Today in History....March 23

On this day in …

* 1765, Britain enacted the Stamp Act of 1765 to raise money from the American colonies. (The Act was repealed the following year.)

* 1820, U.S. naval hero Stephen Decatur was killed in a duel with Commodore James Barron near Washington, D.C.

* 1882, Congress outlawed polygamy

* 1933, during Prohibition, President Roosevelt signed a measure to make wine and beer containing up to 3.2 percent alcohol legal

* 1946, the British mandate in Transjordan came to an end

* 1972, Congress sent the proposed Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution to the states for ratification. (It fell three states short of the 38 needed for approval.)

* 1978, Karl Wallenda, the 73-year-old patriarch of "The Flying Wallendas" high-wire act, fell to his death while attempting to walk a cable strung between two hotel towers in San Juan, Puerto Rico

* 1987, a garbage barge, carrying 3,200 tons of refuse, left Islip, N.Y., on a six-month journey in search of a place to unload. (The barge was turned away by several states and three other countries until space was found back in Islip.)

* 1997, a day after a practitioner of that "religion of peace"
killed three women in a Tel Aviv suicide bombing, Israeli troops clashed with hundreds of Palestinians in Hebron. ALSO: Tara Lipinski, at age 14 years and 10 months, became the youngest women's world figure skating champion