Today is Saturday, March 15, the 74th day of 2014. There are 291 days left in the year.

Today’s highlight:

On March 15, 44 B.C., Roman dictator Julius Caesar was assassinated by a group of nobles that included Brutus and Cassius.

On this date:

In 1493, Christopher Columbus returned to Spain, concluding his first voyage to the Western Hemisphere.

In 1767, the seventh president of the United States, Andrew Jackson, was born in Waxhaw, S.C.

In 1820, Maine became the 23rd state.

In 1913, President Woodrow Wilson met with about 100 reporters for the first formal presidential press conference.

In 1919, members of the American Expeditionary Force from World War I convened in Paris for a three-day meeting to found the American Legion.

In 1944, during World War II, Allied bombers again raided German-held Monte Cassino.

In 1956, the Lerner and Loewe musical play “My Fair Lady,” based on Bernard Shaw’s “Pygmalion,” opened on Broadway.

In 1964, actress Elizabeth Taylor married actor Richard Burton in Montreal; it was her fifth marriage, his second.

In 1970, Expo ‘70, promoting “Progress and Harmony for Mankind,” opened in Osaka, Japan.

In 1975, Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis died near Paris at age 69.

In 1985, the first Internet domain name, symbolics.com, was registered by the Symbolics Computer Corp. of Massachusetts.

In 1999, an Amtrak train slammed into a steel-filled truck at a crossing in Bourbonnais, Ill., killing 11 people.

Associated Press