March 1, Peace Corps established
Today is Sunday, March 1, the 60th day of the year 2026. There are 305 days left in the year.
Today in history:
On March 1, 1961, President John F. Kennedy signed an executive order creating the Peace Corps; since its inception, more than 240,000 Americans have served as Peace Corps volunteers.
Also on this date:
In 1872, President Ulysses S. Grant signed the Yellowstone National Park Protection Act, making Yellowstone the nation’s first national park.
In 1932, Charles A. Lindbergh Jr., the 20-month-old son of Charles and Anne Lindbergh, was kidnapped from the family home in New Jersey. (Remains identified as those of the child were found two months later; Bruno Richard Hauptmann was convicted of murder in this case in 1935 and executed in 1936.)
In 1954, four Puerto Rican nationalists opened fire from the spectator gallery of the United States House of Representatives, wounding five members of Congress.
In 1966, the Soviet space probe Venera 3 crashed onto the surface of Venus, becoming the first spacecraft to reach another planet. However, Venera was unable to transmit any data to Earth due to a failure in its communications system.
In 1971, a bomb exploded in the men’s restroom of the United States Capitol. The radical group Weather Underground claimed responsibility for the pre-dawn explosion, which damaged the building but caused no injuries.
In 1974, seven people, including Nixon’s former White House aides HR Haldeman and John D. Ehrlichman; former Attorney General John Mitchell; and former Deputy Attorney General Robert Mardian, were indicted by a grand jury for conspiracy to obstruct justice in connection with the Watergate burglary. (These four defendants were convicted in January 1975, although Mardian’s conviction was later overturned.)
In 2005, Dennis Rader, the churchgoing father accused of leading a double life as a BTK serial killer, was charged in Wichita, Kansas, with 10 counts of first-degree murder. (Rader later pleaded guilty and received multiple life sentences.)
In 2007, a tornado in the southeastern United States killed at least 19 people in Alabama and Georgia. One of the tornadoes toppled a concrete wall at a high school in Enterprise, Alabama, killing eight students.
In 2014, a mass stabbing attack by men wielding knives and machetes at a train station in Kunming, southwest China, left at least 29 people dead and 130 others injured. Authorities blamed the attack on a militant separatist group and said four of the suspects were shot dead.
In 2024, thousands of mourners bid farewell to Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny at a public funeral in Moscow, two weeks after his unexplained death in an Arctic penal colony. Navalny had been imprisoned since January 2021, when he returned to Moscow to face certain arrest after recovering in Germany from nerve agent poisoning that he blamed on the Kremlin.
Today’s birthdays:
- Rock singer Roger Daltrey is 82 years old.
- Actor Dirk Benedict is 81 years old.
- Republican Senator Deb Fischer of Nebraska is 75 years old.
- Filmmaker Ron Howard is 72 years old.
- Actor Tim Daly is 70 years old.
- Hockey Hall of Famer Ron Francis is 63 years old.
- Filmmaker Zack Snyder is 60 years old.
- Actor Javier Bardem is 57 years old.
- Basketball Hall of Famer Yolanda Griffith is 56 years old.
- Basketball Hall of Famer Chris Webber is 53 years old.
- Actor Mark-Paul Gosselaar is 52 years old.
- Actor Jensen Ackles is 48 years old.
- Actress Lupita Nyong’o is 43 years old.
- Pop singer Kesha is 39 years old.
- Pop singer Justin Bieber is 32 years old.
- NFL wide receiver Ja’Marr Chase is 26 years old.
- Actress Izabella Alvarez is 22 years old.
- Actor Sawyer Sharbino is 20 years old.
