Today in History: March 21

2010: The House of Representatives passes a bill that will overhaul the American health-care system. The bill, called the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, will be sent to President Obama to sign into law.

1963: The U.S. federal prison on San Francisco Bay's Alcatraz Island, which had held some of the most dangerous civilian prisoners—including Al Capone and Robert Stroud, the “Birdman of Alcatraz”—was closed this day in 1963.

1965: American civil rights activists led by Martin Luther King, Jr., began a protest march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama.

1960: About 70 black African demonstrators were killed by police during a protest in Sharpeville, Gauteng province, against South Africa's pass laws.

1918: The Second Battle of the Somme began during World War I.

1871: Journalist Henry Morton Stanley begins his famous search through Africa for the missing British explorer Dr. David Livingstone.

1806: Mexican national hero Benito Juárez was born in San Pablo Guelatao, Oaxaca.

1768: French mathematician Joseph Fourier was born in Auxerre.

1556:Thomas Cranmer, the first Protestant archbishop of Canterbury, was burned at the stake for violating heresy laws revised under the Roman Catholic queen Mary I, known as Bloody Mary.