On This Day: 28 March

This is the 87th day of the year, with 278 days remaining in 2007.

Fact of the Day: visible stars

Of the billions and billions of stars in the universe, about 3,000 are visible to the naked eye under ideal conditions, with no moon. The stars that are visible to the naked eye are within 1,000 light years of us. The dimmest objects visible with the naked eye must be around a magnitude of 6.5 or bigger. We can also view five of the nine planets - Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn - with the naked eye. Technically, Uranus can be seen with the naked eye as well, but it appears as a dot of light that can be very difficult to distinguish from nearby stars. Besides our own Milky Way galaxy, there are four others - Andromeda, Large Magellanic Cloud, Small Magellanic Cloud, and Triangulum - that can be observed with the naked eye.

Holidays

Feast day of St. Alkelda of Middleham, St. Gontran, and St. Tutilo.
Czech Republic - Teachers' Day.
Libya: British Bases Evacuation Day.

Events

1797 - Nathaniel Briggs of New Hampshire patented a washing machine.
1854 - During the Crimean War, Britain and France declared war on Russia.
1881 - P.T. Barnum and James Bailey merged their circuses to form the "Greatest Show on Earth."
1898 - The Supreme Court ruled that a child born in the United States to Chinese immigrants was a U.S. citizen.
1922 - Bradley A. Fiske of Washington, DC. patented a microfilm reading device.
1930 - The names of the Turkish cities of Constantinople and Angora were changed to Istanbul and Ankara.
1939 - The three-year Spanish Civil War ended as Madrid fell to the forces of Francisco Franco.
1979 - America's worst commercial nuclear accident occurred as the Unit-2 reactor suffered a meltdown in its core at the Three Mile Island plant near Middletown, Pennsylvania.
2002 - The Arab League agreed on a peace plan that offered Israel normal relations in exchange for a full withdrawal from lands taken in war and establishing a Palestinian state.

Births

1811 - Saint John Nepomucene Neumann, first male saint of the United States.
1899 - August Anheuser Busch, Jr., American beer magnate, baseball team owner.
1907 - Irving "Swifty" Lazar, American Hollywood talent agent.

Deaths

2004 - Peter Ustinov, actor, director, and write

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