By The Associated Press

Today in History

Today is Monday, March 30, the 90th day of 2020. There are 276 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History:

On March 30, 1981, President Ronald Reagan was shot and seriously injured outside a Washington, D.C. hotel by John W. Hinckley, Jr.; also wounded were White House press secretary James Brady, Secret Service agent Timothy McCarthy and a District of Columbia police officer, Thomas Delahanty.

On this date:

In 1822, Florida became a United States territory.

In 1867, U.S. Secretary of State William H. Seward reached agreement with Russia to purchase the territory of Alaska for $7.2 million, a deal ridiculed by critics as “Seward’s Folly.”

In 1909, the Queensboro Bridge, linking the New York City boroughs of Manhattan and Queens, opened.

In 1923, the Cunard liner RMS Laconia became the first passenger ship to circle the globe as it arrived in New York.

In 1964, John Glenn withdrew from the Ohio race for the U.S. Senate because of injuries suffered in a fall. The original version of the TV game show “Jeopardy!,” hosted by Art Fleming, premiered on NBC.

In 1975, as the Vietnam War neared its end, Communist forces occupied the city of Da Nang.

In 1986, actor James Cagney died at his farm in Stanfordville, New York, at age 86.

In 1991, Patricia Bowman of Jupiter, Florida, told authorities she’d been raped hours earlier by William Kennedy Smith, the nephew of Sen. Edward Kennedy, at the family’s Palm Beach estate. (Smith was acquitted at trial.)

In 1999, Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic (sloh-BOH’-dahn mee-LOH’-shuh-vich) insisted that NATO attacks stop before he moved toward peace, declaring his forces ready to fight “to the very end.” NATO answered with new resolve to wreck his military with a relentless air assault.

In 2004, in a reversal, President George W. Bush agreed to let National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice testify publicly and under oath before an independent panel investigating the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

In 2006, American reporter Jill Carroll, a freelancer for The Christian Science Monitor, was released after 82 days as a hostage in Iraq.

In 2009, President Barack Obama asserted unprecedented government control over the auto industry, rejecting turnaround plans from General Motors and Chrysler and raising the prospect of controlled bankruptcy for either ailing auto giant.

Ten years ago: President Barack Obama signed a single measure sealing his health care overhaul and making the government the primary lender to students by cutting banks out of the process. The world’s largest atom smasher, the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, threw together minuscule particles racing at unheard of speeds in conditions simulating those just after the Big Bang. Math teacher Jaime Escalante, who inspired the movie “Stand and Deliver,” died in Roseville, California, at age 79. Morris Jeppson, a weapons test officer aboard the Enola Gay who helped arm the atomic bomb dropped over Hiroshima, died in a Las Vegas hospital at age 87.

Five years ago: German officials confirmed that Germanwings co-pilot Andreas Lubitz was once diagnosed with suicidal tendencies and received lengthy psychotherapy before receiving his pilot’s license; they believed Lubitz deliberately smashed his Airbus A320 into the French Alps, killing 150 people. Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was convicted of unlawfully accepting money from a U.S. supporter in his retrial on corruption charges. Two men dressed as women and driving a stolen SUV ignored officers’ orders at the gate to the National Security Agency in Fort Meade, Maryland; police fired on the SUV, which then rammed into a police vehicle. One man was killed. Comedy Central announced that Trevor Noah, a 31-year-old comedian from South Africa, would succeed Jon Stewart as host of “The Daily Show.”