On This Day: Pope Francis selected to lead Catholic Church

March 13 (UPI) -- On this date in history:

In 1781, the planet Uranus was discovered by British astronomer William Herschel.

In 1868, the Republican-dominated U.S. Senate began impeachment proceedings against U.S. President Andrew Johnson, a Democrat and successor to Abraham Lincoln, climaxing a political feud following the Civil War. He was acquitted by one vote.

In 1881, Czar Alexander II, the ruler of Russia since 1855, was killed in a St. Petersburg street by a bomb thrown by a member of the revolutionary People's Will group.

In 1933, in the depths of the Great Depression, banks throughout the United States began to reopen after a weeklong bank holiday declared by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in a successful effort to stop runs on bank assets.

In 1933, President Roosevelt sent word to Congress calling for the immediate modification of the Volstead act to permit the manufacture and sale of beer.

File Photo by Library of Congress/UPI

In 1961, President John F. Kennedy proposed the multibillion-dollar Alliance for Progress to aid Latin America. The program was largely believed to have failed to bring democracy to the continent.

In 1980, a Chicago jury sentenced John Wayne Gacy to death for the murder of 33 young men and boys. He died by lethal injection May 10, 1994.

In 1990, the Soviet Congress of People's Deputies formally ended the Communist Party's monopoly rule, establishing a presidential system and giving Mikhail Gorbachev broad new powers.

In 1992, a 6.8-magnitude earthquake struck northeast Turkey, killing at least 500 people and leaving some 50,000 homeless.

In 1996, a gun collector opened fire at a school in Dunblane, Scotland, killing 16 kindergarten children and their teacher, and then himself.

In 2004, opera singer Luciano Pavarotti sang his final opera at New York City's Metropolitan Opera house.

File Photo by Ezio Petersen/UPI

In 2008, gold prices on the New York Mercantile Exchange hit $1,000 per ounce for the first time.

In 2011, the Dalai Lama, 75-year-old spiritual leader of Tibet, formally submitted his resignation as Tibet's political leader, a post he had held since he was 18, to the Tibetan Parliament-in-exile.

In 2013, Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Buenos Aires, a Jesuit, became pope of the Catholic Church. He chose the name of Francis.

In 2020, President Donald Trump declared a national emergency in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. On this date, the novel coronavirus had killed three dozen people in the United States and sickened some 1,200.

In 2022, heavy gunfire and shelling by Russian forces advancing on Kyiv killed Brent Renaud, an award-winning video journalist and documentary filmmaker, amid Russia's invasion of Ukraine.