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• Today is Monday, March 11, the 70th day of 2013. There are 295 days left in the year.
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• Today's Highlight in History:
• On March 11, 1888, the Blizzard of '88, also known as the "Great White Hurricane," began inundating the northeastern United States, resulting in some 400 deaths.
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• On this date:
• In 1513, Giovanni de' Medici was proclaimed pope, succeeding Julius II; he took the name Leo X.
• In 1861, the Constitution of the Confederate States of America was adopted by the Confederate Congress in Montgomery, Ala.
• In 1862, during the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln removed Gen. George B. McClellan as general-in-chief of the Union armies, leaving him in command of the Army of the Potomac, a post McClellan also ended up losing.
• In 1930, former President and Chief Justice William Howard Taft was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
• In 1942, as Japanese forces continued to advance in the Pacific during World War II, Gen. Douglas MacArthur left the Philippines for Australia. (MacArthur, who subsequently vowed, "I shall return," kept that promise more than 2½ years later.)
• In 1959, the Lorraine Hansberry drama "A Raisin in the Sun" opened at New York's Ethel Barrymore Theater.
• In 1965, the Rev. James J. Reeb, a white minister from Boston, died after being beaten by whites during civil rights disturbances in Selma, Ala.
• In 1977, more than 130 hostages held in Washington, D.C. by Hanafi Muslims were freed after ambassadors from three Islamic nations joined the negotiations.
• In 1985, Mikhail S. Gorbachev was chosen to succeed the late Soviet President Konstantin U. Chernenko.
• In 1993, Janet Reno was unanimously confirmed by the Senate to be attorney general.

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