On This Day, March 11: China's legislature gets rid of presidential term limits

March 11 (UPI) -- On this date in history:

In 1824, the U.S. War Department created the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

In 1845, John Chapman, better known as Johnny Appleseed, died in Allen County, Ind.

In 1861, in Montgomery, Ala., delegates from South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas adopted the Permanent Constitution of the Confederate States of America.

In 1918, the first cases of Spanish influenza were reported in the United States. By 1920, the virus had killed up to 22 million people worldwide, 500,000 in the United States.

In 1930, William Howard Taft became the first former U.S. president and chief justice of the Supreme Court to be buried in the national cemetery at Arlington, Va.

In 1942, after struggling to save the Philippines from Japanese conquest, U.S. Army Gen. Douglas MacArthur abandoned the island fortress of Corregidor under orders from President Franklin D. Roosevelt, leaving behind 90,000 U.S. and Filipino troops.

In 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev, the youngest member of the ruling Politburo, was chosen to succeed President Konstantin Chernenko as Communist Party chief, finally bringing to power the post-World War II generation.

File Photo by Joe Marquette/UPI

In 1990, Lithuania proclaimed its independence from Moscow in a long-expected move posing the first splintering of the Soviet Union since the communist nation was founded nearly seven decades ago.

In 1993, Janet Reno won unanimous U.S. Senate approval to become the country's first female attorney general.

In 2004, 10 bombs exploded almost simultaneously on four commuter trains in Madrid, killing 191 people and injuring 1,400.

In 2006, Slobodan Milosevic, former president of Yugoslavia on trial for war crimes, was found dead in his cell at The Hague, of an apparent heart attack.

In 2006, Michelle Bachelet, who was tortured during Chile's years of military dictatorship, was sworn in as the country's first female president.

UPI File Photo

In 2011, Japan was hit by a magnitude-9 earthquake that struck about 230 miles northeast of Tokyo. The quake caused a tsunami that swept away people, homes, vehicles and ships. Tens of thousands of buildings were destroyed, nuclear power plants were damaged, with three reactor meltdowns at one of them. The disaster's death toll reached nearly 15,900.

In 2018, China's legislature nearly unanimously endorsed a change to the Constitution formally removing term limits to enable Xi Jinping to stay on as president for life.

In 2020, the World Health Organization declared the novel coronavirus virus a pandemic, with more than 118,000 cases and 4,300 deaths across 114 countries. A year later, COVID-19 has killed more than 2.5 million people.

In 2022, Russian forces kidnapped and arrested the mayor of Melitopol, Ivan Fedorov. Russian officials released him from captivity five days later.