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First Posted: 3/8/2013

The History Channel

* On March 27, 1905, fingerprint evidence is used for the first time to solve a British murder case. The fingerprint on a cash box was the only clue in the murder of Thomas and Ann Farrow, shopkeepers in South London.

* On March 29, 1929, President Herbert Hoover has a phone installed at his desk in the Oval Office of the White House. It took a while to get the line to Hoover’s desk working correctly, and the president complained to aides when his son was unable to get through from an outside line.

* On March 28, 1941, workers start clearing hundreds of acres of land near Ypsilanti, Mich., for the construction of the Ford Motor Company’s Willow Run plant, which will use Henry Ford’s mass-production technology to build B-24 bomber planes for World War II. Willow Run eventually employed more 42,000 people, and by 1944.

* On March 31, 1968, in a televised speech to the nation, President Lyndon B. Johnson announces a partial halt of bombing missions over North Vietnam and proposes peace talks. At the same time, he also stated that he was sending 13,500 more troops to Vietnam — and that he would not seek nomination for another term as president.

* On March 30, 1981, President Ronald Reagan is shot in the chest outside a Washington, D.C., hotel by a deranged drifter named John Hinckley Jr. In an impressive feat for a 70-year-old man with a collapsed lung, Reagan walked into George Washington University Hospital under his own power.