Today in History: Monday, March 27

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1309 – Pope Clement V imposes excommunication and interdiction on Venice, and a general prohibition of all commercial intercourse with Venice, which had seized on Ferrara, a papal fiefdom. 1329 – Pope John XXII issues his In Agro Dominico condemning some writings of Meister Eckhart as heretical. 1513 – Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de León reaches the northern end of The Bahamas on his first voyage to Florida. 1625 – Charles I becomes King of England, Scotland and Ireland as well as claiming the title King of France. 1782 – Charles Watson-Wentworth, 2nd Marquess of Rockingham becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. 1794 – The United States Government establishes a permanent navy and authorizes the building of six frigates. 1794 – Denmark and Sweden form a neutrality compact. 1809 – Peninsular War: A combined Franco-Polish force defeats the Spanish in the Battle of Ciudad Real. 1814 – War of 1812: In central Alabama, U.S. forces under General Andrew Jackson defeat the Creek at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend. 1836 – Texas Revolution: Goliad massacre: On the orders of General Antonio López de Santa Anna, the Mexican army massacres 342 Texas POWs at Goliad, Texas. 1866 – President Andrew Johnson vetoes the Civil Rights Act of 1866. His veto is overridden by Congress and the bill passes into law on April 9. 1871 – The first international rugby football match, when Scotland defeats England in Edinburgh at Raeburn Place. 1884 – A mob in Cincinnati, Ohio, attacks members of a jury which had returned a verdict of manslaughter in what was seen as a clear case of murder; over the next few days the mob would riot and eventually destroy the courthouse. 1886 – Geronimo, Apache warrior, surrenders to the U.S. Army, ending the main phase of the Apache Wars. 1899 – Emilio Aguinaldo leads Filipino forces for the only time during the Philippine–American War at the Battle of Marilao River. 1915 – Typhoid Mary, the first healthy carrier of disease ever identified in the United States, is put in quarantine, where she would remain for the rest of her life. 1938 – Second Sino-Japanese War: The Battle of Taierzhuang begins, resulting several weeks later in the war's first major Chinese victory over Japan. 1941 – World War II: Yugoslavian Air Force officers topple the pro-Axis government in a bloodless coup. 1943 – World War II: Battle of the Komandorski Islands: In the Aleutian Islands the battle begins when United States Navy forces intercept Japanese attempting to reinforce a garrison at Kiska. 1945 – World War II: Operation Starvation, the aerial mining of Japan's ports and waterways begins. Argentina declares war on the Axis Powers. 1958 – Nikita Khrushchev becomes Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union 1964 – The Good Friday earthquake, the most powerful earthquake in U.S. history at a magnitude of 9.2 strikes Southcentral Alaska, killing 125 people and inflicting massive damage to the city of Anchorage. 1975 – Construction of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System begins. 1977 – Tenerife airport disaster: Two Boeing 747 airliners collide on a foggy runway on Tenerife in the Canary Islands, killing 583 (all 248 on KLM and 335 on Pan Am). Sixty-one survived on the Pan Am flight. This is the worst aviation accident in history. 1980 – The Norwegian oil platform Alexander L. Kielland collapses in the North Sea, killing 123 of its crew of 212. 1980 – Silver Thursday: A steep fall in silver prices, resulting from the Hunt Brothers attempting to corner the market in silver, leads to panic on commodity and futures exchanges. 1981 – The Solidarity movement in Poland stages a warning strike, in which at least 12 million Poles walk off their jobs for four hours. 1990 – The United States begins broadcasting TV Martí, an anti-Castro propaganda network, to Cuba. 1993 – Jiang Zemin is appointed President of the People's Republic of China. 1993 – Italian former minister and Christian Democracy leader Giulio Andreotti is accused of mafia allegiance by the tribunal of Palermo. 1998 – The Food and Drug Administration approves Viagra for use as a treatment for male impotence, the first pill to be approved for this condition in the United States. 1999 – Kosovo War: Yugoslav SAM downed F-117A, the first and only kill by the stealth aircraft. 2000 – A Phillips Petroleum plant explosion in Pasadena, Texas kills one person and injures 71 others. 2002 – Passover massacre: A Palestinian suicide bomber kills 29 people at a Passover seder in Netanya, Israel. 2002 – Nanterre massacre: In Nanterre, France, a gunman opens fire at the end of a town council meeting, resulting in the deaths of eight councilors; 19 others are injured. 2004 – HMS Scylla, a decommissioned Leander-class frigate, is sunk as an artificial reef off Cornwall, the first of its kind in Europe. 2009 – The dam forming Situ Gintung, an artificial lake in Indonesia, fails, killing at least 99 people. 2014 – Philippines signs a peace accord with the largest Muslim rebel group, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, ending decades of conflict. 2015 – Al-Shabab militants attack and temporarily occupy a Mogadishu hotel leaving at least 20 people dead. 2016 – A suicide blast in Gulshan-e-Iqbal Park, Lahore claims over 70 lives and leaves almost 300 others injured. The target of the bombing are Christians celebrating Easter.