NOW YOU KNOW

• On March 1, 1932,  Charles A. Lindbergh Jr., the 20-month-old son of Charles and Anne Linderbergh, was kidnapped from the family home near Hopewell, N.J.
• On March 2, 1861,  the state of Texas, having seceded from the Union, was admitted to the Confederacy.  The Territory of Nevada came into existence under an act signed by President James Buchanan.
• On March 3, 1991,  motorist Rodney King was severely beaten by Los Angeles police officers in a scene captured on amateur video.
• On March 4, 1789,  the Constitution of the United States went into effect as the first Federal Congress met in New York.
• On March 7, 1911,  President William Howard Taft ordered 20,000 troops to patrol the U.S.-Mexico border in response to the Mexican Revolution.
• On March 8, 1862,  during the Civil War, the ironclad CSS Virginia rammed and sank the USS Cumberland and heavily damaged the USS Congress, both frigates, off  Newport News, Va.
• On March 9, 1861,  the Confederate Congress, meeting in Montgomery, Ala., authorized the issuing of paper currency, in the form of interest-bearing notes.
• On March 10, 1876,  the first successful voice transmission over Alexander Graham Bell's telephone took place as his assistant heard Bell say, "Mr. Watson ---come here ---I want to see you."
• On March 11, 1942,  as Japanese forces continued to advance in the Pacific during World War 2, Gen. Douglas MacArthur left the Philippines for Australia.  MacArthur, who subsequently vowed, "I shall return," kept that promise more than 2 1/2 years later.
• On March 14, 1794,  Eli Whitney received a patent for his cotton gin, an invention that revolutionized America's cotton industry.
• On March 16, 1802,  President Thomas Jefferson signed a measure authorizing the establishment of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y.
• On March 17, 1762,  New York's first St. Patrick's Day parade took place.
• On March 21, 1866,  Lucy B. Hobbs became the first woman to graduate from a dental school, the Ohio College of Dental Surgery in Cincinnati.
• On March 22, 1765,  Britian enacted the Stamp Act of 1765 to raise money from the American colonies. (The Act was repealed the following year.)
• On March 23, 1775,  Patrick Henry delivered an address to the Virginia Provincial Convention in which he is said to have declared, "Give me liberty, or give me death!"
• On March 28, 1979,  America;s worst commercial nuclear accident occured inside the Unit 2 reactor at the Three Mile Island plant near Harrisburg.
• 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 District of Columbia police Officer Thomas Delahanty.
• On March 31, 2005,  Terri Schiavo, 41, a Huntingdon Valley native and Archbishop Wood graduate, died at a hospice in Flordia, 13 days after her feeding tube was removed in a wrenching right-to-die dispute.