* On March 24, 1965, the first “teach-in” was conducted at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, in which 200 faculty members led special antiwar seminars while regular classes were canceled and rallies and speeches held sway for 12 hours.
* On March 25, 2001, Icelandic actress and pop singer Bjork made an unforgettable appearance at the 73rd annual Academy Awards in a nude body stocking draped with a large, fake white swan. As if that weren’t enough, the artist then proceeded to “lay” six giant ostrich eggs. Whatever popular opinion said about the look, the dress went on to be honored by the Museum of Modern Art and The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
* On March 26, 1804, President Thomas Jefferson attended a public party at the Senate and led a diverse crowd in eating an enormous loaf of bread dubbed the “mammoth loaf.” The bread had been baked to go with the remnants of a giant block of cheese.
* On March 27, 1929, President Herbert Hoover had a phone installed at his desk in the Oval Office of the White House. It took a while to get the line working correctly and Hoover complained to aides when his son was unable to reach him from an outside line. Previously, Hoover had used a phone located in the foyer just outside the Oval Office.
* On March 28, 1814, the funeral of Dr. Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, inventor of the execution device that bore his name, took place outside of Paris, France. Guillotin had given the contraption to the French as a “philanthropic gesture” and was upset at how his reputation had suffered afterward when it became closely identified with political executions and abuses during the French Terror after the Revolution.
* On March 29, 1982, 19-year-old North Carolina freshman Michael Jordan scored a 16-foot jump shot with only 15 seconds left to give the Tar Heels a 63-62 win over Georgetown for the NCAA tournament championship. “To tell the truth,” he said to New Orleans reporters, “I didn’t see it go in. I didn’t want to look.”
* On March 30, 1949, actor Robert Mitchum was freed from a Los Angeles County prison farm after spending the final week of a two-month sentence for marijuana possession there.
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