Today in history

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April 6
1199 English King Richard I is killed by an arrow at the Siege of the Castle of Chalus in France.
1789 The First U.S. Congress begins regular sessions at Federal Hall in New York City.
1814 Granted sovereignty in the island of Elba and a pension from the French government, Napoleon Bonaparte abdicates at Fontainebleau. He is allowed to keep the title of emperor.
1830 Joseph Smith and five others organize the Church of Latter-Day Saints in Seneca, New York.
1862 Confederate forces attack General Ulysses S. Grant at Shiloh, Tennessee.
1865 At the Battle of Sailer's Creek, a third of Lee's army is cut off by Union troops pursuing him to Appomattox.
1896 The Modern Olympics begin in Athens with eight nations participating.
1903 French Army Nationalists are revealed to have forged documents to guarantee a conviction for Alfred Dreyfus.
1909 Americans Robert Peary and Matthew Henson become the first men to reach the North Pole.
1917 The United States declares war on Germany and enters World War I on Allied side.
1924 Four planes leave Seattle on the first successful flight around the world.
1938 The United States recognizes Nazi Germany's conquest of Austria.
1941 German forces invade Greece and Yugoslavia.
1965 President Lyndon B. Johnson authorizes the use of ground troops in combat operations.


Born on April 6
1483 Raphael (Raffaello Sanzio), Italian painter (Sistine Madonna).
1786 Sacagawea (also Sacajawea), American explorer.
1866 Lincoln Joseph Steffens, journalist.
1905 W. Warrick Cardozo, physician, researcher of Sickle Cell Anemia.
1927 Gerry Mulligan, jazz saxophonist.
1928 James Watson, co-discoverer of the structure of DNA.
1929 Andre Previn, pianist and conductor.
1937 Merle Haggard, American country musician.


First Flight Around the World
On April 6, 1924, eight U.S. Army Air Service pilots and mechanics in four airplanes left Seattle, Washington, to carry out the first circumnavigation of the globe by air. They completed the journey 175 days later on September 28, after making 74 stops and covering about 27,550 miles.

The airplanes were named for American cities and carried a flight number: Seattle (1), Chicago (2), Boston (3), and New Orleans (4). They flew over the Pacific, Indian, and Atlantic oceans and encountered climatic extremes from arctic to tropical. Only the Chicago, flown by Lts. Lowell Smith and Leslie Arnold, and the New Orleans, flown by Lts. Erik Nelson and John Harding Jr., completed the entire journey.

The Objective
The World Flight’s goal was to evaluate the airplane as a global technology. Operating the World Cruisers in extreme environments would test the airplane’s practicality and showcase America’s aeronautical industry. Connecting the world by air routes would foster better international relations and encourage commerce. And it would create popular support for the Army Air Service and its goal of expanding its role within the U.S. military.




Lead Story
1896
First modern Olympic Games

On April 6, 1896, the Olympic Games, a long-lost tradition of ancient Greece, are reborn in Athens 1,500 years after being banned by Roman Emperor Theodosius I. At the opening of the Athens Games, King Georgios I of Greece and a crowd of 60,000 spectators welcomed athletes from 13 nations to the international competition.

The first recorded Olympic Games were held at Olympia in the Greek city-state of Elis in 776 B.C., but it is generally accepted that the Olympics were at least 500 years old at that time. The ancient Olympics, held every four years, occurred during a religious festival honoring the Greek god Zeus. In the eighth century B.C., contestants came from a dozen or more Greek cities, and by the fifth century B.C. from as many as 100 cities from throughout the Greek empire. Initially, Olympic competition was limited to foot races, but later a number of other events were added, including wrestling, boxing, horse and chariot racing, and military competitions. The pentathlon, introduced in 708 B.C., consisted of a foot race, the long jump, discus and javelin throws, and wrestling. With the rise of Rome, the Olympics declined, and in 393 A.D. the Roman Emperor Theodosius I, a Christian, abolished the Games as part of his efforts to suppress paganism in the Roman Empire.

With the Renaissance, Europe began a long fascination with ancient Greek culture, and in the 18th and 19th centuries some nations staged informal sporting and folkloric festivals bearing the name “Olympic Games.” However, it was not until 1892 that a young French baron, Pierre de Coubertin, seriously proposed reviving the Olympics as a major international competition that would occur every four years. At a conference on international sport in Paris in June 1894, Coubertin again raised the idea, and the 79 delegates from nine countries unanimously approved his proposal. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) was formed, and the first Games were planned for 1896 in Athens, the capital of Greece.

In Athens, 280 participants from 13 nations competed in 43 events, covering track-and-field, swimming, gymnastics, cycling, wrestling, weightlifting, fencing, shooting, and tennis. All the competitors were men, and a few of the entrants were tourists who stumbled upon the Games and were allowed to sign up. The track-and-field events were held at the Panathenaic Stadium, which was originally built in 330 B.C. and restored for the 1896 Games. Americans won nine out of 12 of these events. The 1896 Olympics also featured the first marathon competition, which followed the 25-mile route run by a Greek soldier who brought news of a victory over the Persians from Marathon to Athens in 490 B.C. In 1924, the marathon was standardized at 26 miles and 385 yards. Appropriately, a Greek, Spyridon Louis, won the first marathon at the 1896 Athens Games.

Pierre de Coubertin became IOC president in 1896 and guided the Olympic Games through its difficult early years, when it lacked much popular support and was overshadowed by world’s fairs. In 1924, the first truly successful Olympic Games were held in Paris, involving more than 3,000 athletes, including more than 100 women, from 44 nations. The first Winter Olympic Games were also held that year. In 1925, Coubertin retired. The Olympic Games have come to be regarded as the foremost international sports competition. At the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, more than 10,000 athletes from 200 countries competed, including nearly 4,000 women. In 2004, the Summer Olympics returned to Athens, with more than 11,000 athletes competing from 202 countries. In a proud moment for Greeks and an exciting one for spectators, the shotput competition was held at the site of the classical Games in Olympia.
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Re: Today in history

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April 7

1652 The Dutch establish a settlement at Cape Town, South Africa.
1712 A slave revolt breaks out in New York City.
1798 The territory of Mississippi is organized.
1862 General Ulysses S. Grant defeats the Confederates at the Battle of Shiloh in TN.
1914 The British House of Commons passes the Irish Home Rule Bill.
1922 The U.S. Secretary of the Interior leases the Teapot Dome naval oil reserves in Wyoming.
1933 President Franklin Roosevelt signs legislation ending prohibition in the United States.
1943 British and American armies link up between Wadi Akarit and El Guettar in North Africa, forming a solid line against the German army.
1945 The Japanese battleship Yamato, the world’s largest battleship, is sunk during the Battle for Okinawa.
1963 Yugoslavia proclaims itself a Socialist republic.
1971 President Nixon pledges a withdrawal of 100,000 more men from Vietnam by December.
1980 The United States breaks relations with Iran.
1983 Specialist Story Musgrave and Don Peterson make the first Space Shuttle spacewalk.
1990 John Poindexter is found guilty in the Iran-Contra scandal.


Born on April 7
1770 William Wordsworth, English poet laureate (The Prelude, Lyrical Ballads).
1837 John Pierpont Morgan, U.S. industrialist.
1859 Walter Camp, father of American football.
1860 W.K. Kellogg, cereal magnate and health guru.
1897 Walter Winchell, American newscaster and columnist.
1915 Billie Holiday (Eleanora Fagan), jazz and blues singer.
1931 Donald Barthelme, writer.
1931 Daniel Ellsberg, anti-war activist, released the Pentagon Papers.


American Revolution
1776
U.S. Navy captures first British warship

On this day in 1776, Navy Captain John Barry, commander of the American warship Lexington, makes the first American naval capture of a British vessel when he takes command of the British warship HMS Edward off the coast of Virginia. The capture of the Edward and its cargo turned Captain Barry into a national hero and boosted the morale of the Continental forces.
Barry was born in the seaboard county of Wexford, Ireland, in 1745 and offered his services to the Continental Congress upon the outbreak of the American Revolution. Congress purchased Barry’s ship, Black Prince, which it renamed Alfred and placed under the command of Commodore Esek Hopkins. It was the first ship to fly the American flag, raised by John Paul Jones.
Barry served with distinction throughout the American Revolution. At sea, he had continued success with the Lexington. On land, he raised a volunteer force to assist General Washington in the surprisingly successful Trenton, New Jersey, campaign of 1776-77. On May 29, 1781, Barry was wounded while successfully capturing the HMS Atlanta and the HMS Trepassy while in command of a new ship, Alliance. He recovered and successfully concluded the final naval battle of the Revolutionary War with a victory over the HMS Sybylle in March 1783.

Barry’s outstanding career has been memorialized on both sides of the Atlantic. A bridge bearing his name crosses the Delaware River, and Brooklyn, New York, is home to a park named for him. In addition, four U.S. Navy ships and a building at Villanova University carry his name, and statues in his honor stand in Washington, D.C., Philadelphia and his birthplace, Wexford, Ireland. On September 13, 1981, President Ronald Reagan declared Commodore John Barry Day to honor a man he called one of the earliest and greatest American patriots, a man of great insight who perceived very early the need for American power on the sea.
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April 8
1789 The U.S. House of Representatives holds its first meeting.
1832 Some 300 American troops of the 6th Infantry leave Jefferson Barracks, St. Louis, to confront the Sauk Indians in what would become known as the Black Hawk War.
1864 In the Battle of Mansfield, Louisiana, Federals are routed by Confederate Gen. Richard Taylor.
1865 General Robert E. Lee's retreat is cut off near Appomattox Court House.
1898 British General Horatio Kitchener defeats the Khalifa, leader of the dervishes in Sudan, at the Battle of Atbara.
1913 The 17th Amendment is ratified, requiring direct election of senators.
1935 The Works Progress Administration (WPA) is approved by Congress.
1939 Italy invades Albania.
1942 The Soviets open a rail link to the besieged city of Leningrad.
1952 President Truman orders the seizure of U.S. steel mills to prevent a strike.
1962 Bay of Pigs invaders get thirty years imprisonment in Cuba.
1974 Hank Aaron hits his 715th home run, breaking Babe Ruth's record.
1975 Frank Robinson of the Cleveland Indians becomes first black manager of a major league baseball team.


Born on April 8
563 BC Gautama Buddha, founder of Buddhism.
1605 Philip IV, king of Spain and Portugal (1621-65).
1726 Lewis Morris, signer of the Declaration of Independence.
1893 Mary Pickford (Gladys Smith), early film actress.
1893 Edgar "Yip" Harburg, lyricist ("Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?," "Over the Rainbow").
1920 Carmen McRae, jazz vocalist and pianist.
1921 Betty Bloomer Ford, first lady to President Gerald Ford.
1955 Barbara Kingsolver, novelist (The Bean Trees, Animal Dreams).



Automotive
1979
Waltrip beats Petty in last-lap thriller
On this day in 1979, in the Rebel 500 event at Darlington Raceway in South Carolina, drivers Darrell Waltrip and Richard Petty swap the lead four times in a last-lap battle before Waltrip finally wins the race.

The race also featured a pit stop mishap in which driver David Pearson, following a miscommunication with his crew, drove away with only two of his four tires properly changed. Pearson’s car flipped over and had to be removed from the race. The embarrassing incident led to Pearson, who was a top driver, being released from his team, Wood Brothers.

At the time of his defeat by Waltrip at the Rebel 500, Richard Petty was a NASCAR legend. That same year, he won his seventh NASCAR championship, a record later duplicated by just one other driver, Dale Earnhardt (1951-2001). Petty, who was born on July 2, 1937, in Level Cross, North Carolina, is the son of driver Lee Petty (1914-2000), a three-time NASCAR champ who won the first Daytona 500 in 1959. Richard Petty began his own NASCAR career in 1958 and was a dominant competitor before retiring in the early 1990s. Nicknamed “The King,” Petty won a record 200 races in his career, including a record seven victories at the Daytona 500. Petty’s son Kyle (1960- ) also became a well-known NASCAR driver; his grandson Adam (1980-2000), NASCAR’s first fourth-generation driver, was killed in an accident during a practice session at New Hampshire International Speedway.

Darrell Waltrip, who was born on February 5, 1947, in Owensboro, Kentucky, began racing in NASCAR’s Winston Cup Series (now known as the Sprint Cup) in 1972. Aggressive and outspoken, Waltrip earned the nickname “Jaws.” He won the Winston Cup championship in 1981, 1982 and 1985 and claimed victory at the Daytona 500 in 1989. After retiring as a competitor, Waltrip became a race commentator. His younger brother Michael Waltrip (1963- ) is a two-time Daytona 500 winner.
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April 9
193 In the Balkans, the distinguished soldier Septimius Severus is proclaimed emperor by the army in Illyricum.
715 Constantine ends his reign as Catholic Pope.
1241 In the Battle of Liegnitz, Mongol armies defeat Poles and Germans.
1454 The city states of Venice, Milan and Florence sign a peace agreement at Lodi, Italy.
1682 Robert La Salle claims lower Mississippi River and all lands that touch it for France.
1731 British Captain Robert Jenkins loses an ear to a band of Spanish brigands, starting a war between Britain and Spain: The War of Jenkins' Ear.
1770 Captain James Cook discovers Botany Bay on the Australian continent.
1859 Realizing that France has encouraged the Piedmontese forces to mobilize for invading Italy, Austria begins mobilizing its army.
1865 General Robert E. Lee surrenders his rebel forces to Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse, Va.
1900 British forces route Boers at Kroonstadt, South Africa.
1916 The German army launches its third offensive during the Battle of Verdun.
1917 The Battle of Arras begins as Canadian troops begin a massive assault on Vimy Ridge.
1921 Russo-Polish conflict ends with signing of the Riga Treaty.
1940 Germany invades Norway and Denmark.
1942 In the Battle of Bataan, American and Filipino forces are overwhelmed by the Japanese Army.
1945 The Red Army is repulsed at the Seelow Heights on the outskirts of Berlin.
1950 Comedian Bob Hope makes his first television appearance.
1963 Winston Churchill becomes the first honorary U.S. citizen.
1966 The statue of Winston Churchill is dedicated at the British Embassy in Washington, D.C.
1968 Murdered civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., is buried.
1970 Paul McCartney announces the official break-up of the Beatles.


Born on April 9
1649 James Scott, Duke of Monmouth.
1821 Charles Baudelaire, French poet.
1826 Chatham Roberdeau Wheat, Confederate commander during the American Civil War.
1865 Erich Ludendorff, German general during World War I.
1879 W.C. Fields (William Claude Dukenfield), comedian and actor.
1898 Paul Robeson, actor and activist.
1905 J. William Fulbright, U.S. senator from Arkansas.
1926 Hugh Hefner, founder and publisher of Playboy magazine.


Disaster
1947
Tornado reduces Oklahoma town to rubble

The town of Woodward, Oklahoma, is nearly wiped off the map by a powerful tornado on this day in 1947. More than 100 people died in Woodward, and 80 more lost their lives elsewhere in the series of twisters that hit the U.S. heartland that day.
The storm occurred when a cold front from Siberia met a warm and moist stream of air from the Gulf of Mexico. In the late afternoon, the first tornado struck in White Deer, Texas. In Glazier, Texas, only a gas station survived the twister. In Higgins, Texas, 30 people were killed as the tornado grew to nearly a mile-and-a-half wide.
As the tornado traveled on in its nearly 100-mile-long trip, it got even wider. By the time it reached Woodward it was reportedly as big as two miles wide. Fierce lightning and hail preceded the twister and drove the residents to seek shelter. At about nine in the evening, the town s gas and electric plants were destroyed and the residents were left in complete darkness.
As the storm moved through Woodward, 200 residential blocks were completely leveled and nearly 1,000 homes were razed. Fires broke out in several spots but the heavy rains kept them under control. In all, 107 people were killed in Woodward and many more were injured. The devastating tornado then continued on to Kansas, where significant damage was done but no one was killed.

As looting was reported in the areas hit by the tornado, the National Guard was called in to restore order. Army barracks were used to house the homeless until their homes could be rebuilt.
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April 10
1790 The U.S. patent system is established.
1809 Austria declares war on France and her forces enter Bavaria.
1862 Union forces begin the bombardment of Fort Pulaski in Georgia along the Tybee River.
1865 At Appomattox Court, Va, General Robert E. Lee issues his last orders to the Army of Northern Virginia.
1866 The American Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) is formed.
1902 South African Boers accept British terms of surrender.
1912 The Titanic begins her maiden voyage which will end in disaster.
1925 F. Scott Fitzgerald publishes The Great Gatsby.
1930 The first synthetic rubber is produced.
1932 Paul von Hindenburg is elected president in Germany.
1938 Germany annexes Austria.
1941 U.S. troops occupy Greenland to prevent Nazi infiltration.
1945 In their second attempt to take the Seelow Heights, near Berlin, the Red Army launches numerous attacks against the defending Germans. The Soviets gain one mile at the cost of 3,000 men killed and 368 tanks destroyed.
1945 Allied troops liberate the Nazi concentration camp of Buchenwald north of Weener, Germany.
1947 Jackie Robinson becomes the first black to play major league baseball as he takes the field for the Brooklyn Dodgers.
1971 The American table tennis team arrives in China.
1974 Yitzhak Rabin replaces resigning Israeli Prime Minister, Golda Meir.
1981 Imprisoned Irish Republican Army hunger striker Bobby Sands is elected to the British Parliament.


Born on April 10
1583 Hugo Grotius, Dutch statesman and scholar.
1794 Matthew C. Perry, American naval officer, opened Japan to trade with the west.
1827 Lew Wallace, Civil War general, lawyer, diplomat and author of Ben Hur.
1867 A.E. (George William Russell), Irish poet and mystic.
1880 Frances Perkins, U.S. labor secretary, first female cabinet member.
1903 Clare Boothe Luce, reporter, U.S. ambassador to the Vatican.
1917 Robert B. Woodward, synthetic chemist.
1934 David Halberstam, New York Times correspondent, author, Pulitzer Prize winner in 1964.
1932 Omar Sharif (Michael Shalhoub), actor (Dr. Zhivago).
1941 Paul Theroux, author (The Great Railway Bazaar).
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April 11
1512 The forces of the Holy League are heavily defeated by the French at the Battle of Ravenna.
1713 The Treaty of Utrecht is signed, ending the War of Spanish Succession. France cedes Maritime provinces to Britain.
1783 After receiving a copy of the provisional treaty on 13 March, Congress proclaims a formal end to hostilities with Great Britain.
1814 Napoleon abdicates and is exiled to Elba.
1898 American President William McKinley asks Congress for declaration of war with Spain.
1941 German bombers blitz Coventry, England.
1942 Detachment 101 of the OSS--a guerrilla force--is activated in Burma.
1945 After two frustrating days of being repulsed and absorbing tremendous casualties, the Red Army finally takes the Seelow Heights north of Berlin.
1951 President Truman fires General Douglas MacArthur as head of United Nations forces in Korea.
1961 Israel begins the trial of Adolf Eichman, accused of war crimes during WWII.
1961 Folk singer Bob Dylan performs in New York City for the first time, opening for John Lee Hooker.
1968 President Johnson signs the 1968 Civil Rights Act.
1974 The Judiciary committee subpoenas President Richard Nixon to produce tapes for impeachment inquiry.
1981 President Ronald Reagan returns to the White House from hospital after recovery from an assassination attempt.
1986 Dodge Morgan sails solo nonstop around the world in 150 days.
1991 The United Nations Security Council issues formal ceasefire with Iraq.
1996 Forty-three African nations sign the African Nuclear Weapons Free Zone Treaty.


Born on April 11
1370 Frederick I, elector of Saxony.
1722 Christopher Smart, English poet.
1755 James Parkinson, English physician.
1770 George Canning, British prime minister (1827).
1794 Edward Everett, governor of Massachusetts, statesman and orator.
1862 Charles Evans Hughes, 11th Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.
1893 Dean G. Acheson, U.S. secretary of state (1949-53) who helped create NATO.
1901 Glenway Wescott, writer.
1925 Ethel Kennedy, wife of Senator Robert F. Kennedy.
1932 Joel Grey (Joe Katz), actor.
1941 Ellen Goodman, Pultizer Prize-winning columnist.
1950 Bill Irwin, actor and choreographer.




1970
Apollo 13 launched to moon

On April 11, 1970, Apollo 13, the third lunar landing mission, is successfully launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, carrying astronauts James A. Lovell, John L. Swigert, and Fred W. Haise. The spacecraft’s destination was the Fra Mauro highlands of the moon, where the astronauts were to explore the Imbrium Basin and conduct geological experiments. After an oxygen tank exploded on the evening of April 13, however, the new mission objective became to get the Apollo 13 crew home alive.

At 9:00 p.m. EST on April 13, Apollo 13 was just over 200,000 miles from Earth. The crew had just completed a television broadcast and was inspecting Aquarius, the Landing Module (LM). The next day, Apollo 13 was to enter the moon’s orbit, and soon after, Lovell and Haise would become the fifth and sixth men to walk on the moon. At 9:08 p.m., these plans were shattered when an explosion rocked the spacecraft. Oxygen tank No. 2 had blown up, disabling the normal supply of oxygen, electricity, light, and water. Lovell reported to mission control: “Houston, we’ve had a problem here,” and the crew scrambled to find out what had happened. Several minutes later, Lovell looked out of the left-hand window and saw that the spacecraft was venting a gas, which turned out to be the Command Module’s (CM) oxygen. The landing mission was aborted.

As the CM lost pressure, its fuel cells also died, and one hour after the explosion mission control instructed the crew to move to the LM, which had sufficient oxygen, and use it as a lifeboat. The CM was shut down but would have to be brought back on-line for Earth reentry. The LM was designed to ferry astronauts from the orbiting CM to the moon’s surface and back again; its power supply was meant to support two people for 45 hours. If the crew of Apollo 13 were to make it back to Earth alive, the LM would have to support three men for at least 90 hours and successfully navigate more than 200,000 miles of space. The crew and mission control faced a formidable task.

To complete its long journey, the LM needed energy and cooling water. Both were to be conserved at the cost of the crew, who went on one-fifth water rations and would later endure cabin temperatures that hovered a few degrees above freezing. Removal of carbon dioxide was also a problem, because the square lithium hydroxide canisters from the CM were not compatible with the round openings in the LM environmental system. Mission control built an impromptu adapter out of materials known to be onboard, and the crew successfully copied their model.

Navigation was also a major problem. The LM lacked a sophisticated navigational system, and the astronauts and mission control had to work out by hand the changes in propulsion and direction needed to take the spacecraft home. On April 14, Apollo 13 swung around the moon. Swigert and Haise took pictures, and Lovell talked with mission control about the most difficult maneuver, a five-minute engine burn that would give the LM enough speed to return home before its energy ran out. Two hours after rounding the far side of the moon, the crew, using the sun as an alignment point, fired the LM’s small descent engine. The procedure was a success; Apollo 13 was on its way home.

For the next three days, Lovell, Haise, and Swigert huddled in the freezing lunar module. Haise developed a case of the flu. Mission control spent this time frantically trying to develop a procedure that would allow the astronauts to restart the CM for reentry. On April 17, a last-minute navigational correction was made, this time using Earth as an alignment guide. Then the repressurized CM was successfully powered up after its long, cold sleep. The heavily damaged service module was shed, and one hour before re-entry the LM was disengaged from the CM. Just before 1 p.m., the spacecraft reentered Earth’s atmosphere. Mission control feared that the CM’s heat shields were damaged in the accident, but after four minutes of radio silence Apollo 13‘s parachutes were spotted, and the astronauts splashed down safely into the Pacific Ocean.
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April 12
1204 The Fourth Crusade sacks Constantinople.
1606 England adopts the Union Jack as its flag.
1770 Parliament repeals the Townsend Acts.
1782 The British navy wins its only naval engagement against the colonists in the American Revolution at the Battle of Saints, off Dominica.
1811 The first colonists arrive at Cape Disappointment, Washington.
1861 Fort Sumter is shelled by the Confederacy, starting America's Civil War.
1864 Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest captures Fort Pillow, in Tennessee.
1877 The first catcher's mask is used in a baseball game.
1911 Pierre Prier completes the first non-stop London-Paris flight in three hours and 56 minutes.
1916 American cavalrymen and Mexican bandit troops clash at Parral, Mexico.
1927 The British Cabinet comes out in favor of voting rights for women.
1944 The U.S. Twentieth Air Force is activated to begin the strategic bombing of Japan.
1945 President Franklin D. Roosevelt dies at Warm Spring, Georgia. Harry S. Truman becomes president.
1954 Bill Haley records "Rock Around the Clock."
1955 Dr. Jonas Salk's discovery of a polio vaccine is announced.
1961 Soviet Yuri Alexeyevich Gagarin becomes first man to orbit the Earth.
1963 Police use dogs and cattle prods on peaceful civil rights demonstrators in Birmingham, Alabama.
1966 Emmett Ashford becomes the first African-American major league umpire.
1983 Harold Washington is elected the first black mayor of Chicago.


Born on April 12
1777 Henry Clay, the "Great Compromiser", American politician and statesman who ran unsuccessfully for president three times.
1791 Francis Preston Blair, Washington Globe newspaper editor.
1838 John Shaw Billings, American librarian, army physician.
1949 Scott Turow, writer and attorney.




1861
The Civil War begins

The bloodiest four years in American history begin when Confederate shore batteries under General P.G.T. Beauregard open fire on Union-held Fort Sumter in South Carolina’s Charleston Bay. During the next 34 hours, 50 Confederate guns and mortars launched more than 4,000 rounds at the poorly supplied fort. On April 13, U.S. Major Robert Anderson surrendered the fort. Two days later, U.S. President Abraham Lincoln issued a proclamation calling for 75,000 volunteer soldiers to quell the Southern “insurrection.”

As early as 1858, the ongoing conflict between North and South over the issue of slavery had led Southern leadership to discuss a unified separation from the United States. By 1860, the majority of the slave states were publicly threatening secession if the Republicans, the anti-slavery party, won the presidency. Following Republican Abraham Lincoln’s victory over the divided Democratic Party in November 1860, South Carolina immediately initiated secession proceedings. On December 20, the South Carolina legislature passed the “Ordinance of Secession,” which declared that “the Union now subsisting between South Carolina and other states, under the name of the United States of America, is hereby dissolved.” After the declaration, South Carolina set about seizing forts, arsenals, and other strategic locations within the state. Within six weeks, five more Southern states–Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana–had followed South Carolina’s lead.

In February 1861, delegates from those states convened to establish a unified government. Jefferson Davis of Mississippi was subsequently elected the first president of the Confederate States of America. When Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated on March 4, 1861, a total of seven states (Texas had joined the pack) had seceded from the Union, and federal troops held only Fort Sumter in South Carolina, Fort Pickens off the Florida coast, and a handful of minor outposts in the South. Four years after the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter, the Confederacy was defeated at the total cost of 620,000 Union and Confederate soldiers dead.
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April 13
1598 The Edict of Nantes grants political rights to French Huguenots.
1775 Lord North extends the New England Restraining Act to South Carolina, Virginia, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Maryland. The act forbids trade with any country other than Britain and Ireland.
1861 After 34 hours of bombardment, Union-held Fort Sumter surrenders to Confederates.
1864 Union forces under Gen. Sherman begin their devastating march through Georgia.
1902 J.C. Penny opens his first store in Kemmerer, Wyoming.
1919 British forces kill hundreds of Indian nationalists in the Amritsar Massacre.
1933 The first flight over Mount Everest is completed by Lord Clydesdale.
1941 German troops capture Belgrade, Yugoslavia.
1943 Franklin D. Roosevelt dedicates the Jefferson Memorial.
1945 Vienna falls to Soviet troops.
1960 The first navigational satellite is launched into Earth's orbit.
1961 The U.N. General Assembly condemns South Africa because of apartheid.
1964 Sidney Poitier becomes the first black individual to win an Oscar for best actor.
1970 An oxygen tank explodes on Apollo 13, preventing a planned moon landing and jeopardizing the lives of the three-man crew.
1976 The U.S. Federal Reserve begins issuing $2 bicentennial notes.
1979 The world's longest doubles ping-pong match ends after 101 hours.


Born on April 13
1721 John Hanson, first U.S. President under the Articles of Confederation.
1732 Frederick Lord North, British prime minister (1770-82).
1743 Thomas Jefferson, third President of the United States (1801-09)
1852 Frank W. Woolworth, American retailer.
1866 Butch Cassidy [Robert LeRoy Parker], American outlaw and leader of the Wild Bunch.
1899 Alfred Butts, inventor of the board game Scrabble.
1906 Samuel Beckett, playwright, Nobel Prize winner (Waiting for Godot).
1909 Eudora Welty, Southern writer (Delta Wedding, The Optimist's Daughter).
1922 John Gerard Braine, British novelist (Room at the Top).
1939 Seamus Heaney, Irish poet, Nobel laureate.



Civil War
1861
Fort Sumter surrenders

After a 33-hour bombardment by Confederate cannons, Union forces surrender Fort Sumter in South Carolina’s Charleston Harbor. The first engagement of the war ended in Rebel victory.
The surrender concluded a standoff that began with South Carolina’s secession from the Union on December 20, 1860. When President Abraham Lincoln sent word to Charleston in early April that he planned to send food to the beleaguered garrison, the Confederates took action. They opened fire on Sumter in the predawn of April 12. Over the next day, nearly 4,000 rounds were hurled toward the black silhouette of Fort Sumter.
Inside Sumter was its commander, Major Robert Anderson, 9 officers, 68 enlisted men, 8 musicians, and 43 construction workers who were still putting the finishing touches on the fort. Union Captain Abner Doubleday, the man often inaccurately credited with inventing the game of baseball, returned fire nearly two hours after the barrage began. By the morning of April 13, the garrison in Sumter was in dire straits. The soldiers had sustained only minor injuries, but they could not hold out much longer. The fort was badly damaged, and the Confederate’s shots were becoming more precise. Around noon, the flagstaff was shot away. Louis Wigfall, a former U.S. senator from Texas, rowed out without permission to see if the garrison was trying to surrender. Anderson decided that further resistance was futile, and he ran a white flag up a makeshift flagpole.

The first engagement of the war was over, and the only casualty had been a Confederate horse. The Union force was allowed to leave for the north; before leaving, the soldiers fired a 100-gun salute. During the salute, one soldier was killed and another mortally wounded by a prematurely exploding cartridge. The Civil War had officially begun.
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Re: Today in history

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April 14
1471 The Earl of Warwick, who fought on both sides in the War of the Roses, is killed at the Battle of Barnet with the defeat of the Lancastrians.
1543 Bartolome Ferrelo returns to Spain after discovering a large bay in the New World (San Francisco).
1775 The first abolitionist society in United States is organized in Philadelphia.
1793 A royalist rebellion in Santo Domingo is crushed by French republican troops.
1828 The first edition of Noah Webster's dictionary is published.
1860 The first Pony Express rider arrives in San Francisco with mail originating in St. Joseph, Missouri.
1865 President Abraham Lincoln is assassinated in Ford's Theater by John Wilkes Booth.
1894 Thomas Edison's kinetoscope is shown to the public for the first time.
1900 The World Exposition opens in Paris.
1912 The passenger liner Titanic--deemed unsinkable--strikes an iceberg on her maiden voyage and begins to sink. The ship will go under the next day with a loss of 1,500 lives.
1931 King Alfonso XIII of Spain is overthrown.
1945 American B-29 bombers damage the Imperial Palace during firebombing raid over Tokyo.
1953 The Viet Minh invade Laos with 40,00 troops in their war against French colonial forces.
1959 The Taft Memorial Bell Tower is dedicated in Washington, D.C.
1961 The first live broadcast is televised from the Soviet Union.
1969 The first major league baseball game in Montreal, Canada is played.
1981 America's first space shuttle, Columbia, returns to Earth.


Born on April 14
1578 Philip III, king of Spain and Portugal (1598-1621).
1629 Christiaan Huygens, Dutch astronomer.
1866 Anne Mansfield Sullivan, teacher who educated Helen Keller.
1889 Arnold Toynbee, English historian.
1898 Harold Black, electrical engineer.
1904 Sir John Gielgud, British actor.





Lead Story
1865
Lincoln is shot

On this day in 1865, John Wilkes Booth, an actor and Confederate sympathizer, fatally shoots President Abraham Lincoln at a play at Ford’s Theater in Washington, D.C. The attack came only five days after Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered his massive army at Appomattox Court House, Virginia, effectively ending the American Civil War.

Booth, a Maryland native born in 1838, who remained in the North during the war despite his Confederate sympathies, initially plotted to capture President Lincoln and take him to Richmond, the Confederate capital. However, on March 20, 1865, the day of the planned kidnapping, the president failed to appear at the spot where Booth and his six fellow conspirators lay in wait. Two weeks later, Richmond fell to Union forces.

In April, with Confederate armies near collapse across the South, Booth hatched a desperate plan to save the Confederacy. Learning that Lincoln was to attend a performance of “Our American Cousin” at Ford’s Theater on April 14, Booth masterminded the simultaneous assassination of Lincoln, Vice President Andrew Johnson and Secretary of State William H. Seward. By murdering the president and two of his possible successors, Booth and his conspirators hoped to throw the U.S. government into disarray.

On the evening of April 14, conspirator Lewis T. Powell burst into Secretary of State Seward’s home, seriously wounding him and three others, while George A. Atzerodt, assigned to Vice President Johnson, lost his nerve and fled. Meanwhile, just after 10 p.m., Booth entered Lincoln’s private theater box unnoticed and shot the president with a single bullet in the back of his head. Slashing an army officer who rushed at him, Booth leapt to the stage and shouted “Sic semper tyrannis! [Thus always to tyrants]–the South is avenged!” Although Booth broke his leg jumping from Lincoln’s box, he managed to escape Washington on horseback.

The president, mortally wounded, was carried to a lodging house opposite Ford’s Theater. About 7:22 a.m. the next morning, Lincoln, age 56, died–the first U.S. president to be assassinated. Booth, pursued by the army and other secret forces, was finally cornered in a barn near Bowling Green, Virginia, and died from a possibly self-inflicted bullet wound as the barn was burned to the ground. Of the eight other people eventually charged with the conspiracy, four were hanged and four were jailed. Lincoln, the 16th U.S. president, was buried on May 4, 1865, in Springfield, Illinois.
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Re: Today in history

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April 15
1755 English lexicographer Dr. Samuel Johnson publishes his Dictionary of the English Language.
1784 The first balloon is flown in Ireland.
1813 U.S. troops under James Wilkinson lay siege to the Spanish-held city of Mobile in future state of Alabama.
1858 At the Battle of Azimghur, the Mexicans defeat Spanish loyalists.
1871 'Wild Bill' Hickok becomes the marshal of Abilene, Kansas.
1861 President Lincoln mobilizes Federal army.
1865 Abraham Lincoln dies from John Wilkes Booth's assassination bullet.
1912 With her band playing on the deck, the ocean liner Titanic sinks at 2:27 a.m. in the North Atlantic.
1917 British forces defeat the Germans at the Battle of Arras.
1923 Insulin becomes generally available for people suffering with diabetes.
1923 The first sound films shown to a paying audience are exhibited at the Rialto Theater in New York City.
1940 French and British troops land at Narvik, Norway.
1945 President Franklin D. Roosevelt is buried on the grounds of his Hyde Park home.
1948 Arab forces are defeated in battle with Israeli forces.
1952 President Harry Truman signs the official Japanese peace treaty.
1955 Ray Kroc starts the McDonald's chain of fast food restaurants.
1959 Cuban leader Fidel Castro begins a U.S. goodwill tour.
1960 The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) organizes at Shaw University.
1971 North Vietnamese troops ambush a company of Delta Raiders from the 101st Airborne Division near Fire Support Base Bastogne in Vietnam. The American troops are on a rescue mission.
1986 U.S. warplanes attack Libya.


Born on April 15
1452 Leonardo da Vinci, Italian painter, sculptor, scientist and visionary
1684 Catherine I, empress of Russia
1741 Charles Wilson Peale, portrait painter and inventor
1800 Sir James Clark Ross, Scottish explorer who located the Magnetic North Pole.
1832 Wilhelm Busch, German painter and poet, created the precursor to the comic strip.
1843 Henry James, writer and critic.
1874 George Harrison Shull, American botanist, developer of hybrid corn.
1874 Johannes Stark, Novel Prize-winning German physicist.
1880 Max Wertheimer, Czech-born psychologist.
1889 Thomas Hart Benton, painter, muralist.
1889 Asa Phillip Randolph, American labor leader and Civil Rights advocate.
1898 Bessie Smith, American blues singer.
1904 Arshile Gorky, abstract painter.
1922 Harold Washington, first black mayor of Chicago
1922 Neville Mariner, conductor.
1932 Eva Figes, British novelist.
1940 Jeffrey Archer, English novelist and politician (Kane and Abel, Honor Among Thieves).


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General Interest
1912
Titanic sinks
At 2:20 a.m. on April 15, 1912, the British ocean liner Titanic sinks into the North Atlantic Ocean about 400 miles south of Newfoundland, Canada. The massive ship, which carried 2,200 passengers and crew, had struck an iceberg two and half hours before.

On April 10, the RMS Titanic, one of the largest and most luxurious ocean liners ever built, departed Southampton, England, on its maiden voyage across the Atlantic Ocean. The Titanic was designed by the Irish shipbuilder William Pirrie and built in Belfast, and was thought to be the world’s fastest ship. It spanned 883 feet from stern to bow, and its hull was divided into 16 compartments that were presumed to be watertight. Because four of these compartments could be flooded without causing a critical loss of buoyancy, the Titanic was considered unsinkable. While leaving port, the ship came within a couple of feet of the steamer New York but passed safely by, causing a general sigh of relief from the passengers massed on the Titanic‘s decks. On its first journey across the highly competitive Atlantic ferry route, the ship carried some 2,200 passengers and crew.

After stopping at Cherbourg, France, and Queenstown, Ireland, to pick up some final passengers, the massive vessel set out at full speed for New York City. However, just before midnight on April 14, the RMS Titanic failed to divert its course from an iceberg and ruptured at least five of its hull compartments. These compartments filled with water and pulled down the bow of the ship. Because the Titanic‘s compartments were not capped at the top, water from the ruptured compartments filled each succeeding compartment, causing the bow to sink and the stern to be raised up to an almost vertical position above the water. Then the Titanic broke in half, and, at about 2:20 a.m. on April 15, stern and bow sank to the ocean floor.

Because of a shortage of lifeboats and the lack of satisfactory emergency procedures, more than 1,500 people went down in the sinking ship or froze to death in the icy North Atlantic waters. Most of the 700 or so survivors were women and children. A number of notable American and British citizens died in the tragedy, including the noted British journalist William Thomas Stead and heirs to the Straus, Astor, and Guggenheim fortunes.

One hour and 20 minutes after Titanic went down, the Cunard liner Carpathia arrived. The survivors in the lifeboats were brought aboard, and a handful of others were pulled out of the water. It was later discovered that the Leyland liner Californian had been less than 20 miles away at the time of the accident but had failed to hear the Titanic‘s distress signals because its radio operator was off duty.

Announcement of details of the tragedy led to outrage on both sides of the Atlantic. In the disaster’s aftermath, the first International Convention for Safety of Life at Sea was held in 1913. Rules were adopted requiring that every ship have lifeboat space for each person on board, and that lifeboat drills be held. An International Ice Patrol was established to monitor icebergs in the North Atlantic shipping lanes. It was also required that ships maintain a 24-hour radio watch.

On September 1, 1985, a joint U.S.-French expedition located the wreck of the Titanic lying on the ocean floor at a depth of about 13,000 feet. The ship was explored by manned and unmanned submersibles, which shed new light on the details of its sinking.
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Re: Today in history

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April 16
69 Defeated by Vitellius' troops at Bedriacum, Otho commits suicide.
556 Pelagius I begins his reign as Catholic Pope.
1065 The Norman Robert Guiscard takes Bari, ending five centuries of Byzantine rule in southern Italy.
1705 Queen Anne of England knights Isaac Newton.
1746 Prince Charles is defeated at the Battle of Culloden, the last pitched battle fought in Britain.
1818 The U.S. Senate ratifies the Rush-Bagot amendment to form an unarmed U.S.-Canada border.
1854 San Salvador is destroyed by an earthquake.
1862 Confederate President Jefferson Davis approves a conscription act for white males between 18 and 35.
1862 Slavery is abolished in the District of Columbia.
1917 Vladimir Lenin returns to Russia to start the Bolshevik Revolution.
1922 Annie Oakley shoots 100 clay targets in a row, setting a woman's record.
1942 The Island of Malta is awarded the George Cross in recognition for heroism under constant German air attack. It was the first such award given to any part of the British Commonwealth.
1945 The destroyer USS Laffey survives horrific damage from attacks by 22 Japanese aircraft off Okinawa, earning the nickname "The Ship That Would Not Die."
1945 American troops enter Nuremberg, Germany.
1947 A lens which provides zoom effects is demonstrated in New York City.
1968 The Pentagon announces the "Vietnamization" of the war.
1972 Two giants pandas arrive in the U.S. from China.


Born on April 16
1660 Hans Sloane, physician, naturalist, founder of the British Museum.
1728 Joseph Black, Scottish chemist and physicist.
1786 Sir John Franklin, arctic explorer.
1800 George Charles Bingham, British soldier, commanded the Light Brigade during the famous charge.
1844 Anatole France, French writer.
1850 Thomas Sidney Gilchrist, British metallurgist and inventor.
1864 Flora Batson, African-American soprano-baritone singer.
1867 Wilbur Wright, designer, builder and flyer of the first airplane.
1871 John Millington Synge, dramatist and poet (Playboy of the Western World).
1889 Charlie Chaplin, film actor and director.
1919 Merce Cunningham, American dancer and choreographer.
1922 Kingsley Amis, British author (Lucky Jim).
1924 Henry Mancini, composer and conductor ("Moon River").
1947 Lew Alcinder (Kareem Abdul-Jabbar), professional basketball player.





Disaster
1947
Fertilizer explosion kills 581 in Texas

A giant explosion occurs during the loading of fertilizer onto the freighter Grandcamp at a pier in Texas City, Texas, on this day in 1947. Nearly 600 people lost their lives and thousands were injured when the ship was literally blown to bits.
Ammonium nitrate was used as an explosive by the U.S. Army in World War II and, after the war ended, production of the chemical continued as its use as a fertilizer became accepted. However, the precautions used in its transport became far more lax in the post-war years.

On April 16, the Grandcamp was being loaded with ammonium nitrate as well as tobacco and government-owned ammunition. Cigarette smoking, although officially banned, was a common practice by longshoremen on the docks. Just two days prior to the explosion, a cigarette had caused a fire on the docks. On the morning of April 16, smoke was spotted deep within one of the Grandcamp‘s holds.
Some water and an extinguisher were used to fight the fire, but hoses were not employed for fear of ruining the cargo; there were already 2,300 tons loaded on the ship. While the ammunition was removed from the ship, the crew attempted to restrict oxygen to the hold in hopes of putting out the fire. Apparently they did not realize that because of ammonium nitrate’s chemical composition, it does not require oxygen in order to burn.

By 9 a.m., flames had erupted from the hold and within minutes it exploded. The blast was heard 150 miles away and was so powerful that the ship’s 1.5- ton anchor was found two miles away. The force of the explosion lifted another ship right out of the water. People working at the docks were killed instantly.
Pieces of flaming debris damaged the oil refineries in the area. A nearby Monsanto chemical storage facility also exploded, killing 234 of the 574 workers there. Nearly all of the survivors were seriously injured. A residential area of 500 homes was also leveled by the blast. Another ship, the High Flyer, which was carrying similar cargo, was pushed completely across the harbor. The crew fled when it came to rest, failing to notice that a fire had started and the next day their ship also exploded. Two people died.

In all, 581 people died and 3,500 were injured. The explosion caused $100 million in damages. A long-disputed court case over the cause of the blast was resolved when Congress granted compensation to 1,394 victims. They received a total of $17 million in 1955. The port was rebuilt to handle oil products only.
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Re: Today in history

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April 17
858 Benedict III ends his reign as Catholic Pope.
1492 Christopher Columbus signs a contract with Spain to find a western route to the Indies.
1524 Present-day New York Harbor is discovered by Giovanni da Verrazzano.
1535 Antonio Mendoza is appointed first viceroy of New Spain.
1758 Frances Williams, the first African-American to graduate from a college in the western hemisphere, publishes a collection of Latin poems.
1808 Bayonne Decree by Napoleon Bonaparte of France orders seizure of U.S. ships.
1824 Russia abandons all North American claims south of 54' 40'.
1861 Virginia becomes the eighth state to secede from the Union.
1864 General Ulysses Grant bans the trading of prisoners.
1865 Mary Surratt is arrested as a conspirator in the Lincoln assassination.
1875 The game "snooker" is invented by Sir Neville Chamberlain.
1895 China and Japan sign peace treaty of Shimonoseki.
1929 Baseball player Babe Ruth and Claire Hodgson, a former member of the Ziegfeld Follies, get married.
1946 The last French troops leave Syria.
1947 Jackie Robinson bunts for his first major league hit.
1961 Some 1,400 Cuban exiles attack the Bay of Pigs in an attempt to overthrow Fidel Castro.
1964 Jerrie Mock becomes first woman to fly solo around the world.
1969 Sirhan Sirhan is convicted of assassinating Senator Robert F. Kennedy.
1970 Apollo 13--originally scheduled to land on the moon--lands back safely on Earth after an accident.
1975 Khmer Rouge forces capture the capital of Cambodia, Phnom Penh.
1983 In Warsaw, police rout 1,000 Solidarity supporters.


Born on April 17
1622 Henry Vaughan, poet
1676 Frederick I, king of Sweden
1741 Samuel Chase, signer of the Declaration of Independence
1820 Alexander Cartwright, sportsman, developed baseball.
1866 Ernest Henry Starling, British physiologist.
1885 Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen), Danish writer (Out of Africa).
1894 Nikita S. Khrushchev, Soviet premier (1958-64).
1897 Thornton Wilder, novelist and playwright (Our Town).
1923 Harry Reasoner, American broadcast journalist.
1928 Cynthia Ozick, writer (The Cannibal Galaxy, The Messiah of Stockholm).


1970
Apollo 13 returns to Earth

With the world anxiously watching, Apollo 13, a U.S. lunar spacecraft that suffered a severe malfunction on its journey to the moon, safely returns to Earth.

On April 11, the third manned lunar landing mission was launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, carrying astronauts James A. Lovell, John L. Swigert, and Fred W. Haise. The mission was headed for a landing on the Fra Mauro highlands of the moon. However, two days into the mission, disaster struck 200,000 miles from Earth when oxygen tank No. 2 blew up in the spacecraft. Swigert reported to mission control on Earth, “Houston, we’ve had a problem here,” and it was discovered that the normal supply of oxygen, electricity, light, and water had been disrupted. The landing mission was aborted, and the astronauts and controllers on Earth scrambled to come up with emergency procedures. The crippled spacecraft continued to the moon, circled it, and began a long, cold journey back to Earth.

The astronauts and mission control were faced with enormous logistical problems in stabilizing the spacecraft and its air supply, as well as providing enough energy to the damaged fuel cells to allow successful reentry into Earth’s atmosphere. Navigation was another problem, and Apollo 13‘s course was repeatedly corrected with dramatic and untested maneuvers. On April 17, tragedy turned to triumph as the Apollo 13 astronauts touched down safely in the Pacific Ocean.
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Re: Today in history

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April 18
310 St. Eusebius of Vercelli begins his reign as Catholic Pope.
1521 Martin Luther confronts the emperor Charles V, refusing to retract the views which led to his excommunication.
1676 Sudbury, Massachusetts is attacked by Indians.
1775 American revolutionaries Paul Revere and William Dawes ride though the towns of Massachusetts warning that "the British are coming."
1791 National Guardsmen prevent Louis XVI and his family from leaving Paris.
1818 A regiment of Indians and blacks is defeated at the Battle of Suwannee, in Florida, ending the First Seminole War.
1834 William Lamb becomes prime minister of England.
1838 The Wilkes' expedition to the South Pole sets sail.
1847 U.S. forces defeat Mexicans at Cerro Gordo in one of the bloodiest battle of the Mexican-American War.
1853 The first train in Asia begins running from Bombay to Tanna.
1861 Colonel Robert E. Lee turns down an offer to command the Union armies.
1895 The First Sino-Japanese War ends.
1906 A massive earthquake hits San Francisco, measuring 8.25 on the Richter scale.
1923 Yankee Stadium opens with Babe Ruth hitting a three-run homer as the Yankees beat the Red Sox 4-1.
1937 Leon Trotsky calls for the overthrow of Soviet leader Josef Stalin.
1942 James H. Doolittle bombs Tokyo and other Japanese cities.
1943 Traveling in a bomber, Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, the mastermind of the attack on Pearl Harbor, is shot down by American P-38 fighters.
1946 The League of Nations dissolves.
1949 The Republic of Ireland withdraws from British Commonwealth.
1950 The first transatlantic jet passenger trip is completed.
1954 Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser seizes power in Egypt.
1978 The U.S. Senate approves the transfer of the Panama Canal to Panama.
1980 Zimbabwe's (Rhodesia) formal independence from Britain is proclaimed.
1983 A suicide bomber kills U.S. Marines at the U.S. Embassy in Lebanon.


Born on April 18
1480 Lucretia Borgia, daughter of Pope Alexander VI and a patron of the arts.
1817 George Henry Lewes, philosophical writer.
1857 Clarence S. Darrow, lawyer.
1864 Richard Harding Davis, journalist.
1918 Clifton Keith Hillegass, founder of the study guides known as Cliff's Notes.
1940 Ed Garvey, labor leader.



1906
The Great San Francisco Earthquake

At 5:13 a.m., an earthquake estimated at close to 8.0 on the Richter scale strikes San Francisco, California, killing hundreds of people as it topples numerous buildings. The quake was caused by a slip of the San Andreas Fault over a segment about 275 miles long, and shock waves could be felt from southern Oregon down to Los Angeles.

San Francisco’s brick buildings and wooden Victorian structures were especially devastated. Fires immediately broke out and–because broken water mains prevented firefighters from stopping them–firestorms soon developed citywide. At 7 a.m., U.S. Army troops from Fort Mason reported to the Hall of Justice, and San Francisco Mayor E.E. Schmitz called for the enforcement of a dusk-to-dawn curfew and authorized soldiers to shoot-to-kill anyone found looting. Meanwhile, in the face of significant aftershocks, firefighters and U.S. troops fought desperately to control the ongoing fire, often dynamiting whole city blocks to create firewalls. On April 20, 20,000 refugees trapped by the massive fire were evacuated from the foot of Van Ness Avenue onto the USS Chicago.

By April 23, most fires were extinguished, and authorities commenced the task of rebuilding the devastated metropolis. It was estimated that some 3,000 people died as a result of the Great San Francisco Earthquake and the devastating fires it inflicted upon the city. Almost 30,000 buildings were destroyed, including most of the city’s homes and nearly all the central business district.
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April 19
1539 Emperor Charles V reaches a truce with German Protestants at Frankfurt, Germany.
1689 Residents of Boston oust their governor, Edmond Andros.
1764 The English Parliament bans the American colonies from printing paper money.
1775 The American Revolution begins as fighting breaks out at Lexington, Massachusetts.
1782 The Netherlands recognizes the United States.
1794 Tadeusz Kosciuszko forces the Russians out of Warsaw.
1802 The Spanish reopen New Orleans port to American merchants.
1824 English poet Lord George Gordon Byron dies of malaria at age 36 while aiding Greek independence.
1861 The Baltimore riots result in four Union soldiers and nine civilians killed.
1861 President Abraham Lincoln orders a blockade of Confederate ports.
1880 The Times war correspondent telephones a report of the Battle of Ahmed Khel, the first time news is sent from a field of battle in this manner.
1927 In China, Hankow communists declare war on Chiang Kai-shek.
1934 Shirley Temple appears in her first movie.
1938 General Francisco Franco declares victory in the Spanish Civil War.
1939 Connecticut finally approves the Bill of Rights.
1943 The Warsaw Ghetto uprising against Nazi rule begins.
1960 Baseball uniforms begin displaying player's names on their backs.
1971 Russia launches its first Salyut space station.
1977 Alex Haley receives a special Pulitzer Prize for his book Roots.
1982 NASA names Sally Ride to be the first woman astronaut.
1989 The battleship USS Iowa's number 2 turret explodes, killing sailors.
1993 The FBI ends a 51-day siege by storming the Branch Davidian religious cult headquarters in Waco, Texas.
1995 A truck bomb explodes in front of the federal building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people.


Born on April 19
1666 Sarah Kemble Knight, diarist.
1721 Roger Sherman, signer of the Declaration of Independence.
1832 Lucretia Rudolph, President James A. Garfield's first lady.
1877 Ole Evinrude, inventor of the first successful outboard motor.
1900 Richard Hughes, English novelist and playwright (A High Wind in Jamaica).
1903 Eliot Ness, Treasury agent during Prohibition.
1905 Tom Hopkinson, British writer.
1912 Glenn T. Seaborg, physicist.
1933 Etheridge Knight, poet.


American Revolution
1775
The American Revolution begins

At about 5 a.m., 700 British troops, on a mission to capture Patriot leaders and seize a Patriot arsenal, march into Lexington to find 77 armed minutemen under Captain John Parker waiting for them on the town’s common green. British Major John Pitcairn ordered the outnumbered Patriots to disperse, and after a moment’s hesitation the Americans began to drift off the green. Suddenly, the “shot heard around the world” was fired from an undetermined gun, and a cloud of musket smoke soon covered the green. When the brief Battle of Lexington ended, eight Americans lay dead or dying and 10 others were wounded. Only one British soldier was injured, but the American Revolution had begun.

By 1775, tensions between the American colonies and the British government approached the breaking point, especially in Massachusetts, where Patriot leaders formed a shadow revolutionary government and trained militias to prepare for armed conflict with the British troops occupying Boston. In the spring of 1775, General Thomas Gage, the British governor of Massachusetts, received instructions from England to seize all stores of weapons and gunpowder accessible to the American insurgents. On April 18, he ordered British troops to march against the Patriot arsenal at Concord and capture Patriot leaders Samuel Adams and John Hancock, known to be hiding at Lexington.

The Boston Patriots had been preparing for such a military action by the British for some time, and upon learning of the British plan, Patriots Paul Revere and William Dawes were ordered to set out to rouse the militiamen and warn Adams and Hancock. When the British troops arrived at Lexington, Adams, Hancock, and Revere had already fled to Philadelphia, and a group of militiamen were waiting. The Patriots were routed within minutes, but warfare had begun, leading to calls to arms across the Massachusetts countryside.

When the British troops reached Concord at about 7 a.m., they found themselves encircled by hundreds of armed Patriots. They managed to destroy the military supplies the Americans had collected but were soon advanced against by a gang of minutemen, who inflicted numerous casualties. Lieutenant Colonel Frances Smith, the overall commander of the British force, ordered his men to return to Boston without directly engaging the Americans. As the British retraced their 16-mile journey, their lines were constantly beset by Patriot marksmen firing at them Indian-style from behind trees, rocks, and stone walls. At Lexington, Captain Parker’s militia had its revenge, killing several British soldiers as the Red Coats hastily marched through his town. By the time the British finally reached the safety of Boston, nearly 300 British soldiers had been killed, wounded, or were missing in action. The Patriots suffered fewer than 100 casualties.

The battles of Lexington and Concord were the first battles of the American Revolution, a conflict that would escalate from a colonial uprising into a world war that, seven years later, would give birth to the independent United States of America.
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April 20
1139 The Second Lateran Council opens in Rome.
1657 English Admiral Robert Blake fights his last battle when he destroys the Spanish fleet in Santa Cruz Bay.
1769 Ottawa Chief Pontiac is murdered by an Indian in Cahokia.
1770 Captain Cook discovers Australia.
1775 British troops begin the siege of Boston.
1792 France declares war on Austria, Prussia, and Sardinia.
1809 Napoleon Bonaparte defeats Austria at Battle of Abensberg, Bavaria.
1836 The Territory of Wisconsin is created.
1841 Edgar Allen Poe's first detective story is published.
1861 Robert E. Lee resigns from the U.S. Army.
1879 The first mobile home (horse-drawn) is used in a journey from London to Cyprus.
1916 The first National League game is played at Chicago's Wrigley Field, then known as Weeghman Park. The park was renamed Cubs Park in 1920 and Wrigley Field, for the Chicago Cubs owner, in 1926.
1919 The Polish Army captures Vilno, Lithuania from the Soviets.
1940 The first electron microscope is demonstrated.
1942 Pierre Laval, the premier of Vichy France, in a radio broadcast, establishes a policy of "true reconciliation with Germany."
1945 Soviet troops begin their attack on Berlin.
1951 General Douglas MacArthur addresses a joint session of Congress after being relieved by President Harry Truman.
1953 Operation Little Switch begins in Korea, the exchange of sick and wounded prisoners of war.
1962 The New Orleans Citizens Committee gives free one-way ride to blacks to move North.
1967 U.S. planes bomb Haiphong for first time during the Vietnam War.
1999 Two students enter Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado and open fire with multiple firearms, killing 13 students and teachers, wounding 25 and eventually shooting themselves.


Born on April 20
121 Marcus Aurelius, 16th Roman emperor, philosopher.
1745 Philippe Pinel, founder of psychiatry.
1807 Aloysius Bertrand ("Gaspard de la Nuit"), French poet.
1808 Louis-Napoleon (Napoleon III), emperor of France.
1850 Daniel Chester French, sculptor.
1889 Adolf Hitler, Fascist dictator of Nazi Germany (1933-1945).
1893 Harold Lloyd, film comedian.
1893 Joan Miró, Spanish painter.
1927 Alex Muller, Nobel Prize-winning physicist.


Automotive
2008
Danica Patrick becomes first woman to win Indy race

On April 20, 2008, 26-year-old Danica Patrick wins the Indy Japan 300 at Twin Ring Montegi in Montegi, Japan, making her the first female winner in IndyCar racing history.

Danica Patrick was born on March 25, 1982, in Beloit, Wisconsin. She became involved in racing as a young girl and as a teenager moved to England in pursuit of better training opportunities. In 2002, after returning to the United States, she began driving for the Rahal Letterman Racing team, owned by 1986 Indianapolis 500 champ Bobby Rahal and late-night talk-show host David Letterman. In 2005, Patrick started competing in IndyCar events, which include the famed Indianapolis 500 race at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in Indiana.
On May 29, 2005, Patrick made her Indy 500 debut, becoming just the fourth female driver ever to compete in the celebrated 500-mile race, which was first held in 1911 and today is considered one of auto racing’s premier events. (Driver Janet Guthrie first broke the gender barrier at the Indy 500 in 1977.) During Patrick’s inaugural Indy 500, she led the race for 19 laps, marking the first time a woman ever led a lap in the competition. In the end, the diminutive driver, who stands 5’2″ and tips the scales at 100 pounds, finished the race in fourth place. She later earned Rookie of the Year honors for the Indy Racing League’s 2005 season and finished 12th in the overall standings.
During the 2006 season, Patrick finished in ninth place in the overall IndyCar standings, but didn’t win any major races. In 2007, she moved to the Andretti Green Racing team and finished the season seventh in the standings. On April 20, 2008, Patrick won the Indy Japan 300–her 50th IndyCar Series race–at Twin Ring Montegi, a 1.5-mile oval track, making her the first female winner of a major U.S.-sanctioned open-wheel race. She finished the 200-lap race 5.8594 seconds ahead of Helio Castroneves, then a two-time Indy 500 champ. At the 2009 Indy 500, Patrick came in third behind winner Castroneves and second-place finisher Dan Wheldon.

Off the track, the photogenic Patrick has been a media and fan favorite and has found success with a number of commercial endorsements. In 2005 she appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated, and in 2008 she was featured in the magazine’s famous swimsuit issue.
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Re: Today in history

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April 21
753 BC Traditional date of the foundation of Rome.
43 BC Marcus Antonius is defeated by Octavian near Modena, Italy.
1526 Mongol Emperor Babur annihilates the Indian Army of Ibrahim Lodi.
1649 The Maryland Toleration Act is passed, allowing all people freedom of worship.
1689 William III and Mary II are crowned joint king and queen of England, Scotland and Ireland.
1836 General Sam Houston defeats Santa Anna at the Battle of San Jacinto. Texas wins independence from Mexico.
1862 Congress establishes the U.S. Mint.
1865 Abraham Lincoln's funeral train leaves Washington.
1898 The Spanish-American War begins.
1910 Mark Twain dies at the age of 75.
1916 Bill Carlisle, the infamous 'last train robber,' robs a train in Hanna, Wyoming.
1914 U.S. Marines occupy Vera Cruz, Mexico. They will stay six months.
1918 German fighter ace Baron von Richthofen, "The Red Baron," is shot down and killed.
1943 President Franklin D. Roosevelt announces that several Doolittle pilots have been executed by Japanese.
1960 Brasilia becomes the capital of Brazil.
1961 The French army revolts in Algeria.
1966 Pfc. Milton Lee Olive is awarded the Medal of Honor, posthumously, for bravery during the Vietnam War.
1975 The last South Vietnam president, Nguyen Van Thieu, resigns.
1995 Federal authorities arrest Timothy McVeigh in connection with the Oklahoma City bombing.


Born on April 21
1782 Friedrich Froebel, founder of kindergarten.
1816 Charlotte Bronte, novelist (Jane Eyre).
1838 John Muir, naturalist.
1849 Oscar Hertwig, embryologist.
1864 Max Weber, German sociologist and political economist.
1909 Rollo May, psychologist.
1912 Marcel Camus, French film director (Black Orpheus).
1923 John Mortimer, British barrister and playwright (Rumpole of the Bailey).
1926 Elizabeth II, queen of England.
1932 Elaine May, comedy writer.

General Interest
1918
Red Baron killed in action

In the skies over Vauz sur Somme, France, Manfred von Richthofen, the notorious German flying ace known as “The Red Baron,” is killed by Allied fire.

Richthofen, the son of a Prussian nobleman, switched from the German army to the Imperial Air Service in 1915. By 1916, he was terrorizing the skies over the western front in an Albatross biplane, downing 15 enemy planes by the end of the year, including one piloted by British flying ace Major Lanoe Hawker. In 1917, Richthofen surpassed all flying ace records on both sides of the western front and began using a Fokker triplane, painted entirely red in tribute to his old cavalry regiment. Although only used during the last eight months of his career, it is this aircraft that Richthofen was most commonly associated with and it led to an enduring English nickname for the German pilot–the Red Baron.

On April 21, 1918, with 80 victories under his belt, Richthofen penetrated deep into Allied territory in pursuit of a British aircraft. The Red Baron was flying too near the ground–an Australian gunner shot him through his chest, and his plane crashed into a field alongside the road from Corbie to Bray. Another account has Captain A. Roy Brown, a Canadian in the Royal Air Force, shooting him down. British troops recovered his body, and he was buried with full military honors. He was 25 years old. In a time of wooden and fabric aircraft, when 20 air victories ensured a pilot legendary status, Manfred von Richthofen downed 80 enemy aircraft.
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Re: Today in history

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April 22
296 St. Gaius ends his reign as Catholic Pope.
536 St. Agapitus I ends his reign as Catholic Pope.
1500 Pedro Alvarez Cabral discovers Brazil.
1509 Henry VIII ascends to the throne of England upon the death of his father, Henry VII.
1529 Spain and Portugal divide the eastern hemisphere in the Treaty of Saragossa.
1745 The Peace of Fussen is signed.
1792 President George Washington proclaims American neutrality in the war in Europe.
1861 Robert E. Lee is named commander of Virginia forces.
1889 The Oklahoma land rush officially starts at noon as thousands of Americans race for new, unclaimed land.
1898 In the first action of the Spanish-American War, the USS Nashville, takes on a Spanish ship.
1915 At the Second Battle of Ypres, the Germans use poison gas for the first time.
1918 British naval forces attempt to sink block-ships in the German U-boat bases at the Battle of Zeebrugge.
1931 Egypt signs treaty of friendship with Iraq.
1944 Allies launch major attack against the Japanese in Hollandia, New Guinea.
1954 The Senate Army-McCarthy hearings begin. They are broadcast on television.
1955 Congress orders all U.S. coins to bear the motto "In God We Trust."
1976 Barbara Walters becomes the first female nightly news anchor on network television.
1995 In Africa, Rwandan troops kill thousands of Hutu refugees in Kibeho.


Born on April 22
1451 Isabella I of Castile, Queen of Spain, patron of Christopher Columbus.
1707 Henry Fielding, English novelist (Tom Jones).
1724 Immanuel Kant, German philosopher.
1870 Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov), leader of the Bolshevik Revolution (1917) and first head of the U.S.S.R.
1873 Ellen Glasgow, American novelist.
1876 Ole Edvart Rolvaag, novelist (Giants in the Earth).
1899 Vladimir Nabokov, Russian novelist (Lolita).
1904 J. Robert Oppenheimer, physicist, director of the Manhattan Project.
1916 Yehudi Menuhin, violinist.
1918 Robert Wadlow, the world's tallest man (8'11.1").
1922 Charles Mingus, jazz bassist.
1943 Louise Gluck, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet.



THIS IS FOR GIGGLES AND LAUGHS

Crime
1886
Seduction is made illegal

Ohio passes a statute that makes seduction unlawful. Covering all men over the age of 18 who worked as teachers or instructors of women, this law even prohibited men from having consensual sex with women (of any age) whom they were instructing. The penalty for disobeying this law ranged from two to 10 years in prison.

Ohio’s seduction law was not the first of its kind. A Virginia law made it illegal for a man to have an “illicit connexion (sic) with any unmarried female of previous chaste character” if the man did so by promising to marry the girl. An 1848 New York law made it illegal to “under promise of marriage seduce any unmarried female of previous chaste character.” Georgia’s version of the seduction statute made it unlawful for men to “seduce a virtuous unmarried female and induce her to yield to his lustful embraces, and allow him to have carnal knowledge of her.”

These laws were only sporadically enforced, but a few men were actually prosecuted and convicted. In Michigan, a man was convicted of three counts of seduction, but the appeals court did everything in its power to overturn the decision. It threw out two charges because the defense reasoned that the woman was no longer virtuous after the couple’s first encounter. The other charge was overturned after the defense claimed that the woman’s testimony–that they had had sex in a buggy–was medically impossible.

On some occasions, women used these laws in order to coerce men into marriage. A New York man in the middle of an 1867 trial that was headed toward conviction proposed to the alleged victim. The local minister was summoned, and the trial instantly became a marriage ceremony.
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Re: Today in history

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April 23
1348 The first English order of knighthood is founded.
1500 Pedro Cabral claims Brazil for Portugal.
1521 The Comuneros are crushed by royalist troops in Spain.
1661 Charles II is formally crowned king, returning the monarchy to Britain, albeit with greatly reduced powers.
1759 British forces seize Basse-Terre and Guadeloupe from France.
1789 President George Washington moves into Franklin House, New York.
1826 Missolonghi falls to Egyptian forces.
1856 Free Stater J.N. Mace in Westport, Kansas shoots pro-slavery sheriff Samuel Jones in the back.
1865 Union cavalry units continue to skirmish with Confederate forces in Henderson, North Carolina and Munford's Station, Alabama.
1895 Russia, France, and Germany force Japan to return the Liaodong peninsula to China.
1896 Motion pictures premiere in New York City.
1914 The Federals defeat Kansas City 9-1 in the first major league game to be played in Chicago's Weeghman Park, later renamed Wrigley Field.
1915 The ACA becomes the National Advisory Council on Aeronautics (NACA), the forerunner of NASA.
1920 The Turkish Grand National Assembly has first meeting in Ankara.
1924 The U.S. Senate passes the Soldiers' Bonus Bill.
1945 The Soviet Army fights its way into Berlin.
1950 Chiang Kai-shek evacuates Hainan, leaving mainland China to Mao Zedong and the communists.
1954 The Army-McCarthy hearings begin.
1966 President Lyndon Johnson publicly appeals for more nations to come to the aid of South Vietnam.
1969 Sirhan Sirhan is sentenced to death for killing Senator Robert Kennedy.
1971 The Soviet Union launches Soyuz 10, becoming the first mission to the Salyut 1 space station.


Born on April 23
1791 James Buchanan, 15th President of the United States (1857-1861).
1813 Stephen A. Douglas, American politician.
1897 Lucius D. Clay, U.S. military governor of occupied Berlin.
1902 Halldór Laxness, Nobel Prize-winning Icelandic novelist (The Fish Can Sing, Paradise Reclaimed).
1926 J.P. Donleavy, American-born Irish writer (The Ginger Man).
1926 Virgil I. "Gus" Grissom, Mercury and Gemini astronaut, died in an accident on Apollo 1.
1928 Shirley Temple Black, child actress, later U.S. ambassador.
1932 Jim Fixx, runner and writer who popularized running as a form of exercise in the 1970s.


American Revolution
1778
John Paul Jones burns Whitehaven, England

At 8 a.m. on this day in 1778, John Paul Jones, with 30 volunteers from his ship, the USS Ranger, launches a surprise attack on the two harbor forts at Whitehaven, England. Jones’ boat successfully took the southern fort, but a second boat, assigned to attack to the northern fort, returned to the Ranger without having done so, claiming to have been scared off by a strange noise. To compensate, Jones decided to burn the southern fort; the blaze ultimately consumed the entire town. It was the only American raid on English shores during the American Revolution.

Later the same day, Jones continued from Whitehaven, where he began his sailing career, to his home territory of Kirkcudbright Bay, Scotland. There he intended to abduct the earl of Selkirk, and then exchange him for American sailors held captive by Britain. Although he did not find the earl at home, Jones’ crew was able to steal all his silver, including his wife’s teapot, still containing her breakfast tea. From Scotland, Jones sailed across the Irish Sea to Carrickfergus, where the Ranger captured the HMS Drake after delivering fatal wounds to the British ship’s captain and lieutenant.

In September 1779, Jones fought one of the fiercest battles in naval history when he led the USS Bonhomme Richard frigate, named for Benjamin Franklin, in an engagement with the 50-gun British warship HMS Serapis. The USS Bonhomme Richard was struck; it began taking on water and caught fire. When the British captain of the Serapis ordered Jones to surrender, Jones famously replied, “I have not yet begun to fight!” A few hours later, the British captain and crew of the Serapis admitted defeat and Jones took command of their ship.

Jones went on to establish himself as one of the greatest naval commanders in history; he is remembered, along with John Barry, as a Father of the American Navy. He is buried in a crypt in the U.S. Naval Academy Chapel at Annapolis, Maryland, where a Marine honor guard stands at attention in his honor whenever the crypt is open to the public.
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April 24
858 St. Nicholas I begins his reign as Catholic Pope.
1519 Envoys of Montezuma II attend the first Easter mass in Central America.
1547 Charles V's troops defeat the Protestant League of Schmalkalden at the Battle of Muhlberg.
1558 Mary, Queen of Scotland, marries the French dauphin, Francis.
1792 Claude-Joseph Rouget de Lisle composes "La Marseillaise". It will become France's national anthem.
1800 The Library of Congress is established in Washington, D.C. with a $5,000 allocation.
1805 U.S. Marines attack and capture the town of Derna in Tripoli from the Barbary pirates.
1833 A patent is granted for the first soda fountain.
1877 Russia declares war on the Ottoman Empire.
1884 Otto von Bismarck cables Cape Town, South Africa that it is now a German colony.
1898 Spain declares war on United States, rejecting an ultimatum to withdraw from Cuba.
1915 Turks of the Ottoman Empire begin massacring the Armenian minority in their country.
1916 Irish nationalists launch the Easter Uprising against British occupation.
1944 The first B-29 arrives in China, over the Hump of the Himalayas.
1948 The Berlin airlift begins to relieve the surrounded city.
1953 Winston Churchill is knighted by Queen Elizabeth II.
1961 President John Kennedy accepts "sole responsibility" for the failed invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs.
1968 Leftist students take over Columbia University in protest over the Vietnam War.
1980 A rescue attempt of the U.S. hostages held in Iran fails when a plane collides with a helicopter in the Iranian desert.
1981 The IBM Personal Computer is introduced.
1989 Thousands of Chinese students strike in Beijing for more democratic reforms.


Born on April 24
1620 John Graunt, statistician, founder of demography.
1743 Edmund Cartwright, English parson who invented the power loom.
1766 Robert Bailey Thomas, founder of the Farmer's Almanac.
1769 Arthur Wellesley, general during the Napoleonic Wars, Duke of Wellington.
1815 Anthony Trollope, British novelist.
1856 Henri Philippe Pétain, French Marshall, WWI hero, Nazi collaborator.
1900 Elizabeth Goudge, English author.
1904 Willem de Kooning, abstract impressionist painter.
1905 Robert Penn Warren, novelist, America's first poet laureate.
1906 William Joyce, 'Lord Haw-Haw,' British traitor, Nazi propagandist.



Disaster
1908
Tornado flattens towns in Louisiana and Mississippi


A single tornado travels 150 miles through Louisiana and Mississippi, leaving 143 dead in its wake. In total, 311 people lost their lives to twisters during the deadly month of April 1908 in the southeastern United States. Another 1,600 were seriously injured.
Two of the locations worst hit by the single extraordinary tornado on this day were Amite, Louisiana, and Purvis, Mississippi. In Amite, the tornado was 2.5 miles wide as it touched the ground, killing 29 residents. In Purvis, 55 people were killed and 400 were injured.
Tornadoes on average travel four to eight miles along the ground at about 60 miles per hour. This one traveled more than 150 miles. Though large, it is not nearly the most impressive on record—a 200-mile-long tornado was recorded on one occasion.
In the United States, it is rare that a single tornado kills more than 50 people, although a series or grouping of related tornadoes sometimes causes such damage. The death rate from tornadoes has plunged since this 1908 disaster. Until the World War II era, public warnings were very rare. During the war, spotters were used to protect ammunition plants and, when the war ended, this system was adapted for use as a civilian-warning system.
It is estimated that 15,000 people in the United States lost their lives to tornadoes in the 20th century. The most deadly twisters now take place in the densely populated nations of India and Bangladesh, the only other area in the world besides North America where the climate conditions regularly cause these dangerous storms.
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Re: Today in history

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April 25
1590 The Sultan of Morocco launches a successful attack to capture Timbuktu.
1644 The Ming Chongzhen emperor commits suicide by hanging himself.
1707 At the Battle of Almansa, Franco-Spanish forces defeat the Anglo-Portugese forces.
1719 Daniel Defoe's novel Robinson Crusoe is published in London.
1792 The guillotine is first used to execute highwayman Nicolas J. Pelletier.
1859 Work begins on the Suez Canal in Egypt.
1862 Admiral David Farragut occupies New Orleans, Louisiana.
1864 After facing defeat in the Red River Campaign, Union General Nathaniel Bank returns to Alexandria, Louisiana.
1867 Tokyo is opened for foreign trade.
1882 French commander Henri Riviere seizes the citadel of Hanoi in Indochina.
1898 The United States declares war on Spain.
1915 Australian and New Zealand troops land at Gallipoli in Turkey.
1925 General Paul von Hindenburg takes office as president of Germany.
1926 In Iran, Reza Khan is crowned Shah and chooses the name "Pahlavi."
1926 Puccini's opera Turandot premiers at La Scala in Milan with Arturo Toscanini conducting.
1938 A seeing eye dog is used for the first time.
1945 U.S. and Soviet forces meet at Torgau, Germany on Elbe River.
1951 After a three day fight against Chinese Communist Forces, the Gloucestershire Regiment is annihilated on "Gloucester Hill," in Korea.
1953 The magazine Nature publishes an article by biologists Francis Crick and James Watson, describing the "double helix" of DNA.
1956 Elvis Presley's "Heartbreak Hotel" goes to number one on the charts.
1959 The St. Lawrence Seaway--linking the Atlantic Ocean to the Great Lakes--opens to shipping.
1960 The first submerged circumnavigation of the Earth is completed by a Triton submarine.
1962 A U.S. Ranger spacecraft crash lands on the Moon.
1971 The country of Bangladesh is established.
1980 President Jimmy Carter tells the American people about the hostage rescue disaster in Iran.
1982 In accordance with the Camp David agreements, Israel completes a withdrawal from the Sinai peninsula.
1990 Violeta Barrios de Chamorro begins a six year term as Nicaragua's president.


Born on April 25
1214 Louis IX, king of France (1226-1270).
1284 Edward II, king of England (1307-1327).
1599 Oliver Cromwell, lord protector of England (1653-1658).
1873 Howard R. Garis, children's writer.
1873 Walter de la Mare, poet and novelist (Memoir of a Midget, Come Hither).
1874 Guglielmo Marconi, Italian physicist, inventor of the radio.
1892 Maud Hart Lovelace, children's author.
1908 Edward R. Murrow, war correspondent and newscaster.
1912 Gladys L. Presley, mother of Elvis Presley.
1914 Ross Lockridge, Jr., novelist (Raintree Country).
1917 Ella Fitzgerald, American singer.


General Interest
1859
Ground broken for Suez Canal

At Port Said, Egypt, ground is broken for the Suez Canal, an artificial waterway intended to stretch 101 miles across the isthmus of Suez and connect the Mediterranean and the Red seas. Ferdinand de Lesseps, the French diplomat who organized the colossal undertaking, delivered the pickax blow that inaugurated construction.
Artificial canals have been built on the Suez region, which connects the continents of Asia and Africa, since ancient times. Under the Ptolemaic rulers of Egypt, a channel connected the Bitter Lakes to the Red Sea, and a canal reached northward from Lake Timsah as far as the Nile River. These canals fell into disrepair or were intentionally destroyed for military reasons. As early as the 15th century, Europeans speculated about building a canal across the Suez, which would allow traders to sail from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean via the Red Sea, rather than having to sail the great distance around Africa’s Cape of Good Hope.
The first serious survey of the isthmus occurred during the French occupation of Egypt at the end of the 18th century, and General Napoleon Bonaparte personally inspected the remains of an ancient canal. France made further studies for a canal, and in 1854 Ferdinand de Lesseps, the former French consul to Cairo, secured an agreement with the Ottoman governor of Egypt to build a canal. An international team of engineers drew up a construction plan, and in 1856 the Suez Canal Company was formed and granted the right to operate the canal for 99 years after completion of the work.
Construction began in April 1859, and at first digging was done by hand with picks and shovels wielded by forced laborers. Later, European workers with dredgers and steam shovels arrived. Labor disputes and a cholera epidemic slowed construction, and the Suez Canal was not completed until 1869–four years behind schedule. On November 17, 1869, the Suez Canal was officially inaugurated in an elaborate ceremony attended by French Empress Eugenie, wife of Napoleon III. Ferdinand de Lesseps would later attempt, unsuccessfully, to build a canal across the Isthmus of Panama. He died in 1894.

When it opened, the Suez Canal was only 25 feet deep, 72 feet wide at the bottom, and 200 to 300 feet wide at the surface. Consequently, fewer than 500 ships navigated it in its first full year of operation. Major improvements began in 1876, however, and the canal soon grew into the one of the world’s most heavily traveled shipping lanes. In 1875, Great Britain became the largest shareholder in the Suez Canal Company when it bought up the stock of the new Ottoman governor of Egypt. Seven years later, in 1882, Britain invaded Egypt, beginning a long occupation of the country. The Anglo-Egyptian treaty of 1936 made Egypt virtually independent, but Britain reserved rights for the protection of the canal.
After World War II, Egypt pressed for evacuation of British troops from the Suez Canal Zone, and in July 1956 Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized the canal, hoping to charge tolls that would pay for construction of a massive dam on the Nile River. In response, Israel invaded in late October, and British and French troops landed in early November, occupying the canal zone. Under pressure from the United Nations, Britain and France withdrew in December, and Israeli forces departed in March 1957. That month, Egypt took control of the canal and reopened it to commercial shipping.
Ten years later, Egypt shut down the canal again following the Six Day War and Israel’s occupation of the Sinai peninsula. For the next eight years, the Suez Canal, which separates the Sinai from the rest of Egypt, existed as the front line between the Egyptian and Israeli armies. In 1975, Egyptian President Anwar el-Sadat reopened the Suez Canal as a gesture of peace after talks with Israel. Today, an average of 50 ships navigate the canal daily, carrying more than 300 million tons of goods a year.
duc, sequere, aut de via decede
"frapper fort, frapper vite, frappée souvent-- Adm William "Bull" Halsey
“We’re not going to just shoot the sons-of-bitches, we’re going to rip out their living Goddamned guts and use them to grease the treads of our tanks.”--Gen George Patton
"Our Liberty is insured by four "Boxes", the Ballot box, the Jury box, the Soap box and the Cartridge box"

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