On This Day, March 20: U.S. invades Iraq in start of 2003 war

March 20 (UPI) -- On this date in history:

In 1852, Harriet Beecher Stowe's anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom's Cabin was published.

In 1854, in what is considered the founding meeting of the Republican Party, former members of the Whig Party met in Ripon, Wis., to establish a new party to oppose the spread of slavery into the western territories.

In 1963, a volcano on the East Indies island of Bali began erupting. The death toll exceeded 1,500.

In 1976, San Francisco newspaper heiress and kidnapping victim Patty Hearst was convicted of bank robbery. Hearst served 22 months in prison and eventually was granted a full pardon.

File Photo by Laura Cavanaugh/UPI

In 1987, the U.S. government approved the sale of AZT, a treatment, but not a cure, for AIDS.

In 1995, 12 people were killed, and more than 5,000 made ill in a nerve-gas attack on the Tokyo subway system.

In 1996, the world learned of "mad cow" disease from a British government report questioning the safety of beef in Britain.

In 1997, the Liggett Group, fifth-largest U.S. tobacco company, agreed to admit that smoking was addictive and caused health problems and that the tobacco industry had sought for years to sell its products to children as young as 14.

In 2001, five days after explosions destroyed one of its support beams and killed 11 people, the largest oil rig in the world collapsed and sank off the coast of Brazil.

In 2003, U.S.-led coalition forces begin military operations in Iraq.

In 2003, Brian Patrick Regan, a retired Air Force master sergeant, was sentenced to life in prison for offering to sell intelligence secrets to Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and the Chinese government.

In 2004, after narrowly escaping assassination the day before, Chen Shui-bian was re-elected president of Taiwan with about 50 percent of the vote.

File Photo by Sinartus Sosrodjojo/UPI

In 2007, former Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan was hanged in Baghdad for his part in the 1982 deaths of 148 Shiites.

In 2010, accusations of sexual abuse of children by Roman Catholic priests were reported on the increase in Germany, Austria, Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland and Brazil.

In 2016, President Barack Obama became the first sitting U.S. president to visit Cuba since 1928 after normalizing relations between the two countries.