March 9

As you should have realized by now that my favorite source of topics is friends' blogs, so here's fun facts about March 9 (from www.wikipedia.org):

Events:

1796 - Napoléon Bonaparte marries his first wife, Joséphine de Beauharnais.
1841 - The Supreme Court of the United States rules in the Amistad case, concerning captive Africans who seized control of the slave-trading ship carrying them: the court rules that they had been taken into slavery illegally.
1842 - Giuseppe Verdi's third opera Nabucco premieres in Milan; its success establishes Verdi as one of Italy's foremost opera writers.

1959 - The Barbie doll debuts.

1993 - Rodney King testifies at the federal trial of four Los Angeles, California police officers accused of violating King's civil rights when they beat him during an arrest.

2005 - Dan Rather presents his final broadcast of the CBS Evening News.
2006 - Liquid Water discovered on Enceladus, the sixth largest moon of Saturn.

Birthdays:

1454 - Amerigo Vespucci, Italian explorer and cartographer (d. 1512)

1943 - Bobby Fischer, American chess player

1963 - Terry Mulholland, American baseball player (I saw him pitch a no-hitter)

1987 - Bow Wow, American rapper and actor (I remember when he was Little Bow Wow)

Deaths:

1440 - St Frances of Rome, Italian nun (b. 1384)

1996 - George Burns, American actor and singer (b. 1896)
1997 - The Notorious B.I.G., American rapper (b. 1972)

Holiday:

Feast day of St Frances of Rome. (I'm Catholic, you think my boss will accept "I know it's my birthday, but I'm taking off because it's a religious holiday"?)