Other Notable Events, March 13

In 1639, Harvard College in Massachusetts was named for John Harvard, a founder and major benefactor of the school.

In 1781, the planet Uranus was discovered by British astronomer William Herschel.

In 1868, the Republican-dominated U.S. Senate began impeachment proceedings against U.S. President Andrew Johnson, a Democrat and successor to Abraham Lincoln, climaxing a political feud following the Civil War. He was acquitted by one vote.

In 1881, Czar Alexander II, the ruler of Russia since 1855, was killed in a St. Petersburg street by a bomb thrown by a member of the revolutionary People's Will group.

In 1887, Chester Greenwood of Maine received a patent for earmuffs.

In 1933, in the depths of the Great Depression, banks throughout the United States began to reopen after a weeklong bank holiday declared by President Franklin Roosevelt in a successful effort to stop runs on bank assets.

In 1943, a plot by German officers to kill Hitler by blowing up his plane failed.

In 1974, the oil-producing Arab countries agreed to lift their five-month embargo on petroleum sales to the United States. The embargo, during which gasoline prices soared 300 percent, was in retaliation for U.S. support of Israel during the October 1973 Middle East War.

In 1989, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration quarantined fruit imported from Chile after traces of cyanide were found in two Chilean grapes.

In 1990, the Soviet Congress of People's Deputies formally ended the Communist Party's monopoly rule, establishing a presidential system and giving Mikhail Gorbachev broad new powers.

In 1992, more than 400 people were killed when a powerful earthquake hit northeastern Turkey.

In 1996, a gun collector opened fire on a kindergarten class in Dunblane, Scotland, killing 16 children, their teacher and himself.

Also in 1996, Liggett, the fifth-biggest tobacco company, broke ranks with its rivals and settled a class-action cancer lawsuit.

And in 1996, world leaders -- including U.S. President Bill Clinton, Russia's Boris Yeltsin, King Hussein of Jordan and Palestinian President Yasser Arafat -- met in Cairo to reaffirm the Middle East peace process.

In 1997, a Jordanian soldier killed seven Israeli schoolgirls at the Israeli-Jordanian border.

In 2000, the Tribune Co. and the Times Mirror Co., media giants featuring two of the nation's oldest and largest newspapers (Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times), announced they would merge.

In 2004, Iran called an indefinite halt to inspections of its nuclear facilities.

Also in 2004, the California Supreme Court ordered an end to same-sex marriages in San Francisco.

In 2007, Mexican President Felipe Calderon expressed opposition to the U.S-Mexican border fence the United States was building in an effort to control illegal immigration.

In 2008, the body of Iraqi Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho, who led Mosul's Chaldean Catholic Church, was found in Mosul. He had been kidnapped in February.

Also in 2008, gold prices on the New York Mercantile Exchange hit $1,000 per ounce for the first time.

In 2009, admitted Wall Street swindler Bernard Madoff, accused of defrauding thousands of clients of billions of dollars in a massive Ponzi scheme over 20 years, pleaded guilty to 11 counts that lawyers say could net him a 150-year prison sentence.

In 2010, a string of explosions triggered by a reported four suicide bombers struck Kandahar, a Taliban stronghold in southern Afghanistan, killing at least 35 people and wounding another 45, all said to be civilians.

In 2011, Saudi and United Arab Emirates troops were invited into Bahrain to shore up the beleaguered regime under fire by protesters seeking government reform.

Also in 2011, the Dalai Lama, 75-year-old spiritual leader of Tibet, announced his resignation from his second job, as his people's official political leader, a post he had held since he was 18.

In 2012, an oil cargo ship collided with a passenger launch in Bangladesh's Meghna River, claiming at least 26 lives with more than 200 people reported missing.

Thirty passengers of the Dhaka-bound MV Shariatpur-1 swam to shore.

Also in 2012, the death toll reached 19 in reprisal attacks and the suicide bombing of a Catholic church in Jos, Nigeria.