On this day
Revisit the music, news, notable people, and historical moments connected to this date.
Portrait 1080 × 1920 PNG · created on your device
Toshihiko Fukui, Bank of Japan governor, says Japan's economy is gradually recovering, helped by strong capital spending and increasing exports; warns that there is still no end in sight to falling consumer prices (S)
Ed Levine reports on his quest to find best cheesecake in New York City; list of seven of city's best cheesecake sources; photos (L)
Tampa Bay Devil Rays senior advisor Don Zimmer discusses tumultuous relationship with former boss and New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner; pledges never to return to Yankees as coach (M)
American military commanders in Iraq are just now reckoning with volume of civilian casualies streaming in for assistance; do not have precise figures or even estimates of number of noncombatant Iraqis killed or wounded by American-led forces, but nonprofit groups' estimates of Iraqi civilians killed range from 3,200 to more than 5,000, and that number grows as civilians continue to be cut down by American forces in checkpoint shootings and crossfires, accidents and mishaps; groups fault military for its continued use of cluster bombs; masses of grieving, injured and disfigured Iraqis line up twice a week at Baghdad Convention Center seeking treatment and compensation; Capt Jonathan Tracy forces $5,000 on man who watched his wife burn to death and his three children die after American missile hit his house a year ago, acknowledging that it cannot bring any of them back but saying that this is all US can do for now; photos (M)
New York Knicks defeat Washington Wizards, 114-110, in overtime; photos (M)
Music on My Birthday
The Top 50 albums for the chart week of March 17, 2004, covering March 17, 2004.
Norah Jones
Jessica Simpson
Evanescence
Kanye West
Kenny Chesney
2004Unrest in Kosovo: More than 22 are killed and 200 wounded. Thirty-five Serbian Orthodox shrines in Kosovo and two mosques in Serbia are destroyed.[†]
On 17–18 March 2004, violence erupted in Kosovo, leaving hundreds wounded and at least 19 people dead. The unrest was precipitated by unsubstantiated reports in the Kosovo Albanian media which claimed that three Kosovo Albanian boys had drowned after being chased into the Ibar River by a group of Kosovo Serbs. UN peacekeepers and NATO troops scrambled to contain a gun battle between Serbs and Albanians in the partitioned town of Mitrovica, Kosovo before the violence spread to other parts of Kosovo. Kosovo Serb communities and cultural heritage were attacked by crowds of Albanians. Serbs call the event the March Pogrom, while the Albanians call it the March Unrest.
In 2004, the world population was approximately 6,503,377,772 people[†]