Today in history—March 28

845: The Viking raider Ragnar Lodbrok captures Paris; he agrees to leave after he is paid 7,000 pounds of silver.  It’s a relative bargain; that’s less than $800,000 at today’s prices.

1834: The U.S. Congress censures President Andrew Jackson after he withdraws government funds from the Second Bank of the United States, which he opposes.

1910: U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Josiah Brewer (Albany Law 1858) dies at age 73.

1914: Future Senator Edmund Sixtus Muskie (Cornell Law 1939) is born at Rumford, Maine.

1930: After 1,700 years, the city of Constantinople has its name changed to “Istanbul.”  The name comes from the signposts on roads to the city; it literally means “To the city.”

1947: The last episode of Buck Rogers in the 25th Century airs on radio, ending a fifteen-year run.

1958: Composer William Christopher (“W.C.”) Handy dies at age 84, having seen his St. Louis Blues become the most-recorded American song of the 20th century.

1964: The first offshore (“pirate”) British radio station, Radio Caroline, takes to the airwaves, based on a former passenger ferry anchored outside British territorial waters.

1962: The U.S. Congress confirms James Skelly Wright as a judge of the D.C. Circuit.