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March 25th
1634 ~ The first settlers arrived in Maryland (led by Lord Baltimore).
1807 ~ The Slave Trade Act became law, abolishing slavery in the Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. 1867 ~ Birthday of Arturo Toscanini, Conductor. 1881 ~ Birthday of Béla Bartók, Composer. 1918 ~ Death of Claude Debussy, Composer. 1942 ~ Birthday of Aretha Franklin, Singer. 1957 ~ The European Economic Community was established (West Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg). 1975 ~ King Faisal of Saudi Arabia was shot and killed by a mentally ill nephew. 1992 ~ Cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev returned to Earth from the Mir space station after a 10-month stay, during which his native country, the Soviet Union, ceased to exist. 1998 ~ President Clinton acknowledged during his Africa tour that ''we did not act quickly enough'' to stop the slaughter of one million Rwandans four years earlier. |
March 26th
1827 ~ Death of Ludwig van Beethoven, Composer.
1874 ~ Birthday of Robert Frost, Poet. 1881 ~ Harper's Weekly featured a cartoon about industrial pollution. 1892 ~ Death of Walt Whitman, Poet. 1904 ~ Birthday of Joseph Campbell, Author & Mythologist. 1911 ~ Birthday of Tennessee Williams, Playwright. 1964 ~ The musical ''Funny Girl'', starring Barbra Streisand, opened on Broadway. 1971 ~ East Pakistan proclaimed its independence, taking the name Bangladesh. 1979 ~ Anwar al-Sadat, Menachem Begin and Jimmy Carter signed the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty in Washington, DC. 1999 ~ The Melissa worm infected e-mail systems around the world. |
March 27th
1836 ~ Antonio López de Santa Anna ordered the Mexican army to kill about 400 Texans at Goliad, Texas.
1845 ~ Birthday of Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen, physicist, awarded the first Nobel Prize in physics. 1863 ~ Birthday of Sir Henry Royce, automobile pioneer. 1871 ~ First international rugby football match, England v. Scotland, played in Edinburgh at Raeburn Place. 1886 ~ Birthday of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Architect. 1958 ~ Nikita Khrushchev became Premier of the Soviet Union. 1968 ~ Death of Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space. 1972 ~ Death of M. C. Escher, Dutch artist. 1977 ~ Two jumbo jets collided on a foggy runway on Tenerife in the Canary Islands, killing 583. 2002 ~ Passover Massacre: A suicide bomber killed 28 people in Netanya, Israel. |
March 28th
1854 ~ Crimean War: United Kingdom and France declared war on Russia.
1881 ~ Death of Modest Mussorgsky, Russian composer. 1903 ~ Birthday of Rudolf Serkin, Austrian pianist. 1910 ~ Henri Fabre becomes the first man to fly a seaplane after taking off from a water runway near Martigues, France. 1939 ~ Generalissimo Franco entered Madrid, essentially ending the Spanish Civil War. 1943 ~ Death of Sergei Rachmaninoff, composer and pianist. 1947 ~ The last episode of the Buck Rogers in the 25th Century airs on radio. 1979 ~ A pump in the reactor cooling system fails at Three Mile Island, resulting in the evaporation of some contaminated water causing a nuclear meltdown. 1987 ~ Death of Maria von Trapp, Singer. 2004 ~ Death of Peter Ustinov, Actor. |
March 29th
1638 ~ Swedish colonists established first settlement in Delaware, called New Sweden.
1799 ~ New York passed a law aimed at gradually abolishing slavery in the state. 1867 ~ Queen Victoria gave Royal Assent to the British North America Act which established the Dominion of Canada on July 1. 1899 ~ Birthday of Lavrenty Beria, Soviet Communist leader. 1912 ~ Death of Robert Falcon Scott, Explorer. 1981 ~ First running of the London Marathon. 1982 ~ Queen Elizabeth gave Royal Assent to the Canada Act 1982, setting the stage for the Queen of Canada to proclaim the Constitution Act, 1982. 1984 ~ The Baltimore Colts of the NFL moved to Indianapolis in the middle of the night. 2004 ~ Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia join NATO as full members. 2004 ~ Death of Alistair Cooke, Television Host. |
March 30th
1746 ~ Birthday of Francisco Goya, Spanish painter and engraver.
1842 ~ Anesthesia (ether) was used for the first time in an operation. 1853 ~ Birthday of Vincent van Gogh, Painter. 1870 ~ Texas was readmitted to the Union following Reconstruction. 1912 ~ France established a protectorate over Morocco. 1951 ~ Julius and Ethel Rosenberg convicted of espionage. 1951 ~ Remington Rand delivered the first UNIVAC I computer to the U.S. Census Bureau. 1977 ~ Death of Sergey Ilyushin, Russian aerospace engineer. 1981 ~ President Reagan was shot and seriously injured. 1987 ~ Vincent Van Gogh's painting Sunflowers was bought for almost $40 million. |
March 31st
1596 ~ Birthday of René Descartes, Mathematician.
1621 ~ Birthday of Andrew Marvell, English poet. 1732 ~ Birthday of Joseph Haydn, Composer. 1837 ~ Death of John Constable, Painter. 1855 ~ Death of Charlotte Brontë, Author. 1918 ~ Daylight Savings Time went into effect in the United States for the first time. 1959 ~ The 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, crossed the border into India and was granted political asylum. 1968 ~ President Lyndon Johnson announced he would not run for re-election. 1970 ~ After 12 years in orbit, Explorer 1 burns up when it re-enters the Earth's atmosphere. 1991 ~ The end of the Warsaw Pact. |
April 1st
1815 ~ Birthday of Otto von Bismarck, Politician.
1884 ~ Birthday of Florence Blanchfield, the first woman to receive a regular commission in the U.S. Army. 1873 ~ Birthday of Sergei Rachmaninoff, Composer, Pianist & Conductor. 1917 ~ Death of Scott Joplin, Musician & Composer. 1918 ~ The Royal Flying Corps was replaced by the Royal Air Force. 1945 ~ World War II: American forces invaded Okinawa. 1957 ~ The all time best April Fools hoax! Play the video and enjoy. 1976 ~ Apple Computer Company was formed by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. 2001 ~ Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic was arrested and taken to prison. 2001 ~ A U.S. intelligence gathering plane collides with a PRC Army fighter jet. The Navy crew makes an emergency landing in Hainan, PRC and is detained. |
April 2nd
1725 ~ Birthday of Giacomo Casanova, adventurer and writer.
1805 ~ Birthday of Hans Christian Andersen, Danish writer. 1875 ~ Birthday of Walter Chrysler, automobile pioneer. 1917 ~ President Woodrow Wilson asked Congress to declare war against Germany. 1917 ~ The first woman ever elected to the U.S. Congress, Jeannette Rankin, took her seat as a representative from Montana. 1966 ~ Death of C.S. Forester, Author. 1978 ~ Dallas premieres on CBS, beginning a 13-year run. 1982 ~ Argentina invades the British-owned Falkland Islands starting the war. 1986 ~ A grandmother, her daughter and her granddaughter were sucked out of a TWA jet when it was bombed by a group calling itself the Ezzedine Kassam Unit of the Arab Revolutionary Cells 2004 ~ Islamist terrorists involved in the March 11, 2004 Madrid attacks attempted a bombing of the Spanish high-speed train near Madrid. |
April 3rd
1783 ~ Birthday of Washington Irving, Author.
1882 ~ Jesse James is shot in the back and killed for a $5,000 reward. 1885 ~ Gottlieb Daimler is granted a German patent for his engine design. 1895 ~ The libel trial started by Oscar Wilde against the Marquess of Queensbury began, eventually resulting in Wilde's arrest, trial and imprisonment on charges of homosexuality. 1897 ~ Death of Johannes Brahms, Composer. 1901 ~ Death of Richard D'Oyly Carte, Impresario. 1934 ~ Birthday of Jane Goodall, Zoologist. 1946 ~ Masaharu Homma, the Japanese general responsible for the Bataan Death March, was executed in the Philippines. 1948 ~ President Truman signed the Marshall Plan. 1996 ~ Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski was arrested at his Montana cabin. |
April 4th
1884 ~ Birthday of Isoroku Yamamoto, naval commander.
1885 ~ Birthday of Arthur Murray, dancer. 1902 ~ British financier Cecil Rhodes left £6 million in his will to provide scholarships for Americans at Oxford University in England. 1949 ~ Twelve nations signed The North Atlantic Treaty creating the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. 1964 ~ The Beatles occupied all of the top five positions on the Billboard singles chart in the United States. 1968 ~ Martin Luther King Jr. assassinated. 1969 ~ Dr. Denton Cooley implanted the first temporary artificial heart. 1984 ~ President Reagan called for an international ban on chemical weapons. 1984 ~ Winston Smith, the main character of George Orwell's book Nineteen Eighty-Four, began writing in his secret diary. 1994 ~ Netscape Communications Corporation was founded by Marc Andreessen and Jim Clark. |
April 5th
1588 ~ Birthday of Thomas Hobbes, English philosopher.
1614 ~ In Virginia, Pocahontas married English colonist John Rolfe. 1792 ~ President Washington vetoed a bill. This was the first time the presidential veto was used. 1827 ~ Birthday of Joseph Lister, Surgeon. 1908 ~ Birthday of Herbert von Karajan, Austrian conductor. 1930 ~ In an act of civil disobedience, Mahatma Gandhi breaks British law after marching to the sea and making salt. 1951 ~ Ethel and Julius Rosenberg were sentenced to death for spying for the Soviet Union. 1955 ~ Winston Churchill resigned as Prime Minister of the U.K. due to failing health. 1964 ~ Death of General Douglas MacArthur, US Army. 1976 ~ Death of Howard Hughes, aviation pioneer. |
April 6th
1528 ~ Death of Albrecht Dürer, Artist.
1866 ~ Birthday of Butch Cassidy, Outlaw. 1895 ~ Oscar Wilde was arrested after losing a libel case against the Marquess of Queensberry. 1909 ~ Robert Peary and Matthew Henson became the first men to reach the North Pole. 1928 ~ Birthday of James D. Watson, Geneticist, co-discoverer of structure of DNA, awarded 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. 1933 ~ HostessTwinkies were invented. 1974 ~ ABBA won the 19th Eurovision Song Contest for Sweden, singing "Waterloo". 1992 ~ Death of Isaac Asimov, Science-fiction author. 1994 ~ The presidents of Rwanda and Burundi were killed in a plane crash near Rwanda's capital. 1998 ~ Death of Tammy Wynette, Country Singer. |
April 7th
1614 ~ Death of El Greco (Domenikos Theotocopoulos), artist.
1770 ~ Birthday of William Wordsworth, English poet. 1795 ~ France adopted the meter as the unit of length. 1891 ~ Death of P. T. Barnum, Circus Impresario. 1947 ~ Death of Henry Ford, automobile manufacturer and industrialist. 1953 ~ Dag Hammarskjöld was elected United Nations Secretary General. 1964 ~ IBM announced the System/360. 1968 ~ Death of Jim Clark, racing driver. 1969 ~ The Internet's symbolic birth date: publication of the first Request for Comment (RFC). 2003 ~ U.S. troops captured Baghdad, Saddam Hussein's regime fell two days later. |
April 8th
1820 ~ The Venus de Milo was discovered on the Aegean island of Melos.
1848 ~ Death of Gaetano Donizetti, Italian composer. 1889 ~ Birthday of Sir Adrien Boult, English Conductor. 1919 ~ Birthday of Ian Smith, former Prime Minister of Rhodesia. 1945 ~ Pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer was executed at the POW camp at Flossenbürg. 1953 ~ Jomo Kenyatta was convicted of being a member of the Mau Mau. 1973 ~ Death of Pablo Picasso, artist. 1975 ~ Frank Robinson managed his first game as major league baseball's first African American manager. 1983 ~ Death of Omar Bradley, General. 2005 ~ The funeral of Pope John Paul II. |
April 9th
1682 ~ Robert de LaSalle discovered the mouth of the Mississippi River, claimed it for France and named it Louisiana.
1865 ~ Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia, effectively ending the American Civil War. 1906 ~ Birthday of Antal Dorati, Hungarian conductor. 1940 ~ Operation Weserübung: Germany invaded Denmark and Norway. 1942 ~ HMS Hermes and Royal Australian Navy Destroyer HMAS Vampire were sunk off Ceylon’s (Sri Lanka) east coast by Japanese naval aircraft. 1926 ~ Birthday of Hugh Hefner, Editor & Publisher. 1928 ~ Birthday of Tom Lehrer, Musician & Satirist. 1959 ~ Death of Frank Lloyd Wright, Architect. 1991 ~ Georgia declared its independence from the Soviet Union. 1992 ~ John Major won the UK general election. |
April 10th
1847 ~ Birthday of Joseph Pulitzer, Journalist & Publisher.
1912 ~ The RMS Titanic left port in Southampton, England. 1919 ~ Mexican Revolution leader Emiliano Zapata was ambushed and shot dead by government forces. 1931 ~ Death of Khalil Gibran - Lebanese Poet. 1947 ~ Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in MLB. 1954 ~ Death of Auguste Lumière, Cinema Pioneer. 1963 ~ The American submarine USS Thresher and its crew was lost off Cape Cod, Mass. 1966 ~ Death of Evelyn Waugh, Writer. 1970 ~ Paul McCartney announced that The Beatles have broken up. 1998 ~ The Belfast Agreement was signed. |
April 11th
1814 ~ Napoleon abdicated and was exiled to Elba.
1893 ~ Birthday of Dean Acheson, former U.S. Secretary of State. 1899 ~ Spain ceded Puerto Rico to the U.S. 1906 ~ Death of James Bailey, co-founder with Phineas Barnum of the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus. 1945 ~ U.S. forces liberated Buchenwald concentration camp. 1951 ~ President Truman replaced General MacArthur with Lieutenant-General Ridgway. 1961 ~ Bob Dylan made his singing début in New York City. 1961 ~ Start of war crimes trial of Adolf Eichmann. 1979 ~ Idi Amin deposed as president of Uganda. 2001 ~ China agreed to free the crew of an American spy plane that had collided with a Chinese fighter plane. |
April 12th
65 ~ Death of Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Philosopher, Dramatist & Statesman.
1606 ~ The Union Jack was adopted as the national flag of Great Britain. 1861 ~ The American Civil War began with Confederate forces firing on Fort Sumter, in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina. 1895 ~ Birthday of Lily Pons, Opera Soprano. 1937 ~ Frank Whittle ground-tested the first jet engine designed to power an aircraft. 1940 ~ Birthday of Herbie Hancock, Musician. 1944 ~ Birthday of John Kay, of Steppenwolf. 1945 ~ President Franklin Roosevelt died. 1961 ~ Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space aboard Vostok 1. 1984 ~ Arthur Scargill, the man who led the destruction of the National Union of Mineworkers ruled out a national ballot of miners on whether to continue their strike. |
April 13th
1570 ~ Birthday of Guy Fawkes, Gunpowder Plot conspirator.
1742 ~ George Frideric Handel's oratorio Messiah premiered in Dublin, Ireland. 1743 ~ Birthday of Thomas Jefferson, 3rd U.S. President. 1826 ~ Death of Franz Danzi, German composer. 1829 ~ The British Parliament granted freedom of religion to Roman Catholics. 1892 ~ Birthday of Arthur Harris, commander of RAF's Bomber Command in World War II. 1986 ~ Jack Nicklaus won his sixth Masters Tournament. 1987 ~ Portugal and China signed an agreement in which the island of Macao would be returned to China in 1999. 1990 ~ The Soviet Union admitted committing the Katyn Massacre. 1997 ~ Tiger Woods became the youngest golfer to win golf's Masters Tournament. |
April 14th
1629 ~ Birthday of Christiaan Huygens, Mathematician.
1759 ~ Death of Georg Friedrich Handel, Composer. 1865 ~ President Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth. 1904 ~ Birthday of Sir John Gielgud, Actor. 1912 ~ RMS Titanic struck an iceberg. 1935 ~ Death of Emmy Noether, Mathematician. 1939 ~ ''The Grapes of Wrath'' by John Steinbeck was published. 1964 ~ Death of Rachel Carson, Writer & Ecologist. 1970 ~ An explosion crippled Apollo 13. 1988 ~ The USSR pledged to leave Afghanistan. |
April 15th
1452 ~ Birthday of Leonardo da Vinci.
1707 ~ Birthday of Leonhard Euler, Mathematician. 1802 ~ William Wordsworth and his sister, Dorothy come across a "long belt" of daffodils, inspiring him to write I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud. 1912 ~ The RMS Titanic sank. 1924 ~ Birthday of Sir Neville Marriner, Conductor. 1924 ~ Rand McNally published its first road atlas. 1955 ~ The first McDonald's restaurant opened in Des Plaines, Illinois. 1980 ~ Death of Jean-Paul Sartre, Philosopher & Writer. 1994 ~ Representatives of 124 countries signed the Marrakesh Agreements revised the GATT with the WTO. 1998 ~ Death of Pol Pot, Cambodian Dictator. |
April 20th
1653 ~ Oliver Cromwell disbanded Parliament.
1657 ~ Jews of New York City (then New Amsterdam) granted freedom of religion. 1862 ~ The first pasteurization test completed by Louis Pasteur. 1889 ~ Birthday of Adolf Hitler, German dictator, "Der Führer". 1912 ~ Death of Bram Stoker, Author. 1918 ~ Manfred von Richthofen shot down his 79th and 80th victims - his final victories. 1968 ~ Pierre Trudeau first became Prime Minister of Canada. 1968 ~ English politician Enoch Powell made his controversial Rivers of Blood speech. 1979 ~ U.S. President Jimmy Carter is attacked by a Swamp Rabbit. 1999 ~ Columbine High School Massacre |
April 21st
1649 ~ The Maryland Toleration Act, which provided for freedom of worship for all Christians, was passed by the Maryland assembly.
1816 ~ Birthday of Charlotte Brontë, Author. 1838 ~ Birthday of John Muir, Environmentalist. 1912 ~ The New York Giants and New York Yankees played an exhibition game to benefit survivors of the RMS Titanic. 1918 ~ German fighter ace Manfred von Richthofen, The Red Baron, was shot down and killed. 1926 ~ Birthday of Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom. 1944 ~ Women in France were enfranchised. 1946 ~ Death of John Maynard Keynes, Economist. 1986 ~ Geraldo Rivera opens Al Capone's vault on live television and finds nothing. 1992 ~ The first extrasolar planets were announced by astronomer Alexander Wolszczan. |
April 22nd
1724 ~ Birthday of Immanuel Kant, Philosopher.
1870 ~ Birthday of Vladimir Lenin, Russian revolutionary. 1889 ~ The Oklahoma Land Rush began. 1904 ~ Birthday of Robert Oppenheimer, American physicist. 1943 ~ Albert Hofmann wrote his first report about the hallucinogenic properties of LSD. 1970 ~ First Earth Day celebrated. 1984 ~ Death of Ansel Adams, Photographer. 1996 ~ Death of Erma Bombeck, Humorist & Writer. 1997 ~ A four-month siege of the Japanese embassy in Peru ended when commandos stormed and captured the building, rescuing 71 hostages. Interestingly, all 14 rebels died. 2000 ~ Federal agents seized six-year-old Elián González from his relatives' home in Miami, Florida, and fly him to his Cuban father in Washington, DC. |
April 23rd
1564 ~ Birthday of William Shakespeare, Playwright.
1858 ~ Birthday of Max Planck, Physicist. Awarded the Nobel Prize in physics 1918. 1891 ~ Birthday of Sergei Prokofiev, Soviet Composer. 1954 ~ Hank Aaron hit his first major league home run. 1968 ~ Birthday of Timothy McVeigh, American Terrorist. 1969 ~ Sirhan Sirhan was sentenced to death for assassinating Sen. Robert Kennedy. 1971 ~ The Rolling Stones released “Sticky Fingers”. 1984 ~ American announcement of the isolation of the AIDS virus. 1994 ~ Physicists discover the top quark. 1998 ~ Death of James Earl Ray, Assassin. |
April 24th
1731 ~ Death of Daniel Defoe, English Writer.
1856 ~ Birthday of Henri Philippe Pétain, Soldier & Statesman. 1898 ~ Spain declared war on the U.S. over Cuba. 1905 ~ Birthday of Robert Penn Warren, Writer, Pulitzer Prize winner, first American Poet Laureate. 1916 ~ The Easter Uprising began. The Irish Republican Brotherhood led by nationalist Patrick Pearse started a rebellion in Ireland. 1967 ~ Cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov died in Soyuz 1. 1986 ~ Death of Wallis Simpson, Mistress and Wife of The Duke of Windsor. 1990 ~ The Hubble Space Telescope was launched by Space Shuttle Discovery. 1998 ~ An IRA bomb devastated the Bishopsgate area of London. 2004 ~ Death of Estée Lauder, Cosmetics pioneer. |
April 25th
1599 ~ Birthday of Oliver Cromwell, Military Leader & Politician.
1719 ~ Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe was published. 1792 ~ The French national anthem, “La Marseillaise” was composed. 1840 ~ Birthday of Pyotr Tchaikovsky, Composer. 1900 ~ Birthday of Wolfgang Pauli, Physicist. Awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics 1945. 1915 ~ Allied soldiers invaded the Gallipoli Peninsula in an unsuccessful attempt to remove the Ottoman Turkish Empire from WWI. 1917 ~ Birthday of Ella Fitzgerald, Jazz Singer. 1945 ~ The United Nations was organized in San Francisco, California, by 50 nations. 1953 ~ Francis Crick and James Watson published MOLECULAR STRUCTURE OF NUCLEIC ACIDS: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid describing the double helix structure of DNA. 1980 ~ Tehran hostage rescue mission failed. Feastdays & Holidays Australia, New Zealand ~ ANZAC Day |
April 26th
1607 ~ Colonists made landfall at Cape Henry, Virginia, to create the first permanent English settlement in North America.
1711 ~ Birthday of David Hume, Philosopher & Historian. 1785 ~ Birthday of John Audubon, Naturalist & Illustrator. 1865 ~ Death of John Wilkes Booth, shot while trying to avoid capture for the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. 1935 ~ Birthday of Carol Burnett, Singer, Actress & Comedienne. 1937 ~ Spanish Civil War: Guernica, Spain was bombed by the Luftwaffe. 1964 ~ Tanganyika and Zanzibar merged to form Tanzania. 1986 ~ In Ukraine, a nuclear reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear plant exploded, creating the world's worst nuclear disaster. 1989 ~ Death of Lucille Ball, Actress & Comedienne. 1994 ~ South Africa held its first multiracial elections. |
April 27th
1521 ~ Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan was killed in the Philippines.
1667 ~ John Milton sold the copyright of Paradise Lost for £10. 1791 ~ Birthday of Samuel Morse, inventor of Morse code. 1813 ~ War of 1812: U.S. troops captured York, the capital of Ontario (present day Toronto, Ontario). 1822 ~ Birthday of Ulysses S. Grant, 18th U.S. President. 1904 ~ The Australian Labor Party became the first such party to gain national government, under Chris Watson. 1965 ~ Death of Edward R. Murrow, Journalist. 1972 ~ Death of Kwame Nkrumah, first post-independence leader of Ghana. 1945 ~ Soviet and American armies link up at the Elbe. 1999 ~ Death of Al Hirt, Musician. |
April 28th
1788 ~ Maryland became the 7th state to ratify the U.S. Constitution.
1906 ~ Birthday of Kurt Gödel, mathematician. 1908 ~ Birthday of Oskar Schindler, Businessman. 1937 ~ Birthday of Saddam Hussein, former leader of Iraq. 1945 ~ Benito Mussolini and his mistress Clara Petacci are killed by members of the Italian resistance movement while trying to flee Italy. 1947 ~ Thor Heyerdahl and five crewmates set out from Peru on the Kon-Tiki to prove that Peruvian natives could have settled Polynesia. 1952 ~ The U.S. occupation of Japan ended. 1969 ~ Charles de Gaulle resigned as President of France. 2001 ~ Dennis Tito became the world's first space tourist. 2003 ~ Apple Computer's iTunes Music Store launched. |
April 29th
1770 ~ James Cook arrived at and named Botany Bay, Australia.
1863 ~ Birthday of William Randolph Hearst, American publisher. 1893 ~ Birthday of Harold Urey, American chemist, awarded the 1934 Nobel Prize for Chemistry. 1936 ~ Birthday of Zubin Mehta, Indian-born American conductor. 1945 ~ Start of Operation Manna. 1945 ~ American soldiers liberated the Dachau concentration camp in Germany. 1958 ~ The Broadway musical, My Fair Lady, opened in London. 1980 ~ Death of Alfred Hitchcock, director. 1992 ~ Rioting broke out in Los Angeles following the acquittal of four white police officers accused of beating black motorist Rodney King. 1997 ~ A worldwide treaty to ban chemical weapons went into effect. |
April 30th
1777 ~ Birthday of Carl Friedrich Gauss, Mathematician, Astronomer & Physicist.
1803 ~ The U.S. purchased the Louisiana Territory from France. 1877 ~ Birthday of Alice B. Toklas, Muse and Brownie Chef. 1883 ~ Death of Édouard Manet, Impressionist Painter. 1916 ~ Birthday of Claude Shannon, the "father of information theory” 1938 ~ Birthday of Larry Niven, Science Fiction author. 1945 ~ Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun committed suicide after being married for one day. 1948 ~ The Land Rover was introduced. 1975 ~ The South Vietnamese government in Saigon announced its unconditional surrender to the Vietcong. 1993 ~ CERN announced that the World Wide Web would be free to everyone. |
May 1st
1786 ~ Opening night of Mozart’s opera, The Marriage of Figaro.
1840 ~ The Penny Black postage stamp put on sale in the UK. 1869 ~ The Folies Bergères opened in Paris. 1904 ~ Death of Antonín Dvořák, Czech Composer. 1939 ~ Birthday of Judy Collins, American folk singer. 1941 ~ Orson Welles's Citizen Kane premiered in New York City. 1944 ~ Birthday of Rita Coolidge, Singer. 1960 ~ Gary Powers, in a U-2 spy plane, was shot down over the Soviet Union. 1978 ~ Death of Aram Khachaturian, Armenian composer. 1982 ~ RAF aircraft attack two airstrips near Port Stanley in the Falkland Islands. |
May 2nd
1519 ~ Death of Leonardo da Vinci, inventor, painter.
1660 ~ Birthday of Alessandro Scarlatti, Italian Composer. 1729 ~ Birthday of Empress Catherine II of Russia. 1892 ~ Birthday of "The Red Baron", Manfred von Richthofen. 1933 ~ The first modern sighting of the Loch Ness monster was reported. 1945 ~ The Soviet Union announced the capture of Berlin. 1952 ~ The world's first jet airliner, the De Havilland Comet 1, launched the jet age. 1955 ~ Tennessee Williams won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. 1982 ~ The British submarine HMS Conqueror sank the Argentine cruiser ARA General Belgrano. 1997 ~ The Labour Party's Tony Blair became Prime Minister of the UK, ending 18 years of Conservative Party rule. |
May 3rd
1469 ~ Birthday of Niccolò Machiavelli, Italian Historian & Political Author.
1616 ~ Death of William Shakespeare Playwright & Poet. 1810 ~ Lord Byron swam the Hellespont. 1844 ~ Birthday of Richard D'Oyly Carte, English Impresario. 1898 ~ Birthday of Golda Meir, Prime Minister of Israel. 1937 ~ Gone With the Wind, a novel by Margaret Mitchell, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. 1945 ~ Indian forces captured Rangoon, Burma, from the Japanese. 1946 ~ The International Military Tribunal for the Far East began in Tokyo against Japanese military and government officials accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity. 1991 ~ The last episode of the soap opera “Dallas” aired. 2005 ~ The first democratically elected government in the history of Iraq was sworn in. |
May 4th
1825 ~ Birthday of Thomas Henry Huxley, English Scientist.
1852 ~ Birthday of Alice Liddell, for whom Lewis Carroll wrote Alice in Wonderland. 1928 ~ Birthday of Hosni Mubarak, President of Egypt. 1942 ~ The Battle of the Coral Sea, the first naval clash fought entirely with carrier aircraft, began during World War II. 1970 ~ The Ohio National Guard, sent to Kent State University after the ROTC building was burnt down, opened fire on students protesting at the U.S. invasion of Cambodia. 1975 ~ Death of Moe Howard, actor, comedian; member of the Three Stooges. 1979 ~ Margaret Thatcher became the UK’s first female Prime Minister. 1980 ~ Death of Josip Tito, President of Yugoslavia. 1982 ~ Falklands War: The HMS Sheffield is sunk by an Exocet missile. 1990 ~ Latvia proclaims independence. |
May 5th
1807 ~ Death of P. D. Q. Bach, fictitious Composer.
1813 ~ Birthday of Søren Kierkegaard, Philosopher. 1818 ~ Birthday of Karl Marx, Political Philosopher. 1821 ~ Death of Napoleon Bonaparte, Ruler of France. 1891 ~ NYC’s Carnegie Hall had its grand opening and first public performance, with Pyotr Tchaikovsky as the guest conductor. 1925 ~ Biology teacher John Scopes was arrested for teaching Charles Darwin's Theory of Evolution in Dayton, Tennessee. 1961 ~ Alan Shepard became the first American to travel into space. 1980 ~ Great Britain’s SAS stormed the Iranian embassy in London after a six day siege. 1992 ~ Wolfenstein 3D was released, the first-ever first-person shooter computer game. 1995 ~ Death of Mikhail Botvinnik, world chess champion. |
May 6th
1758 ~ Birthday of Maximilien Robespierre, Revolutionary.
1856 ~ Birthday of Sigmund Freud, psychiatrist, founder of Psychoanalysis. 1889 ~ The Eiffel Tower was officially opened to the public at the Universal Exposition in Paris. 1915 ~ Birthday of T.H. White, Writer. 1915 ~ Birthday of Orson Welles, Director. 1937 ~ The German zeppelin Hindenburg caught fire and was destroyed while attempting to dock at Lakehurst, New Jersey. 1940 ~ John Steinbeck was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his novel The Grapes of Wrath. 1953 ~ Birthday of Tony Blair, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. 1954 ~ Roger Bannister becomes the first man to run the mile in under four minutes. 1994 ~ Queen Elizabeth and French President François Mitterrand inaugurate the opening of the Chunnel. |
May 7th
1824 ~ Premiere of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in Vienna.
1825 ~ Death of Antonio Salieri, Composer. 1833 ~ Birthday of Johannes Brahms, Composer. 1840 ~ Birthday of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Composer. 1915 ~ World War I: A German U-boat sank the RMS Lusitania, killing 1,198 people. 1919 ~ Birthday of Eva Peron, wife of Argentine President Juan Peron. 1933 ~ Birthday of Johnny Unitas, American football star. 1945 ~ World War II: General Alfred Jodl signed unconditional surrender terms at Reims, France, ending Germany's participation in the war. 1954 ~ Indochina War: The Battle of Dien Bien Phu ended in a French defeat (the battle began on March 13). 1999 ~ Kosovo War: Three Chinese embassy workers were killed and 20 wounded when a NATO aircraft “mistakenly” bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade. |
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