Today is Sunday, March 22, the 81st day of 2026. There are 284 days left in the year.

Today in history:

On March 22, 1963, The Beatles’ debut album, “Please Please Me,” was released in the United Kingdom on the Parlophone record label.

Also on this date:

In 1765, the British Parliament passed the Stamp Act to raise money from the American colonies, which fiercely resisted the tax. (The Stamp Act was repealed a year later.)

In 1894, ice hockey’s first Stanley Cup championship game was played, in which the Montreal Hockey Club defeated the Ottawa Hockey Club, 3-1.

In 1933, during the Prohibition Era, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Cullen-Harrison Act, which allowed the sale of beer and wine with an alcohol content of 3.2%. (Prohibition would be fully repealed nine months later with the ratification of the 21st Amendment.)

In 1941, the Grand Coulee hydroelectric dam in Washington state officially went into operation; it remains the largest capacity hydropower station in the United States.

In 1945, the Arab League was formed with the adoption of a charter in Cairo, Egypt.

In 1972, in the Eisenstadt v. Baird decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that unmarried people had the same right to possess and use contraception as did married people.

In 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.

In 1993, Intel Corp. unveiled the original Pentium computer chip.

In 2019, former President Jimmy Carter became the longest-living chief executive in American history; at 94 years and 172 days, he exceeded the life span of the late former President George H.W. Bush. (Carter would die at age 100 in December 2024.)

In 2021, 10 people were killed in a mass shooting at a King Soopers supermarket in Boulder, Colorado. (The shooter, Ahmad Alissa, was sentenced to life in prison without parole in September 2024.)

In 2024, men firing automatic weapons attacked a crowd gathered for a concert at the Crocus City Hall auditorium in a Moscow suburb, leaving at least 137 people dead and more than 180 wounded. An affiliate of the Islamic State group claimed responsibility for what was the deadliest terror attack on Russian soil in years.

Today’s Birthdays: Artist Yayoi Kusama is 97. Actor William Shatner is 95. Former U.S. poet laureate Billy Collins is 85. Musician George Benson is 83. Writer James Patterson is 79. Composer Andrew Lloyd Webber is 78. Actor Lena Olin is 71. Singer-actor Stephanie Mills is 69. Actor Matthew Modine is 67. Football Hall of Famer Jim Covert is 66. Actor-comedian Keegan-Michael Key is 55. Democratic Sen. Alex Padilla of California is 53. Actor Reese Witherspoon is 50. Actor Constance Wu is 44. Actor Noah LaLonde is 28. Dancer Vitoria Bueno is 21.