This Day in History: March 13

On this day, March 13 ...

2018:  On his first trip to California as president, President Trump accuses the state of putting "the entire nation at risk" by refusing to take tough action against illegal immigration. 

Also on this day:

• 1865: Confederate President Jefferson Davis signs a measure allowing Black slaves to enlist in the Confederate States Army with the promise they would be set free.
• 1901: Benjamin Harrison, the 23rd president of the United States, dies in Indianapolis at age 67.
• 1925: The Tennessee General Assembly approves a bill prohibiting the teaching of the theory of evolution. (Gov. Austin Peay would sign the measure on March 21.)
• 1928: At least 400 people die when the San Francisquito Canyon in Southern California is inundated with water after the nearly two-year-old St. Francis Dam collapses just before midnight the evening of March 12.

Captured desperado John Dillinger, wearing vest, strikes a jaunty pose with prosecutor Robert Estill in what would become an infamous image at the Crown Point, Ind., jailhouse, Feb. 1934. (AP Photo)

• 1934: A gang that includes John Dillinger and "Baby Face" Nelson (aka Lester Joseph Gillis) rob the First National Bank in Mason City, Iowa, making off with $52,344.

• 1964: Bar manager Catherine "Kitty" Genovese, 28, is stabbed to death near her Queens, New York, home; the case would gain notoriety over the apparent reluctance of Genovese’s neighbors to respond to her cries for help.

• 1975: The first Chili’s restaurant opens in Dallas by entrepreneur Larry Lavine.
• 1980: Ford Motor Co. Chairman Henry Ford II announces he is stepping down, the same day a jury in Winamac, Ind., found the company not guilty of reckless homicide in the fiery deaths of three young women in a Ford Pinto.
• 1996: A gunman bursts into an elementary school in Dunblane, Scotland, and opens fire, killing 16 children and one teacher before taking his own life.
• 2009: Soprano Anne Wiggins Brown, the original Bess in George Gershwin’s "Porgy and Bess," dies at age 96.
• 2009: The Philadelphia 76ers play their final game at the Spectrum, beating the Chicago Bulls 104-101.

• 2013: Jorge Bergoglio of Argentina is elected pope, choosing the name Francis and becoming the first pontiff from the Americas and the first from outside Europe in more than a millennium.
• 2014: Seeking to pacify frustrated immigration advocates, President Barack Obama directs the government to find more humane ways to handle deportation for illegal immigrants in the U.S. illegally.

• 2018: Joy Behar of "The View" apologizes for suggesting that mental illness is behind claims by people that Jesus Christ talks to them. (Her comment came during a discussion about Vice President Mike Pence.)