March 28 · This Day in America
Just after four in the morning near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, a valve sticks open at the Unit 2 reactor of the Three Mile Island plant. Cooling water drains away. The instruments lie, or are misread, and the operators shut off the emergency pumps that would have saved them. Hour by hour, unseen, roughly half the reactor core melts. For days the country holds its breath as engineers fight a machine they cannot see inside and pregnant women and children are urged to leave the area. In the end the containment building holds. No one is known to have died. But the accident broke America's easy faith in the atom; no new reactor would be ordered for decades. It became the day the future got more careful.
Source: www.britannica.com
Also on this day · 1834
In a duel over the Bank of the United States, the Senate does something it has never done before: it formally censures a sitting president, voting 26 to 20 that Andrew Jackson had overstepped the Constitution. Jackson, furious, fired back a written protest. Years later his allies expunged the censure from the record, drawing black lines around the words. It remains the only time the Senate has ever censured a president, a reminder that the branches were built to push back on each other.
Source: www.senate.gov