Today is Tuesday, March 8, the 68th day of 2016. There are 298 days left in the year.

Today’s birthdays: Actress Sue Ane Langdon is 80. Baseball player-turned-author Jim Bouton is 77. Songwriter Carole Bayer Sager is 72. Actor Micky Dolenz (The Monkees) is 71. Former Red Sox slugger Jim Rice is 63. Actor Aidan Quinn is 57. Actress Camryn Manheim is 55. Actor Freddie Prinze Jr. is 40.

In 1917, Russia’s ‘‘February Revolution’’ (referring to the Old Style calendar) began in Petrograd; the result was the abdication of the Russian monarchy.

In 1965, the United States landed its first combat troops in South Vietnam as 3,500 Marines arrived to defend the US air base at Da Nang.

In 1966, Nelson’s Pillar, a 120-foot-high column in Dublin honoring British naval hero Horatio Nelson, was bombed by the Irish Republican Army.

In 1979, technology firm Philips demonstrated a prototype compact disc player in Eindhoven, the Netherlands.

In 1983, in a speech to the National Association of Evangelicals convention in Orlando, Fla., President Reagan referred to the Soviet Union as an ‘‘evil empire.’’

In 2006, six months after Hurricane Katrina, President George W. Bush got a close-up look at the mountains of debris, abandoned homes, and boarded-up stores in New Orleans.

In 2014, Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, a Boeing 777 with 239 people on board, vanished during a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, setting off a massive search. The fate of the jetliner and its occupants has yet to be determined.