Today in History: March 6, Walter Cronkite signs off for the last time
Today is Friday, March 6, the 65th day of 2026. There are 300 days left in the year.
Today in history:
On March 6, 1981, Walter Cronkite signed off for the last time after nearly two decades as the anchor of “The CBS Evening News.”
Also on this date:
In 1820, President James Monroe signed the Missouri Compromise, which allowed Missouri to join the Union as a slave state and Maine to join as a free state, while banning slavery in the northern portion of the Louisiana Territory.
In 1836, the Alamo in San Antonio, Texas, fell as Mexican forces led by General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna stormed the fortress after a 13-day siege; the battle claimed the lives of all the Texian defenders, including William Travis, James Bowie and Davy Crockett.
In 1857, the U.S. Supreme Court, in the Dred Scott v. Sandford decision, ruled 7-2 that Scott, an enslaved person, was not a U.S. citizen and therefore could not sue for his freedom in federal court; it also ruled that slavery could not be banned from any federal territory. The decision deepened the national divide over slavery in the years leading up to the Civil War.
In 1869, chemist Dmitri Mendeleev introduced his concept of a periodic table of elements at a meeting of the Russian Chemical Society in St. Petersburg.
In 1912, Oreo cookies were first introduced by the National Biscuit Company (later known as Nabisco).
In 1951, the trial of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg on federal espionage charges began in New York. (Both were subsequently found guilty, sentenced to death and then executed in 1953).
In 1964, heavyweight boxing champion Cassius Clay took a new name given to him by Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammed: Muhammad Ali.
In 1970, a bomb being built inside a townhouse in New York’s Greenwich Village by members of the Weather Underground militant leftist group accidentally exploded, destroying the house and killing three group members.
In 1990, Ed Yeilding and Joseph T. Vida flew a Lockheed SR-71 “Blackbird” spy plane east across the U.S. from coast to coast in a record 67 minutes, 54 seconds. (The since-retired U.S. Air Force reconnaissance plane played an outsized role in American military and intelligence gathering since 1968.)
In 2009, NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope was rocketed into space from Cape Canaveral, Florida, to hunt for Earth-sized planets orbiting distant stars. The spacecraft discovered 2,681 exoplanets outside the solar system before it ran low on fuel and was retired in 2018 after 9 1/2 years of scouring space for alien worlds.
In 2021, Pope Francis met with Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, one of Shiite Islam’s most senior clerics, in Iraq’s holy city of Najaf to deliver a message of peaceful coexistence, urging Muslims to embrace Iraq’s long-beleaguered Christian minority. The historic encounter followed months of negotiations between the ayatollah’s office and the Vatican.
Today’s birthdays:
- Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan is 100.
- Former Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova is 89.
- Opera singer Kiri Te Kanawa is 82.
- Rock musician David Gilmour (Pink Floyd) is 80.
- Actor-comedian Tom Arnold is 67.
- Actor-comedian D.L. Hughley is 63.
- Actor Connie Britton is 59.
- Basketball Hall of Famer Shaquille O’Neal is 54.
- Rapper-producer Tyler, the Creator is 35.
- Actor Millicent Simmonds is 23.