brain injury was not
considered to be terminal. The request was made by her husband, Michael
Schiavo, who won a 1992 lawsuit based on the argument that he would need money
to continue her skilled care. This was the third time that Schiavo's feeding
tube was removed. In 2003, it was removed but reinserted after the Florida
Legislature intervened and passed “Terri's Law.” In 2005, the U.S.
Congress met in an unprecedented session to try to save her life, but that
effort was ultimately unsuccessful. She died on March 31, 2005. The doctor who
conducted her autopsy stated that, based on the physical evidence, it would be
impossible to determine what level of brain functioning existed.
March 28th, 1979 – A cooling
malfunction causes a partial meltdown of the reactor core at the Three Mile
Island nuclear power plant, resulting in the release of a significant amount of
radioactivity into the air. The nuclear power industry claimed there were no
deaths, injuries or adverse health effects from the accident, although a
peer-reviewed study by Steven Wing of the University of North Carolina found
lung cancer and leukemia rates were two to 10 times higher downwind of TMI than
upwind, in addition to plant and animal chromosomal damage. Governor Richard
Thornburgh of Pennsylvania oversaw the cleanup of the accident and mandated the
evacuation of many affected areas. While serving as attorney general during the
George H. W. Bush presidency, Thornburgh oversaw passage of the Americans with
Disabilities Act. Thornburgh became a noted advocate for the rights of people
with disabilities after his son acquired a form of brain damage as a result of
an accident.
April 12th, 1945 – Franklin Delano
Roosevelt, the 32nd president of the United States, dies in Warm Springs, Ga.,
from a cerebral hemorrhage. FDR, despite contracting polio, was a central
figure of the 20th century during a time of worldwide economic crisis and world
war. Elected to four terms in office, he served from 1933 to 1945 and is the
only U.S. president to have served more than two terms.
Compiled from various sources by Mike Reynolds
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