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

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