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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. |
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