Today in Nebraska-March

March 1

1855 - Brownville was incorporated.

1867 - Nebraska was admitted to the Union as the 37th state.

March 2

1855 - Territorial Legislature created Johnson and Otoe counties.

1857 - Jesse Lowe was elected mayor in Omaha’s first city elections.

1911 - Fire wiped out a block in the Ogallala business district. It was the second devastating fire in the town in less than six months.

March 3

1854 - The U.S. Senate passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act, organizing the Kansas and Nebraska territories.

1871 - Franklin County was organized.

2008 - Omaha billionaire investor Warren Buffett said the U.S. economy was essentially in a recession even if it hadn’t met the technical definition of one yet.

March 4

1913 - Village of Duncan in Platte County was incorporated.

1951 - Clifford Battershaw went to the Douglas County Jail and pulled a gun, helping his brother Dewey and fellow inmate Victor Sweet escape. The men took two hostages and left the jail on a streetcar. They were later cornered by lawmen in Arizona, who killed Dewey and wounded Clifford and Sweet.

March 5

1860 - Nebraska Territory voters rejected a proposal to form a state constitution.

March 6

1855 - Lancaster County was created by an act of the Territorial Legislature; Dodge County was organized on the same day.

1987 - U.S. Sen. Edward Zorinsky died of a heart attack after performing in the Omaha Press Club show.

March 7

1874 - Infantry troops from the Sioux Expedition at Fort Laramie arrived at the Red Cloud Agency in northwest Nebraska to quell an uprising by Sioux Indians.

1929 - A shed where dynamite and other materials were stored caught fire and exploded in Scribner, killing six firefighters and injuring 35 other people.

1950 - A blizzard descended on the state, building drifts 10 feet high. Property and livestock damage was estimated at $2.7 million.

1953 - Chet Calkins, chief of police in O’Neill, was found shot to death in his car. More than a year later a railroad worker from Long Pine confessed to the killing and was sentenced to life in prison.

March 8

1955 - Construction of Interstate 80 began in Nebraska at Kimball.

1956 - Omaha police arrested a 20-year-old woman for drag-racing on city streets. One officer said it was the first time police had caught a woman drag-racing.

March 9

1930 - John R. Ellis, mayor of Beatrice, announced he was dropping his bid for re-election because he had suffered a heart attack.

March 10

1966 - Author Mari Sandoz died in New York City.

March 11

1930 - Lena Madesin Phillips, a New York attorney, told a meeting of Business and Professional Women in Omaha that women should receive “equal pay for equal work” as they compete with men in the job market.

1987 - Gov. Kay Orr appointed Omaha businessman David Karnes to fill out the unexpired term of U.S. Sen. Edward Zorinsky, who died of a heart attack five days earlier.

March 12

1918 - Lt. Gov. William Nichol was born in Windsor, Colo.

March 13

1937 - Sarah Louise Meyer of Lincoln, the first female candidate for Ivy Day orator at the University of Nebraska, finished second to Frank Landis of Seward in a campus poll.

1987 - Omaha businessman David Karnes was sworn in as a U.S. senator. At 38, he was the youngest member of the Senate.

March 14

1984 - The Legislature impeached Attorney General Paul Douglas for his conduct in office and his personal business dealings involving the failed Commonwealth Savings Co. of Lincoln and one of its former officers. The Nebraska Supreme Court later acquitted Douglas of the impeachment charges.

March 15

1854 - Otoe and Missouria Indians ceded all claims to land west of the Missouri River except a small reservation on the Big Blue River.

1875 - Village of Edgar was incorporated.

1943 - A prisoner-of-war camp opened at Fort Robinson.

March 16

1854 - Omaha tribe ceded all land west of the Missouri River except a reservation in what is now Thurston County.

1855 - First Territorial Legislature adjourned.

March 17

1969 - Severe spring flooding caused by rains and melting winter snow in the upper Midwest began in Nebraska and eventually sent a 50-mile-long flood crest down the Mississippi River and its tributaries.

March 18

1922 - The old Kearney Cotton Mill, once the largest manufacturing plant in the state, was destroyed by fire.

March 19

1860 - William Jennings Bryan, “the great commoner” who was to lead the Populist movement, was born in Salem, Ill.

1903 - Fire destroyed about half the buildings in Springfield.

1975 - Gov. Jim Exon signed legislation making the honey bee the state insect.

March 20

1956 - Meeting in Columbus, representatives of Nebraska’s rural electrification districts approved Rural Electrification Administration financing of a power plant to be built in Lexington by the Central Nebraska Public Power and Irrigation District.

2013 - Creighton University joined the Big East Conference.

March 21

1890 - Gen. George Crook, who once headed the Army’s Department of the Platte and led several campaigns against Indians throughout the West, died of heart failure.

2008 - A jury clears a 16-year-old North Platte girl in the slayings of her mother and half sister.

March 22

1937 - Creighton University debaters defeated St. Louis University on whether consumer cooperatives would contribute to the public welfare.

March 23

1858 - Territorial Gov. Thomas Cuming died.

1913 - More than 100 people were killed in a tornado that slashed through Omaha on Easter Sunday.

1972 - The Legislature named the cottonwood the state tree, replacing the American elm.

March 24

1969 - The steamboat Bertrand, which sank in the Missouri River at DeSoto north of Omaha in 1865 and was later excavated with much of its cargo intact, was named to the National Register of Historic Places.

March 25

1920 - A state constitutional convention adjourned, to resume its work in October.

2008 - The state Legislature rejects a bill that would have repealed the death penalty.

March 26

1918 - Gov. Keith Neville called the Legislature into special session to make preparations relating to World War I.

March 27

1867 - David Butler took office as the first governor of the state of Nebraska.

1952 - Ranch hand Blaine Ellis killed a rancher, his wife and neighbor at a house near Merriman. Angry ranchers fanned out across the Sandhills looking for the killer. They trapped Ellis in a tool shed on a ranch near Gordon. Ellis refused to surrender and the ranchers opened fire, killing him.

1955 - Inmates at the state penitentiary in Lincoln took two guards hostage. The revolt ended 65 hours later and the guards were released.

March 28

1925 - The Legislature approved the state flag.

March 29

1874 - An Army post in northwest Nebraska was named Camp Robinson (later Fort Robinson) in honor of Lt. Levi Robinson, who was killed by Indians the previous month.

1937 - Dr. Floyd Kinyoun, Omaha city health director, urged people to be vaccinated against smallpox. Two cases had been reported in the previous two weeks.

March 30

1916 - In Washington, Sen. Gilbert Hitchcock accused the Standard Oil Co. of reaping huge profits by monopolistic control of gasoline prices.

March 31

1887 - The Legislature established Arthur County, named for President Chester A. Arthur.