On This Day: March 21

This is the 80th day of the year.

Fact of the Day: ice

Ice permanently covers about 10 percent of the land surface of the earth, with the majority of that at the South Pole. But there have been several great ice ages in the past when a much larger part of the earth's surface was covered with ice - up to three times what it is now. The most famous, "the" Ice Age, was during the Pleistocene period from approximately 2 million years ago to 10,000 years ago. Glaciology deals with the physical and chemical characteristics of ice on the landmasses, the formation and distribution of glaciers and ice caps, the dynamics of the movement of glacier ice, and interactions of ice accumulation with climate, both in the present and in the past.

Holidays

Feast day of St. Benedict, St. Enda, St. Nicholas of Flue, St. Fanchea, and St. Serapion of Thmuis.

Namibia: Independence Day (from South Africa, 1990).

South Africa: Human Rights Day (commemorating the Sharpeville Massacre in 1960, when a peaceful demonstration against apartheid was fired upon and 69 people killed).

United Nations: International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.

Iowa: Bird Day.

Iran: Iranian New Year / Noruz.

Lesotho: National Tree Planting Day.

Events

1804 - The French civil code, the Napoleonic Code, was adopted.

1806 - Lewis and Clark began their trip home after investigating Mississippi basin and the Pacific Coast.

1826 - The Rensselaer School in Troy, New York was incorporated. Known today as Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, it was the first engineering college in the U.S.

1946 - The United Nations set up temporary headquarters at Hunter College in New York City.

1961 - The Beatles made their debut in an appearance at Liverpool's The Cavern.

1963 - The Alcatraz federal prison island in San Francisco Bay was emptied of its last inmates at the order of Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy.

1965 - More than 3,000 demonstrators led by Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. began their march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama.

Births

1685 - Johann Sebastian Bach, German composer.

1806 - Benito Juarez, Mexican statesman.

1869 - Florenz Ziegfeld, producer Ziegfeld Follies.

1905 - Phyllis McGinley, American Pulitzer prize-winning poet.

1910 - Julio Gallo, American vintner.

Deaths

1843 - Robert Southey, English poet.