On This Day: March 22

This is the 81st day of the year.

Fact of the Day: laser and maser

The laser was invented by Charles Hard Townes of New York City and Arthur Leonard Schawlow of Madison, New Jersey. Townes, a physicist at Columbia University, first conceived of the maser, which used microwaves. Townes and his brother-in-law Schawlow developed the first "optical maser" or laser in September 1957. They filed for a patent, which was granted on this day in 1960. The word maser is an acronym for microwave amplification by stimulated emission of radiation and laser is an acronym for light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation.

Holidays

Feast day of St. Deogratius, St. Basil of Ancyra, St. Paul of Narbonne, St. Nicholas Owen, and St. Benvenuto of Osimo. It is also the earliest possible date for Easter.

India: New Year's Day.

International Day of the Seal.

Puerto Rico: Emancipation Day.

Events

1638 - Religious dissident Anne Hutchinson was expelled from the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

1765 - Britain enacted the Stamp Act to raise money from the American colonies.

1790 - Thomas Jefferson became the first U.S. Secretary of State.

1882 - The U.S. Congress outlawed polygamy.

1893 - The first women's collegiate basketball game was played at Smith College in Massachusetts.

1894 - Hockey's first Stanley Cup championship game was played, between Montreal and Ottawa.

1895 - Auguste Lumiere and Louis Lumiere showed their first movie to an invited audience in Paris.

1933 - President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed a bill legalizing the sale and possession of beer and wine containing up to 3.2 percent alcohol.

1935 - Persia was renamed Iran.

1941 - The Grand Coulee Dam in Washington state went into operation.

1945 - The Arab League was formed -- Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Transjordan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Yemen, in Egypt. Fifteen more Arab nations eventually joined the organization.

1960 - The first laser was patented by Arthur Schawlow and Charles Townes.

1968 - President Lyndon Johnson named General William Westmoreland as Army Chief of Staff.

1972 - Congress sent the proposed Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution of the United States to the states for ratification; it fell three states short of the 38 needed for approval.

1990 - A jury in Alaska found former tanker captain Joseph Hazelwood innocent of major charges in connection with the Exxon Valdez oil spill, but convicted him of a minor charge of negligent discharge of oil.

Births

1599 - Sir Anthony Van Dyck, Flemish artist, namesake of the beard style.

1908 - Louis L'Amour, American author.

1914 - Karl Malden (Mladen Sekulovich), American actor.

1923 - Marcel Marceau (Mangel), French mime.

1930 - Stephen Sondheim, American composer.

1948 - Andrew Lloyd Webber, British composer.

Deaths

1820 - U.S. Navy officer Stephen Decatur, hero of the Barbary Wars, in a duel with disgraced U.S. Navy Commodore James Barron in Maryland.