Rodney King Beating…..
March 3, 1991…..
Rodney King becomes a beating victim of the Los Angeles police with the incident caught on videotape. The following year, L.A. street riots erupted after the four white police officers involved were acquitted.
Spanish Flu……
March 4, 1918…..
The first recorded case, of what became known as the Spanish Flu, is detected in a U.S. Army private stationed at Fort Riley, Kansas. Troops spread the disease as they traveled overseas as part of World War I.
The U.S. and other countries involved in the war were unwilling to publicly discuss the epidemic and suppressed it from the media, as they were concerned knowledge of the epidemic would harm the war effort. Spain, who was neutral in the war, was one of the few countries that openly discussed it, and as a consequence became associated with the disease, leading to the name “Spanish Flu.”
The pandemic lasted until April of 1920, killing an estimated 17-50 million people world wide.
Although this is the first recorded case, it almost certainly was not the first.
John Belushi Dies of Overdose…..
March 5, 1982……
33-year-old comedian John Belushi, one of the seven original cast members of Saturday Night Live (1975-81), dies of an overdose from a lethal combination of cocaine and heroin, known as a speedball.
Two months later, the woman who was with Belushi at the time of his death, Cathy Smith, gave an interview with the National Enquirer in which she admitted she had administered the fatal speedball shot. The article was titled “I Killed Belushi”. The case was then reopened and Smith was charged with first-degree murder. A plea bargain reduced the charge to involuntary manslaughter, and she served 15 months in prison.