A Blast from the Past

Today is March 8.

The sex scandal that rattled the Roman Catholic clergy continued to grow as dozens of priests resigned or were suspended. On this date in 2002, the bishop of Palm Beach, Fla., stepped down after admitting he had abused a teenage seminary student in the 1970s. His predecessor had resigned in 1999 admitting he had molested five boys.

Hundreds of years of Russian imperial rule was coming to an end. On this date in 1917, strikes and riots in St. Petersburg marked the start of the Russian Bolshevik revolution. Later that summer, Czar Nicholas, his wife and children were taken and summarily executed.

A lot of great spy novels revolve around Soviet espionage but on this date in 1999 it was Chinese spying the United States was worried about. As the investigation continued into how China had managed to steal American nuclear secrets, the Dept. of Energy fired a Chinese-born computer scientist from the Los Alamos (N.M.) National Laboratory.

Former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin died on this date in 1992. The stern underground leader hunted by the British as a terrorist before Israel won independence went on to win the Nobel Prize for making peace with Egypt.

The Beatles as a cover band: it was on this date in 1962 that the Beatles -- with Pete Best on drums -- make the band's TV debut on the BBC show "Teenager's Turn." They played Roy Orbison's "Dream Baby." Thirty-four years later, in 1996, BBC Radio One declined to air the second Beatles single "Real Love" from "The Beatles Anthology" -- calling it of insufficient merit.

We now return you to the present, already in progress.