Inaugural Address

Staige D. Blackford , 72, editor of Virginia Quarterly Review, was killed in a car crash Monday, one week before his retirement from the respected literary journal. Mr. Blackford was riding in a car driven by his wife, Florence Bettina Blackford, when it was struck broadside, police said. Mrs. Blackford was being treated for her injuries. Mr. Blackford was a Rhodes Scholar, political speechwriter and newspaperman. He was press secretary for Virginia Gov. Linwood Holton and is credited with crafting the appeal for racial reconciliation that was the centerpiece of Holton's inaugural address in 1970.

Paris -- Nicolas Sarkozy took office as France's 23rd president yesterday and moved quickly to deliver on promises of change by assembling a Cabinet of historic diversity that is likely to include an internationally known leader of the leftist opposition. Sarkozy, 52, succeeded Jacques Chirac during a ceremony at the Elysees Palace. Chirac, 74, who served two terms, greeted Sarkozy on a red carpet in the stone courtyard and then took him inside for a 35-minute meeting during which Chirac turned over the top-secret codes to France's nuclear arsenal.

The Carroll County commissioners are planning to put the nation's history on display in Westminster.The commissioners will place Freedom Shrines -- photographic reproductions of 28 historic United States documents -- in the courthouse annex and the County Office Building.A dedication ceremony is expected in February."This is a wonderful display for people to look at," said Steven D. Powell, county budget director. "It gives them an opportunity to review our nation's history."The photographic reproductions are the result of the Freedom Shrine Project, which was conceived in the educational department of the Ohio-based National Exchange Club, a nonprofit service organization.

A four-page personal handwritten letter from John Jay Audubon to Gideon B. Smith, dated May 18, 1843, taken from the Connecticut Historical Society. A single-page letter from Marie Antoinette written in French on Oct. 2, 1784, taken from the Connecticut Historical Society. A letter written in French from Napoleon Bonaparte on Sept. 17, 1878, taken from the Connecticut Historical Society. A letter written by Karl Marx on April 14, 1874, to P.H. King inquiring about the title and price of a book bearing Marx's signature, taken from the Wilbur Collection at the University of Vermont Library.

From The Sun March 3-9, 1841March 5: The Baltimore and Ohio, and Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad Companies, ran expresses from Washington to Philadelphia carrying President Harrison's Inaugural Address for the accomodation of the editorial corps and of the public.From The Sun March 3-9, 1891March 4: Five hundred dogs were on dress parade yesterday when the second annual dog show of the Maryland Kennel Club began at the Fifth Regiment Armory.March 9: The temple for the Baltimore Hebrew Congregation is nearing completion and the members expect to hold the first service in the new edifice the latter part of September.

Old Tippecanoe, the ninth president of the United States, was born 240 years ago today. He remains the president with the shortest term in office, having died a month after his inauguration. An elderly gentleman, he insisted on making a prolonged and unremarkable inaugural address in bad weather, caught a bad cold, and succumbed, bequeathing executive authority to John Tyler, "His Accidency," who would later distinguish himself as the only former president to make his allegiance to the Confederacy.

DALLAS - The mood was jovial for Southwest Airlines Co. investors yesterday as the airline predicted another year in the black. "I would expect that we will be profitable for the year," Chief Executive Officer James F. Parker told a room packed with shareholders at the company's annual meeting. Southwest, the largest carrier at Baltimore-Washington International Airport, was the only major airline to make money last year. It also reported a profit in the first quarter of this year, but the $21 million was 82 percent less than earnings in the first quarter of last year.

ANKARA, Turkey -- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told a top Russian envoy yesterday that Moscow's crackdown on dissent was making Russian-American relations "more difficult," a State Department official said. But Rice also signaled in public that the United States would not try to isolate Russia because of its actions. The State Department official, speaking after a dinner between Rice and Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov, said the secretary noted Russia's steps to take over independent television, seize the oil company Yukos and arrest its leaders, and remove powers from state governors.

The new Baltimore county executive, Roger B. Hayden, was sworn in today in a packed ceremonial courtroom in Towson's 19th Century old courthouse.Rain forced cancellation of a planned outdoor ceremony, and people stood packed in the hallways.Hayden's inaugural address was short and general. He said his mandate from the voters was "to promote openness in government and pay strict attention to cost control and efficiency in government."His was one of four swearing-ins today in the suburban counties.

WASHINGTON -- The British historian Paul Johnson was in Washington last month to address a gathering at the Library of Congress on the subject ''Calvin Coolidge and the Last Arcadia.'' The visit was timely, coming as it did in the heat of the war between the Clinton administration and the Republican Congress over whether and how to balance the budget.''We have too much legislation by clamor, by tumult and by pressure,'' said Coolidge more than seven decades ago. Who could disagree?In normal times, Coolidge believed, minimal government must be the norm.