MOMENTS IN TIME
• On March 12, 1969, the London drug squad appears at the house of Beatle George Harrison and wife Pattie Boyd with a warrant and drug-sniffing canines. Sergeant Norman Pilcher, the man behind the raid, was convicted of planting drugs in other cases and went to jail in 1972.
• On March 13, 1942, during World War II, the Quartermaster Corps of the U.S. Army begins training dogs for the newly established War Dog Program, or "K-9 Corps." The most famous dog to emerge from the World War I was Rin Tin Tin, an abandoned puppy of German war dogs found in France in 1918 and taken to the United States, where he made his film debut in the 1922 silent film "The Man from Hell's River."
• On March 14, 1914, stock-car racer Lee Arnold Petty (father of Richard Petty) is born near Randleman, N.C. In 1959, he won the Daytona 500. Lee Petty never lost a race on account of being too kind to his competitors, even if those competitors were family.
• On March 15, 1954, the Chords record "Sh-boom." The song's lighthearted melody and nonsensical lyrics kicked off a new era of "doo-wop" music. Doo-wop hits included "Earth Angel" by the Penguins and "In the Still of the Night" by the Five Satins.
• On March 16, 1978, one of the world's worst supertanker disasters takes place when the Amoco Cadiz wrecks off the coast of Portsall, France. Although it later became a more commonplace feature of television news, this was the first time that images of oil-coated sea birds were seen by the world.
• On March 17, 1901, paintings by the late Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh are shown in Paris. Eleven years earlier, van Gogh had committed suicide without any notion that his work was destined to win acclaim beyond his wildest dreams. In his lifetime, he had sold only one painting.
• On March 18, 1852, in New York City, Henry Wells and William G. Fargo join with several other investors to launch their namesake business. In July 1852, Wells Fargo & Co. shipped its first loads of freight from the East Coast to mining camps scattered around northern California.
• On March 19, 1916, eight Curtiss "Jenny" planes of the First Aero Squadron take off from Columbus, N.M., in the first combat air mission in U.S. history. They flew a support mission for the 7,000 U.S. troops who invaded Mexico to capture Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa.
