Sunday, April 26, 2015

What Happened This Day In History .... April 26

TODAY IN HISTORY

April 26
757Stephen II ends his reign as Catholic Pope.
1478Pazzi conspirators attack Lorenzo and kill Giuliano de'Medici.
1514Copernicus makes his first observations of Saturn.
1564William Shakespeare is baptized.
1607The British establish a colony at Cape Henry, Virginia.
1865Joseph E. Johnston surrenders the Army of Tennessee to Sherman.
1915Second Lieutenant Rhodes-Moorhouse becomes the first airman to win the Victoria Cross after conducting a successful bombing raid.
1929The first non-stop flight from England to India is completed.
1931New York Yankee Lou Gehrig hits a home run but is called out for passing a runner, the mistake ultimately costs him the home run record.
1937The ancient Basque town of Guernica in northern Spain is bombed by German planes.
1941The first organ is played at a baseball stadium in Chicago.
1968Students seize the administration building at Ohio State University.
1983The Dow Jones Industrial Average breaks 1,200 for first time.
1986The world's worst nuclear disaster occurs at the Chernobyl power plant in the Soviet Union.
1994Nelson Mandela wins the presidency in South Africa's first multiracial elections.
Born on April 26
1718Esek Hopkins, first commodore of the United States Navy.
1785John James Audubon, artist and naturalist.
1812Alfred Krupp, German arms merchant.
1822Frederick Law Olmstead, landscape architect, designed New York's central park.
1875Syngman Rhee, South Korean statesman.
1893Anita Loos, novelist and screenwriter (Gentleman Prefer Blondes).
1894Rudolf Hess, Nazi leader.
1900Charles Richter, physicist and seismologist.
1914Bernard Malamud, novelist and short story writer (The Natural).

Saturday, April 25, 2015

What Happened This Day In History.... 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 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 Kahn is crowned Shah and chooses the name "Pehlevi."
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 Walther de la Mare, poet and novelist (Memoir of a MidgetCome 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

Friday, April 24, 2015

What Happened This Day In History...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 Muhlburg.
1558 Mary, Queen of Scotland, marries the French dauphin, Francis.
1792 Claude-Joseph Rouget de Lisle composes "La Marseilles". 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 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 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

Thursday, April 23, 2015

What Happened This Day In History... April 23

1348 The first English order of knighthood is founded.
1500 Pedro Cabal 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 Munsford Station, Alalbama.
1895 Russia, France, and Germany force Japan to return the Liaodong peninsula to China.
1896 Motion pictures premiere in New York City.
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 in Salyut 1 space station.


Born on April 23
1547 Miguel de Cervantes, Spanish author (Don Quixote).
1564 William Shakespeare, English playwright and poet.
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 SingParadise Reclaimed).
1926 J.P. Donlevey, 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

Wednesday, April 22, 2015

What Happened This Day In History... 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 Saragosa.
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 Zeeburgge.
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 Ilich Lenin (Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov), leader of the Bolshevik Revolution (1917) and first head of the U.S.S.R.
1873 Ellen Glassgow, American novelist.
1876 O.E. 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

Tuesday, April 21, 2015

What Happened This Day In History... April 21

753BC Traditional date of the foundation of Rome.
43BC 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 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 Oskar Hertwig, embryologist.
1864 Max Weber, German sociologist and political economist.
1909 Rollo May, psychologist.
1912 Marcel Camus, French film director (Black Orpheus).
1923 John Mortimor, British barrister and playwright (Rumpole of the Bailey).
1926 Elizabeth II, queen of England.
1932 Elaine May, comedy writer

Monday, April 20, 2015

What Happened This Day In History... 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 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 Wrigley Field opens in Chicago.
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 MacArthur addresses a joint session of Congress after being relieved by President 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, Facist dictator of Nazi Germany (1933-1945).
1893 Harold Lloyd, film comedian.
1893 Joan Miró, Spanish painter.
1927 Alex Muller, Nobel Prize-winning physicist

Sunday, April 19, 2015

What Happened This Day In History... 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 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 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 Dividian 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 Kembel Knight, diarist.
1721 Roger Sherman, signer of the Declaration of Independence.
1832 Lucretia Rudolph, President 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.

Saturday, April 18, 2015

What Happened This Day In History... April 18

310 St. Eusebius 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 Suwanna, 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 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.
1885 The Sino-Japanese war ends.
1906 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 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.

Friday, April 17, 2015

What Happened This Day In History... 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.
1521 Martin Luther is excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church.
1524 Present-day New York Harbor is discovered by Giovanni Verrazano.
1535 Antonio Mendoza is appointed first viceroy of New Spain.
1758 Frances Williams, the first African-American to graduate for a college in the western hemisphere, publishes a collection of Latin poems.
1808 Bayonne Decree by Napoleon I of France orders seizure of U.S. ships.
1824 Russia abandons all North American claims south of 54' 40'.
1861 Virginia become eighth state to secede from the Union.
1864 General 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 Hodgeson, a former member of the Ziegfield 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–originaly 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 Dinesen), 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 GalaxyThe Messiah of Stockholm).

Thursday, April 16, 2015

What Happened This Day In History... 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 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.
1944 The destroyer USS Laffey survives horrific damage from attacks by 22 Japanese aircraft off Okinawa.
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.
1977 The ban on women attending West Point is lifted.


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 Cuningham, 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.

Wednesday, April 15, 2015

What Happened This Day In History... 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 siege 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.
1919 British troops kill 400 Indians at Amritsar, India.
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 were 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 AbelHonor Among Thieves).

Tuesday, April 14, 2015

What Happened This Day In History... 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 Bartoleme 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's 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 is played in Montreal, Canada.
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 Christian 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.