Today in history: March 28

1999: An American Stealth F117 Nighthawk is shot down over northern Yugoslavia during NATO air strikes.

1990: Jesse Owens receives the Congressional Gold Medal from President George Bush.

1986: The U.S. Senate passes $100 million aid package for the Nicaraguan contras.

1979: At 4:00 AM an automatic valve mistakenly closed at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, culminating in radioactive leakage.

1969: Dwight D. Eisenhower, the 34th president of the United States, died in General Hospital in Washington, D.C.

1962: The U.S. Air Force announces research into the use of lasers to intercept missiles and satellites.

1946: Juan Peron is elected President of Argentina. He will hold the office for six years.

1945: Germany launches the last of its V-2 rockets against England.

1942: A British ship, the HMS Capbeltown, a Lend-Lease American destroyer, which was specifically rammed into a German occupied dry-dock in France, explodes, knocking the area out of action for the German battleship Tirpitz.

1941: The Italian fleet is routed by the British at the Battle of Battle of Cape Matapan

1941: English novelist Virginia Woolf throws herself into the River Ouse near her home in Sussex. Her body is never found.

1939: Francisco Franco, leader of the Nationalist forces during the Spanish Civil War, captured the capital city of Madrid en route to his overthrow of the democratic Spanish republic.

1939: The Spanish Civil War ends as Madrid falls to Francisco Franco.

1933: Nazis order a ban on all Jews in businesses, professions and schools.

1930: Built as Byzantium about 657 BC, then renamed Constantinople in the 4th century AD after Constantine the Great made the city his capital, the Turkish city of Istanbul officially received its present name on this day in 1930 and also from Angora to Ankara

1921: President Warren Harding names William Howard Taft as chief justice of the United States.

1920: American motion-picture actors Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks were wed.

1917: The Women's Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) is founded, Great Britain's first official service women.

1910: The first seaplane takes off from water at Martinques, France.

1908: Automobile owners lobby Congress in support of a bill that calls for vehicle licensing and federal registration.

1890: American bandleader Paul Whiteman, called the “King of Jazz” for popularizing a musical style that helped to introduce jazz to mainstream audiences during the 1920s and '30s, was born.

1885: The Salvation Army is officially organized in the United States.

1864: A group of Copperheads attack Federal soldiers in Charleston, Illinois. Five are killed and twenty wounded.

1854: Britain and France declare war on Russia.

1774: Britain passes the Coercive Act against rebellious Massachusetts.