Today is Thursday, March 30, the 89th day of 2017. There are 276 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History

On March 30, 1867, U.S. Secretary of State William H. Seward reached agreement with Russia to purchase the territory of Alaska for $7.2 million (the rough equivalent of $125 million today), a deal ridiculed by critics as “Seward’s Folly.”

On this date

In 1822, Florida became a United States territory.

In 1870, the 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which prohibited denying citizens the right to vote and hold office on the basis of race, was declared in effect by Secretary of State Hamilton Fish. Texas was readmitted to the Union.

In 1923, the Cunard liner RMS Laconia became the first passenger ship to circle the globe as it arrived in New York.

In 1945, during World War II, the Soviet Union invaded Austria with the goal of taking Vienna, which it accomplished two weeks later.

In 1959, a narrowly divided U.S. Supreme Court, in Bartkus v. Illinois, ruled that a conviction in state court following an acquittal in federal court for the same crime did not constitute double jeopardy.

In 1964, John Glenn withdrew from the Ohio race for the U.S. Senate because of injuries suffered in a fall. The original version of the TV game show “Jeopardy!” hosted by Art Fleming, premiered on NBC.

In 1975, as the Vietnam War neared its end, Communist forces occupied the city of Da Nang. James Ruppert, 41, killed 11 members of his family at his mother’s home in Hamilton, Ohio, on Easter Sunday.

In 1981, President Ronald Reagan was shot and seriously injured outside a Washington, D.C., hotel by John W. Hinckley, Jr.; also wounded were White House press secretary James Brady, Secret Service agent Timothy McCarthy and a District of Columbia police officer, Thomas Delahanty.

In 1987, at the 59th Academy Awards, “Platoon” was named best picture; Marlee Matlin received best actress for “Children of a Lesser God” and Paul Newman was honored as best actor for “The Color of Money.”

In 1991, Patricia Bowman of Jupiter, Florida, told authorities she’d been raped hours earlier by William Kennedy Smith, the nephew of Sen. Edward Kennedy, at the family’s Palm Beach estate. (Smith was acquitted at trial.)

In 2002, Britain’s Queen Mother Elizabeth died at Royal Lodge, Windsor, outside London; she was 101 years old.

In 2006, American reporter Jill Carroll, a freelancer for The Christian Science Monitor, was released after 82 days as a hostage in Iraq.

Ten years ago: President George W. Bush visited Walter Reed Army Medical Center, where he personally apologized to troops for shoddy conditions there.

The Associated Press