Today in history

1855: Birth of Andrew William Mellon (1855-1937), American financier, philanthropist, and secretary of the Treasury whose munificence made possible the building of the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. He gave $10 million for the founding of the Mellon Institute of Industrial Research in Pittsburgh. It merged with the Carnegie Institute of Technology to form Carnegie Mellon University.

• 1855: Birth of Andrew William Mellon (1855-1937), American financier, philanthropist, and secretary of the Treasury whose munificence made possible the building of the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. He gave $10 million for the founding of the Mellon Institute of Industrial Research in Pittsburgh. It merged with the Carnegie Institute of Technology to form Carnegie Mellon University.

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• 1874: Birth of Erik Weiss better known as Harry Houdini (1874-1926), American magician noted for his sensational escape acts.

• 1976: Death of Field Marshall Montgomery the celebrated hero of El-Alamein, aged 88. The expression "The Full Monty" meaning the whole thing or the whole lot became popular after a movie of the same name in 1997. Though the origin of the term is obscure one of the explanations is that it derives from Montgomery's alleged habit of wearing his full set of medals, or his insistence on a full English breakfast every day.

• 1989: The worst oil spill in U.S. territory began when the supertanker Exxon Valdez, owned and operated by the Exxon Corporation, ran aground on a reef in Prince William Sound in southern Alaska. An estimated 11 million gallons of oil eventually spilled into the water. Hundreds of thousands of birds and animals were adversely affected by the environmental disaster.

• 1999: North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) commenced air strikes against Yugoslavia with the bombing of Serbian military positions in Kosovo. The NATO offensive came in response to a new wave of ethnic cleansing launched by Serbian forces against the Kosovar Albanians on March 20.