2008-03-07 13:15:43 -

Today is Friday, March 14, the 74th day of 2008. There are 292 days left in the year.
Highlights in history on this date
1558 - Ferdinand I assumes title of Holy Roman Emperor without being crowned by the Pope.
1689 - Convention Parliament meets in Scotland, and William and Mary are proclaimed King and Queen of England.
1743 -The first

recorded town meeting in America is held, at Faneuil Hall in Boston.
1757 - British Admiral John Byng is executed for neglect of duty resulting in loss of Menorca.
1794 - Eli Whitney receives a patent for the cotton gin.
1840 - Constitution in Rome is promulgated by Pope Pius IX.
1844 - Carlos Antonio Lopez sworn in as first constitutional president of Paraguay.
1900 - U.S. Congress ratifies the Gold Standard Act.
1917 - China severs diplomatic relations with Germany in World War I.
1923 - U.S. President Warren Harding becomes the first chief executive to file an income tax report.
1939 - The Republic of Czechoslovakia is dissolved, opening the way for Nazi occupation.
1951 - United Nations forces recapture Seoul during the Korean War.
1964 - A jury in Dallas finds Jack Ruby guilty of murdering Lee Harvey Oswald, the suspected assassin of U.S. President John F. Kennedy, in November 1963.
1965 - Israel's cabinet formally approves establishment of diplomatic relations with West Germany.
1973 - United States relaxes embargo on arms shipments to Pakistan and India.
1976 - Egypt's President Anwar Sadat asks Parliament to cancel treaty with Soviet Union, charging that Moscow failed to provide arms that had been promised.
1987 - At least 12 people are killed in escalated communist insurgency in Philippines with congressional elections almost two months away.
1988 - Iran and Iraq unleash missiles on each other's capitals as so-called «war of the cities» erupts.
1991 - Emir returns to Kuwait after more than seven months in exile and more than two weeks after his country was freed from Iraqi occupation.
1992 - The warring parties in Croatia pledge to cooperate to end the civil war ahead of the deployment of a U.N. peacekeeping force.
1993 - An independent U.N.-sponsored commission releases a report blaming the bulk of atrocities committed during El Salvador's civil war on the country's military.
1994 - In a setback to longtime ruler Gnassingbe Eyadema, the opposition is declared victorious in Togo's first democratic parliamentary election.
1995 - Astronaut Norman Thagard becomes the first American to enter space aboard a Russian rocket as he and two cosmonauts blast off aboard a Soyuz spacecraft, headed for the Mir space station.

1996 - A Congressional committee approves a resolution urging the United States to defend Taiwan. Clinton administration officials said they have received assurances from China that it has no plans to invade.
1998 - India's Congress party appoints as its president Sonia Gandhi, the Italian-born widow of assassinated prime minister Rajiv Gandhi.
1999 - Afghanistan's Taliban Islamic group and opposition factions agree in principle to a create a coalition government and end decades of fighting.
2002 - Serbia and Montenegro, the two republics that comprise the Yugoslav federation, sign an accord to restructure their ties and formally drop the name Yugoslavia.
2003 - South Korea urges North Korea to defuse its nuclear standoff through multilateral talks. The U.S. warns the communist country is just months away from enriching uranium to make atomic bombs.
2004 - Brushing off U.S. criticism of a one-sided election campaign, Russian President Vladimir Putin claims victory after voters hand him an expected landslide 71 percent win for a second four-year term.
2007 - A team from the International Atomic Energy Agency visits North Korea for the first time since the country kicked inspectors out in 2002, a significant first step toward renewed relations. IAEA officials say North Korea is committed to nuclear disarmament.
Today's Birthdays
Casey Jones, U.S. railroad engineer (1864-1900); Maxim Gorky, Russian novelist (1868-1936); Albert Einstein, German-born physicist (1879-1955); Michael Caine, English actor (1933--); Quincy Jones, U.S. music producer (1933--); Wolfgang Petersen, U.S. director (1941--); Billy Crystal, U.S. actor/comedian (1948--).
Thought For Today
The basic tenet of black consciousness is that the black man must reject all value systems that seek to make him a foreigner in the country of his birth and reduce his basic dignity _ Steve Biko, South African anti-apartheid activist (1946-1977