On this day: March 21

POSTED: 11:38 AM PDT Mar 18, 2013    UPDATED: 11:00 PM PDT Mar 20, 2013 

Alcatraz prison closes, Martin Luther King Jr. marches toward Montgomery, the U.S. decides to boycott Moscow's Olympics, and Spielberg nabs his first Oscar, all on this day.

OTD March 21 - 1980 Olympics
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Denis Balibouse/Reuters

1980: President Jimmy Carter tells a group of U.S. athletes that America will boycott the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow to protest the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan. It marked the first and only time that the United States has boycotted the Olympics. The boycott, which was joined by more than 60 other countries, would prompt the Soviet-led boycott of the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.

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