Sunday March 23, 2014 the 81st day and 12th week of 2014, there 284 days and 40 weeks left in the year. Highlights of today in world history...
1919 Mussolini founds the Fascist party
Benito Mussolini, an Italian World War I veteran and publisher of Socialist newspapers, broke with the Italian Socialists and established the nationalist Fasci di Combattimento, named after the Italian peasant revolutionaries, or "Fighting Bands," from the 19th century. Commonly known as the Fascist Party, Mussolini's new right-wing organization advocated Italian nationalism, had black shirts for uniforms, and launched a program of terrorism and intimidation against its leftist opponents.
In October 1922, Mussolini led the Fascists on a march on Rome, and King Emmanuel III, who had little faith in Italy's parliamentary government, asked Mussolini to form a new government. Initially, Mussolini, who was appointed prime minister at the head of a three-member Fascist cabinet, cooperated with the Italian parliament, but aided by his brutal police organization he soon became the effective dictator of Italy. In 1924, a Socialist backlash was suppressed, and in January 1925 a Fascist state was officially proclaimed, with Mussolini as Il Duce, or "The Leader."
Mussolini appealed to Italy's former Western allies for new treaties, but his brutal 1935 invasion of Ethiopia ended all hope of alliance with the Western democracies. In 1936, Mussolini joined Nazi leader Adolf Hitler in his support of Francisco Franco's Nationalist forces in the Spanish Civil War, prompting the signing of a treaty of cooperation in foreign policy between Italy and Nazi Germany in 1937. Although Adolf Hitler's Nazi revolution was modeled after the rise of Mussolini and the Italian Fascist Party, Fascist Italy and Il Duce proved overwhelmingly the weaker partner in the Berlin-Rome Axis during World War II.
In July 1943, the failure of the Italian war effort and the imminent invasion of the Italian mainland by the Allies led to a rebellion within the Fascist Party. Two days after the fall of Palermo on July 24, the Fascist Grand Council rejected the policy dictated by Hitler through Mussolini, and on July 25 Il Duce was arrested. Fascist Marshal Pietro Badoglio took over the reins of the Italian government, and in September Italy surrendered unconditionally to the Allies. Eight days later, German commandos freed Mussolini from his prison in the Abruzzi Mountains, and he was later made the puppet leader of German-controlled northern Italy. With the collapse of Nazi Germany in April 1945, Mussolini was captured by Italian partisans and on April 29 was executed by firing squad with his mistress, Clara Petacci, after a brief court-martial. Their bodies, brought to Milan, were hanged by the feet in a public square for all the world to see.
1983 Artificial-heart patient dies
On March 23, 1983, Barney Clark died 112 days after becoming the world's first recipient of a permanent artificial heart. The 61-year-old dentist spent the last four months of his life in a hospital bed at the University of Utah Medical Center in Salt Lake City, attached to a 350-pound console that pumped air in and out of the aluminium-and-plastic implant through a system of hoses.
In the late 19th century, scientists began developing a pump to temporarily supplant heart action. In 1953, an artificial heart-lung machine was employed successfully for the first time during an operation on a human patient. In this procedure, which is still used today, the machine temporarily takes over heart and lung function, allowing doctors to operate extensively on these organs. After a few hours, however, blood becomes damaged by the pumping and oxygenation.
In the late 1960s, hope was given to patients with irreparably damaged hearts when heart-transplant operations began. However, the demand for donor hearts always exceeded availability, and thousands died every year while waiting for healthy hearts to become available.
On April 4, 1969, a historic operation was performed by surgeon Denton Cooley of the Texas Heart Institute on Haskell Karp, a patient whose heart was on the brink of total collapse and to whom no donor heart had become available. Karp was the first person in history to have his diseased heart replaced by an artificial heart. The temporary plastic-and-Dacron heart extended Karp's life for the three days it took doctors to find him a donor heart. However, soon after the human heart was transplanted into his chest, he died from infection. Seven more failed attempts were made, and many doctors lost faith in the possibility of replacing the human heart with a prosthetic substitute.
In the early 1980s, however, a pioneering new scientist resumed efforts to develop a viable artificial heart. Robert K. Jarvik had decided to study medicine and engineering after his father died of heart disease. By 1982, he was conducting animal trials at the University of Utah with his Jarvik-7 artificial heart.
On December 2, 1982, a team led by Dr. William C. DeVries implanted the Jarvik-7 into Barney Clark. Because Jarvik's artificial heart was intended to be permanent, the Clark case drew worldwide attention. Clark spent his last 112 days in the hospital and suffered considerably from complications and the discomfort of having compressed air pumped in and out of his body. He died on March 23, 1983, from various complications. Clark's experience left many feeling that the time of the permanent artificial heart had not yet come.
During the next decade, Jarvik and others concentrated their efforts on developing mechanical pumps to assist a diseased heart rather than replace it. These devices allow many patients to live the months or even years it takes for them to find a donor heart. Battery powered, these implants give heart-disease patients mobility and allow them to live relatively normal lives. Meanwhile, in the 1990s, the Jarvik-7 was used on more than 150 patients whose hearts were too damaged to be aided by the mechanical pump implant. More than half of these patients survived until they got a transplant.
In 2001, a company called AbioMed unveiled the AbioCor, the first completely self-contained replacement heart. Although patients implanted with the AbioCor have still eventually died, AbioMed has shown it is possible to live as long as 500 days with the implant. Scientists continue to look for ways to improve artificial hearts for long-term use.
1979 Two men sentenced in murder of former Chilean diplomat
Federal Judge Barrington Parker presided over the sentencing of Guillermo Novo and Alvin Ross Diaz for the murder of Orlando Letelier. Novo and Ross Diaz were initially sentenced to consecutive terms of life imprisonment.
The murder to which Judge Parker referred had occurred on September 21, 1976, when a car bomb exploded while victims, Orlando Letelier, former Chilean ambassador, and his friends Michael and Ronni Moffitt were driving on Washington D.C.'s Embassy Row. Letelier was the intended target because of his political work against Chile's dictator Augusto Pinochet.
Letelier was the ambassador to the United States for Chile's leftist government led by Salvador Allende in the early 1970s. However, after a CIA-supported coup by Pinochet in 1973, he was sent to a concentration camp on Dawson Island in the Straits of Magellan at the southern tip of South America. He survived and was exiled to the United States where he spent his time lobbying against the new military dictatorship.
According to the prosecution, a man named Michael Townley was contacted by key figures in Pinochet's regime to assassinate Letelier and he used Cuban exiles, among them Novo and Ross Diaz, to help carry out the hit. The entire plot was unravelled when Townley was caught and turned into a prosecution witness. For his cooperation, Townley was given a new identity and only a 40-month prison sentence. He never expressed any remorse and is thought to have returned to Chile after his release.
General Pinochet was granted amnesty for his crimes when he stepped down from power in Chile. However, while travelling in England in 1998 he was arrested based on charges for human rights abuses by a Spanish prosecutor.
Novo and Ross Diaz's sentence was turned over on appeal and they were later acquitted. Evidence has since come to light suggesting that the CIA might have been aware of the impending assassination in advance and, perhaps because of the U.S.'s close relationship with Pinochet, done nothing to stop it.
1994 Leading Mexican presidential candidate assassinated
Luis Donaldo Colosio, Mexico's ruling party's presidential candidate, was gunned down during a campaign rally in the northern border town of Tijuana.
As a member of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), the political party that held power in Mexico for most of the 20th century, Colosio became the protÝgÝ of future Mexican president Carlos Salinas de Gortari and was elected to the Congress and Senate. In 1988, he was the campaign manager of Salinas' successful presidential campaign and the same year was named PRI party head. In 1992, President Salinas appointed Colosio social development secretary. He became increasingly reform-minded in this capacity; although his promises to reduce Mexico's widespread poverty failed to stop anti-government guerrilla activity in the state of Chiapas. Salinas designated Colosio his successor in late 1993, making him the PRI candidate and thus the favourite to win the presidential election scheduled for August 1994.
Colosio campaigned as a man of the people and often appeared without the protection of bodyguards. On March 23, 1994, he was assassinated at a campaign rally in Tijuana. Mario Aburto Martinez, a factory worker, was arrested at the scene and later convicted as the sole shooter. During the next few years, however, evidence was uncovered suggesting a conspiracy that may have led all the way up to President Salinas' office. Colosio had promised to fight Mexico's rampant political corruption, of which Salinas, who had ties to organized crime in Mexico, was guilty.
In the wake of the assassination, Salinas appointed Ernesto Zedillo the PRI presidential campaign. Zedillo was elected in an election unusually free from fraud, and served as Mexican president until 2000. Salinas spent the late 1990s in exile but returned to Mexico in 2000. His administration has been implicated in other political assassinations, and in 1999 his brother Raul was convicted of ordering and financing the September 1994 murder of Jose Francisco Ruiz Massieu, the secretary general of the PRI.
1994 Wayne Gretzky scores number 802
On March 23, 1994, Wayne Gretzky scored his 802nd goal, breaking his childhood idol Gordie Howe’s National Hockey League record for most goals scored in a career. Gretzky, known to hockey fans as "The Great One," broke a total of 61 offensive records in his NHL career, including many previously held by "Mr. Hockey" Gordie Howe.
Wayne Gretzky began to skate at the age of two on the Nith River in his native Ontario. As a young child, he showed a tremendous aptitude for sports, especially baseball and hockey. Gretzky’s father, Walter Gretzky, built a skating pond in the family’s backyard every winter on which his son could conduct drills to improve his skills. When Gretzky was just six years old, he was advanced enough to play on a team with 10 year olds. At the age of 10, Gretzky scored 378 goals in one season of pee wee hockey. His output was so astonishing that his games were played in front of sold-out crowds and often broadcast live on television. At 16, Gretzky was drafted third overall into the Ontario Hockey Association (OHA), a major league for amateur and youth players. Despite a naturally slight build and average speed and strength, Gretzky quickly proved that his dominance in the pee wee league was no fluke by scoring six goals in his first OHA game. He turned professional the next year at 17, signing with the Indianapolis Racers of the World Hockey League. The Racers sold Gretzky to the Edmonton Oilers the next year; when the WHL folded, the Oilers, and Gretzky, became part of the National Hockey League (NHL).
Outsized by many in the NHL, Gretzky learned to use his vision and wits to his advantage, and went on to become the most dominant player in the league’s history. In 1979-80, he set an NHL record for points by a first-year player with 137, winning the first of eight consecutive Hart trophies, the NHL’s most valuable player award. In his second year, Gretzky scored 164 points, setting a record for most points in a season. The following year Gretzky became the first player to score 200 points in a season, an achievement he matched three times. Upon retiring after the 1999 season, Gretzky’s record of 2,857 career points gave him 1,000 more career points than Gordie Howe, who had previously held the record.
Gretzky was not just a goal scorer: His 1983 career assists were more than any other player’s career points, which are tallied as goals plus assists. Behind "The Great One," the Oilers won the Stanley Cup in 1984, 1985, 1987 and 1988. Gretzky was then traded to Los Angeles, a highly unpopular move among Canadian fans, who hung in effigy Edmonton owner Peter Pocklington. Gretzky led the Los Angeles Kings to the finals in 1993.
Wayne Gretzky wore number 99 throughout his career in tribute to Gordie Howe, who wore number 9.
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