On This Day, March 12th:
In 1930, Indian independence leader Mahatma Gandhi began a 240-mile march to the Arabian Sea with his followers, known as the Salt March, in protest against the British monopoly on salt in India.
In 1947, in what would become known as the Truman Doctrine, US President Harry S. Truman declared that the US would provide military and economic assistance to any democratic country facing a communist threat.
In 1993, two-year-old James Bulger was abducted from a shopping center in Liverpool, UK, and murdered by two ten-year-old boys, Jon Venables, and Robert Thompson.
In 2019, a shooting at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, during Friday prayers resulted in the deaths of 51 people and the injury of 49 others.
In 2020, the World Health Organization declared Europe to be the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic as the number of cases and deaths continued to rise sharply across the continent.