Today in History: March 28, Three Mile Island nuclear plant accident

On March 28, 1979, America’s worst commercial nuclear accident occurred with a partial meltdown inside the Unit 2 reactor at the Three Mile Island plant near Middletown, Pennsylvania.

Also on this date:

In 1898, the U.S. Supreme Court, in United States v. Wong Kim Ark, ruled 6-2 that Wong, who was born in the United States to Chinese immigrants, was an American citizen. It was the first Supreme Court decision to rule on the citizenship status of a child born in the United States to noncitizen parents.

In 1935, the notorious Nazi propaganda film “Triumph des Willens” ("Triumph of the Will"), directed by Leni Riefenstahl, premiered in Berlin with Adolf Hitler present.

In 1941, author Virginia Woolf, 59, drowned herself near her home in Lewes, East Sussex, England.

In 1969, the 34th president of the United States, Dwight D. Eisenhower, died in Washington, D.C., at age 78.

In 1990, President George H.W. Bush posthumously awarded the Congressional Gold Medal to the late Jesse Owens, who won four gold medals in track at the 1936 Berlin Olympics (Owens, who was Black, won in front of Adolf Hitler, thwarting Nazi claims of Aryan racial supremacy).

In 2024, FTX cryptocurrency exchange founder Sam Bankman-Fried was sentenced to 25 years in prison after being convicted on fraud and conspiracy charges related to the collapse of the exchange.

In 2025, Utah became the first state to prohibit flying LGBTQ+ pride flags at schools and government buildings after Gov. Spencer Cox announced he was allowing a ban on unsanctioned flag displays to become law without his signature; the law took effect the following May.

Today’s Birthdays: Basketball Hall of Famer Rick Barry is 82. Actor Dianne Wiest is 78. Singer-actor Reba McEntire is 71. Olympic gymnastics gold medalist Bart Conner is 68. Rapper Salt (Salt-N-Pepa) is 60. Country musician Rodney Atkins is 57. Actor Vince Vaughn is 56. Sen. Ashley Moody, a Republican from Florida, is 51. Actor Julia Stiles is 45. Singer-actor Lady Gaga is 40. Stylist-TV personality Jonathan Van Ness is 39. Rapper Jackson Wang is 32. Russian figure skater and Olympic gold medalist Anna Shcherbakova is 22.