Today in History, March 11th
On March 11, 2011, a magnitude 9.0 quake and tsunami struck Japan and crippled Fukushima Daiichi. Plus Lend-Lease and COVID-19.
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March 11 is best known for 2011, when a magnitude 9.0 earthquake off northeastern Japan set off a tsunami and a nuclear crisis at Fukushima Daiichi. The date also saw President Franklin Roosevelt approve the Lend-Lease Act in 1941 and the World Health Organization call COVID-19 a pandemic in 2020.
The big story: Japan’s Earthquake, Tsunami and Nuclear Crisis (2011)
At 2:46 p.m. local time, the seafloor along the Japan Trench, roughly 80 miles east of the city of Sendai, gave way. The quake measured 9.0, among the strongest ever recorded, and it was only the start. Within minutes a tsunami as high as about 33 feet pushed over seawalls and ran miles inland, sweeping away towns along the Tohoku coast. Japan’s official tally of dead or missing came to about 18,500, and most of them drowned. Down the coast, the water knocked out the backup generators at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. Without cooling, the cores of three reactors partly melted, and hydrogen explosions released radiation. Regulators later rated the accident a level 7, the same rating given to Chernobyl. Four years after the disaster, some 230,000 people were still displaced, largely because of the evacuation zone around the plant.
More events on March 11
| Year | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1779 | The Continental Congress created the Corps of Engineers to plan and build fortifications for the Army. |
| 1824 | The Bureau of Indian Affairs was established to manage the U.S. government’s relations with Native American nations. |
| 1861 | Meeting in Montgomery, Alabama, Confederate delegates adopted the permanent constitution of the Confederate States of America. |
| 1888 | The Great Blizzard of 1888 began battering the Atlantic coast. New York City got about 22 inches of snow, and more than 400 people died. |
| 1941 | President Franklin Roosevelt approved the Lend-Lease Act, letting the U.S. send war supplies to countries whose defense he judged vital to American security. |
| 1942 | Under orders from Roosevelt, Gen. Douglas MacArthur left Corregidor in the Philippines. |
| 1959 | Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun opened on Broadway. |
| 1985 | Mikhail Gorbachev was chosen to lead the Soviet Communist Party, one day after Konstantin Chernenko died. |
| 1990 | Lithuania’s legislature declared that the country’s independence from the Soviet Union was restored. |
| 2004 | Ten bombs exploded on four commuter trains in Madrid during the morning rush, killing more than 190 people, three days before Spain’s general election. |
| 2020 | The World Health Organization declared that the spread of COVID-19 could be called a pandemic. |
Born on March 11
- 1811: Urbain Le Verrier, French astronomer whose math pointed the way to the planet Neptune.
- 1926: Ralph David Abernathy, religious leader and civil rights activist, Martin Luther King Jr.’s closest associate.
- 1936: Antonin Scalia, U.S. Supreme Court justice from 1986 to 2016.
- 1952: Douglas Adams, British author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
Sources
- Japan earthquake and tsunami of 2011, Britannica
- What happened on March 11, History.com
- March 11, Britannica On This Day
- Lend-Lease Act (1941), National Archives
- Lithuania: Independence restored, Britannica
- Listings of WHO’s response to COVID-19, World Health Organization
- Urbain-Jean-Joseph Le Verrier, Britannica
- Ralph David Abernathy, Britannica
- Antonin Scalia, Britannica
- Douglas Adams, Britannica
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