Good News Ghosts: March 8-14

Double, double, toil and trouble: Our ghosts are far cries from witches and ghouls. Instead we're breathing a little life into those pivotal moments in history that changed our laws, our lives and the way we look at dolls. Yes, the Blonde Plastic One on the list. (Oh, Barbie — can't live with you, can probably live without you, but our culture certainly wouldn't be the same if you weren't in it.) But so is a Carnegie, a King, a Paine ... and a half a dozen justice-seeking ex-non-cons. Get your ghost on and take a moment for women's rights and Tibetan freedom fighters. Then go do something weekendy and beg Spring to hurry up and make itself, official, will you?

March 8, 1775: Thomas Paine's African Slavery in America was the first work of literature demanding abolition and emancipation. March 8, 1817: New York Stock Exchange is founded. May not ring as a very good thing these days, but revolutionary all the same. March 12, 1901: Andrew Carnegie donates a whopping $5.2 million to New York state to build libraries galore. A shocking 65 of them. Read up. March 8, 1908: International Women's Day is launched. Although initially a week earlier, protests and customs solidified it as every March 8 around the world. Chocolate and yellow mimosas (the flower, not the cocktail) all around. March 13, 1930: Pluto makes its mark on the planetary map! It enjoyed 66 years of said status before sadly getting the boot. March 9, 1959: Birth of the Barbie doll. An American — if unrealistic — icon. March 10, 1959: Tibetan National Uprising marked the protest for peace in the occupied Buddhist country. March 10, 1969: Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassin, James Earl Ray, is sentenced to life in prison. March 14, 1991: Wrongly convicted Birmingham Six set free — after 16 years in prison! (Learn more about wrongful convictions and what you can do at The Innocence Project.) March 11, 2003: The International Criminal Court gets off and rolling, holding its first official session at The Hague and establishing a global rule of law.