Today in History March 26

1517   The famous Flemish composer Heinrich Issac dies. 
1799   Napoleon Bonaparte captures Jaffa, Palestine. 
1804   Congress orders the removal of Indians east of the Mississippi River to Louisiana. 
1804   The territory of New Orleans is organized in the Louisiana Purchase. 
1827   German composer Ludwig Van Beethoven dies in Vienna. He had been deaf for the later part of his life, but said on his death bed "I shall hear in heaven." 
1832   Famed western artist George Catlin begins his voyage up the Missouri River aboard the American Fur Company steamship Yellowstone. 
1885   Eastman Film Co. manufactures the first commercial motion picture film. 
1913   The Balkan allies take Adrianople. 
1918   On the Western Front, the Germans take the French towns Noyon, Roye and Lihons. 
1938   Herman Goering warns all Jews to leave Austria. 
1942   The Germans begin sending Jews to Auschwitz in Poland. 
1950   Senator Joe McCarthy names Owen Lattimore, an ex-State Department adviser, as a Soviet spy.
1951   The United States Air Force flag design is approved. 
1953   Eisenhower offers increased aid to the French fighting in Indochina. 
1953   Dr. Jonas Salk announces a new vaccine against polio. 
1954   The United States sets off an H-bomb blast in the Marshall Islands, the second in four weeks. 
1961   John F. Kennedy meets with British Premier Macmillan in Washington to discuss increased Communist involvement in Laos. 
1969   The Soviet weather Satellite Meteor 1 is launched. 
1969   Writer John Kennedy Toole commits suicide at the age of 32. His mother helps get his first and only novel, A Confederacy of Dunces, published. It goes on to win the 1981 Pulitzer Prize. 
1979   The Camp David treaty is signed between Israel and Egypt. 
1982   Ground is broken in Washington D.C. for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. 
1989   The first free elections take place in the Soviet Union. Boris Yeltsin is elected. 
1992   An Indianapolis court finds heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson guilty of rape.

Born on March 26

1819   Louise Otto, German author. 1850   Edward Bellamy, writer (Looking Backward). 
1859   A.E. Houseman, poet (A Shropshire Lad). 
1874   Robert Frost, poet, multiple Pulitzer Prize-winner. 
1880   Duncan Hines, U.S. restaurant guide author 
1904   Joseph Campbell, folklorist and writer. 
1911   Tennessee Williams, American dramatist (Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, A Streetcar Name Desire). 
1914   William Westmoreland, U.S. army general during the Vietnam War. 
1923   Bob Elliot, radio comedian, one half of Bob and Ray. 
1930   Gregory Corso, beat poet, discovered literature in prison. 
1930   Sandra Day O'Connor, U.S. Supreme Court Justice. 
1933   Vine Deloria, Jr., writer, activist. 
1942   Erica Jong, poet, novelist (Fear of Flying, How to Save Your Own Life).