Earth Hour is currently taking place on Saturday, March 28, 2009 at 8:30 pm, local time.
March 28, 0 -
According to Des Pascha Comutus, written in 243 CE, Jesus Christ's birthday was March 28. It later became the familiar December 25 after the Catholic Church changed it in 336.
So Merry Christmas everybody.
March 28, 1942,
The Wabbit Who Came to Dinner, another funny Looney Tunes was released on this date.
Notice the pudgy Elmer.
Today in History
March 28, 193-
The Roman ruler Pertinax was at his palace when a contingent of some three hundred soldiers rushed the gates. Pertinax was somewhat distracted. Ancient sources suggest that the soldiers had received only half their promised donativum (pay or bribe money not to kill him). Pertinax had only been emperor for 86 days and didn't have enough time to sell off the previous Emperor Commodus' property (including the concubines and youths Commodus kept for his sexual pleasures) in the giant fire sale he was having.
Neither the guards on duty nor the palace officials chose to resist them. Pertinax, although advised to flee, attempted to reason with them (never try to reason with unpaid Roman soldiers on a rampage), and was almost successful before being struck down by a member of the Praetorian Guard. There being no obvious successor and no Senatorial volunteers, the Guard auctions off the emperorship. The high bidder is Senator Didius Julianus, for 300 million sesterces. After hearing of this, Roman general Septimus Severus in Dalmatia marched on Rome, beheading the new emperor upon arrival.
Both films, The Fall of the Roman Empire and Gladiator both take the same historical event as a starting point.
March 28, 1921 -
Dirk Bogarde, actor and the epitome of coolness, was born on this date.
March 28, 1930 -
Istanbul was Constantinople
Now it's Istanbul, not Constantinople
Been a long time gone, Constantinople
Why did Constantinople get the works?
That's nobody's business but the Turks.
March 28, 1941-
Virginia Woolf drowns herself by weighing her pockets with stones and walking into the River Ouse near her home because she a dream that Nicole Kidman would portray her in a film with a truly horrifying fake nose.
March 28, 1979 -
The Unit 2 nuclear power plant (a pressurized water reactor manufactured by Babcock & Wilcox) on the Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania near Harrisburg suffered a partial core meltdown.
The Three Mile Island accident was the worst accident in American commercial nuclear power generating history, even though it led to no deaths or injuries to plant workers or members of the nearby community.
And so it goes.
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