Today in History: March 23

2011:On this day in 2011, actress Elizabeth Taylor, who appeared in more than 50 films, won two Academy Awards and was synonymous with Hollywood glamour, dies of complications from congestive heart failure at a Los Angeles hospital at age 79. The violet-eyed Taylor began her acting career as a child.

2001: Although designed for only 5 years of service, the Soviet/Russian space station Mir ended 15 years in orbit when it reentered Earth's atmosphere, falling into the South Pacific Ocean.

1983: In a nationwide television address, U.S. President Ronald Reagan announced the Strategic Defense Initiative, popularly known as Star Wars, a proposed strategic defensive system against potential nuclear attacks.

1976: The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights entered into force, incorporating almost all the international human rights proclaimed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948.

1933: The German Reichstag, dominated by the Nazi Party and German National People's Party, voted to pass the Enabling Act, thereby assuring Nazi primacy, in a process that began with the Reichstag fire about a month prior.

1849: At the Battle of Novara, during the first Italian War of Independence, outnumbered Austrian troops under Field Marshal Joseph Radetzky destroyed the poorly trained Italian troops of Charles Albert, king of Sardinia-Piedmont.

1806: Having completed the first U.S. overland expedition to the Pacific coast, explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark this day in 1806 began their return to St. Louis, Missouri, where their journey had begun in May 1804.

1775: Patrick Henry, a major figure of the American Revolution, delivered the well-known speech featuring the phrase “give me liberty or give me death” at the second Virginia Convention at St. John's Church, Richmond.