29 th March

1790 John Tyler was born.

1812 ^e first White House wedding took place.

1867 The British North America Act established the Dominion of Canada.

1961 Washington, D. C. residents won right to vote in the Presidential elections.

1973 The last U. S. prisoners of war and armed forces left Vietnam.

This is an anniversary many Americans remember. In 1973, the last American prisoners of war—POWs—and armed forces left Vietnam.

Until 1961, there was a whole class of law abiding, literate, tax-paying U. S. citizens, who were denied the right to vote in the Presidential elections. It wasn’t caused by racial or religious prejudice. It was simply because they happened to live in the District of Columbia, rather than in a state. On this date, the Twenty-third Amendment to the U. S. Constitution finally granted the residents of the nation’s capital the right to vote in a presidential election.

Today is John Tyler’s birthday You might not recognize his name as readily as the campaign phrase, “Tippecanoe and Tyler, too.” That’s our John Tyler. born in 1790 in Greenway, Virginia, Tyler was the first vice president to wake up one day and find himself the President of the United States. President William Henry “Tippecanoe” Harrison had died one month after taking office and Vice President John Tyler moved into the

White House without much Congressional enthusiasm. We have had all too much experience since then with sudden accessions to the Presidency like Teddy Roosevelt, Harry S Truman, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Gerald R. Ford. So we should be grateful that the first time it became necessary, in 1840, Tyler was there to make it work.

Wedding bells rang for the first time in the White House on this day in 1812. Lucy Payne Washington married Supreme Court Justice Thomas Todd at the President’s home. Lucy was First Lady Dolly Madison’s sister, so it seemed only right that the presidential couple host her wedding to a member of the highest court in the land. But, truly, on that day their status as bride and groom outranked anyone else in attendance.

Freedom celebrates a victory without bloodshed on this day. In 1867, Great Britain’s Parliament passed the British North American Act. The four Canadian provinces of Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Ontario were granted the right to form an almost autonomous, but definitely separate dominion. They still owed their allegiance to the queen, and relied on London as the center of ultimate jurisdiction, but in all other respects, Canadians gained their right to independence.