Today in History: March 14, Albert Einstein is born

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Today is Saturday, March 14, the 73rd day of 2026. There are 292 days left in the year.

Today in history:

On March 14, 1879, Albert Einstein, who would revolutionize physics and the human understanding of the universe, was born in Ulm, Germany.

Also on this date:

In 1794, Eli Whitney received a patent for his cotton gin, an invention that revolutionized the American cotton industry.

In 1900, President William McKinley signed the Gold Standard Act into law, tying the value of the U.S. currency solely to gold. (The United States remained on the gold standard until its suspension in 1933 during the Great Depression.)

In 1964, a jury in Dallas found Jack Ruby guilty of murdering Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused assassin of President John F. Kennedy, and sentenced Ruby to death. (Both the conviction and death sentence were overturned, but Ruby died before he could be retried.)

In 1967, the body of President John F. Kennedy was moved from a temporary grave to a permanent memorial site at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.

In 1973, future U.S. senator and presidential candidate John McCain was released from North Vietnamese captivity after being held as a prisoner of war for over five years.

In 1980, a LOT Polish Airlines jet crashed while attempting to land in Warsaw, killing all 87 people aboard, including 22 athletes and staff members of the U.S. boxing team.

In 1990, the Soviet Congress of People’s Deputies held a secret ballot that elected Mikhail S. Gorbachev to a new, powerful presidency.

In 1995, American astronaut Norman Thagard became the first American to enter space aboard a Russian rocket as he and two cosmonauts blasted off aboard a Soyuz spacecraft, headed for the Mir space station.

In 2013, Xi Jinping, leader of China's Communist Party, was elected president of the People's Republic of China at the 12th National People’s Congress; Xi is currently in his third term.

In 2015, Robert Durst, a wealthy eccentric linked to two killings and his wife’s disappearance, was arrested by the FBI in New Orleans on a murder warrant a day before HBO aired the final episode of a serial documentary about his life. (Durst would be convicted in the shooting death of his friend, Susan Berman; he died in January 2022 while serving a life sentence in California.)

In 2018, Stephen Hawking, the best-known theoretical physicist of his time, died at his home in Cambridge, England, at the age of 76 after living with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) for 55 years.

Today’s Birthdays: Actor Michael Caine is 93. Country musician Michael Martin Murphey is 81. Actor-comedian Billy Crystal is 78. Country singer Kristian Bush is 56. Actor Betsy Brandt is 53. Actor Grace Park is 52. Actor Corey Stoll is 50. Actor Chris Klein is 47. Actor Jamie Bell is 40. NBA star Stephen Curry is 38. Actor Ansel Elgort is 32. Olympic gymnastics gold medalist Simone Biles is 29. Singer Olivia Dean is 27. Actor Abby Ryder Fortson is 18.