On this day in 1951 began the trial of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, who were falsely accused of passing the "secret of the nuclear bomb" to the Soviet Union. Two years later the pair was unjustly executed.

Almost 100 years before in 1857, another important legal case with an appalling outcome occurred on the same day on March 6th. The Supreme Court released their wildly unjust decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford, ruling "that Scott, an enslaved person, was not an American citizen and therefore could not sue for his freedom in Federal court."