Today’s almanac, Thursday 28 March: 1979 accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania

It happened today

On March 28, 1946, Washington published the Acheson–Lilienthal Report on the “International Control of Atomic Energy.” In essence, having acknowledged that they would not maintain supremacy in terms of nuclear weapons, the USA proposed to establish an independent authority to which the world’s stocks of fissile material would be entrusted. The agency would release small quantities to individual countries only for peaceful uses. The plan was then presented to the UN, but the Russians rejected it. Thus began the arms race. 33 years later Chinese syndrome he reached the cinema and was highly criticized by the atomic industry, which accused him of committing terrorism. In one scene, an official tells Jane Fonda that an explosion at the plant would make “an area the size of Pennsylvania uninhabitable.” The film had been released for a few days when, on March 28, 1979, there was an accident at the Three Mile Island power plant in Pennsylvania: partial meltdown of the core and release of radioactive gases into the environment. The most serious in American history.

Saint of the day

Saint Stephen Harding, English Christian monk and abbot. Born in 1059 into a noble family from the county of Dorset, in Southern England, he approached monastic life early and took his vows at the Benedictine Abbey of Sherborne. With the Norman invasion he was forced to leave monastic life and fled to Scotland and then to Paris, where he finished his studies. He soon undertook a pilgrimage to Rome to redeem himself from abandoning monastic life. Returning to England, he met Robert of Molesme, founder of the Abbey of Molesme in Burgundy who so fascinated Stephen that he decided to stay there. Together with Alberic, Robert and Stephen founded a new monastery at Cîteaux, near Dijon. To organize life within the monastery, Stephen drew up the Charta Caritatis, one of the statutes of the Cistercian order.

Born of the day

Carolina Invernizio, 28 March 1851, writer

Guido Carli, 28 March 1914, public manager, economist and politician Felice Chiusano, 28 March 1922, singer and drummer

Zbigniew Brzezinski, March 28, 1928, American politician and political scientist

Amelia Rosselli, 28 March 1930, poet and organist

Ilaria Occhini, 28 March 1934, actress

Mario Vargas Llosa, 28 March 1936, Peruvian writer, playwright and politician

Alberto Meda, 28 March 1945, designer

Claudio Lolli, 28 March 1950, singer-songwriter and writer

Attilio Fontana, 28 March 1952, politician

Lady Gaga, March 28, 1986, American singer-songwriter, composer and actress

Deaths of the day

Ivan IV of Russia, 28 March 1584, Russian

Modest Petrovic Mussorgsky, 28 March 1881, Russian composer

Dwight Eisenhower, March 28, 1969, American politician

Virginia Woolf, 28 March 1941, British writer, essayist and activist

Sergej Vasilevich RachmaninovMarch 28, 1943, Russian composer, pianist and conductor

Marc Chagall, 28 March 1985, Russian painter

Eugene IonescoMarch 28, 1994, Romanian playwright and essayist

Peter Ustinov28 March 2004, British actor, director and screenwriter

Enrico Vaime, March 28, 2021, television author, writer and playwright