Someone needs to put those kid-proof socket protecters in that outlet to keep her from sticking her nipples in there and hurting herself....
...Thank you, waitress, I believe I am ready. Admi, you too?
THT
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Milestones
- Thread starter admihoek
- Start date
Someone needs to put those kid-proof socket protecters in that outlet to keep her from sticking her nipples in there and hurting herself....
...Thank you, waitress, I believe I am ready. Admi, you too?
THT
April 21st Tarbula (Tarbo, Pherbutha), Virgin Martyr. She was the sister of Bishop Simeon Barsabba'e, leader of Christians in Persia during the persecution by Shapur II. After her brother had been martyred (341), she, her sister and a serving girl, were accused of causing the queen to become ill by witchcraft. They were executed (345) by being sawn in half. The pieces of their bodies were hung on rows of crosses, between which the queen walked in the belief that this would heal her from their sorcery.
'It is said that this Tarbula was beautiful and very stately in form, and that one of the Magi, having become deeply enamoured with her, secretly sent a proposal for intercourse, and promised to save her and her companions if she would consent. But she would give no ear to his licentiousness, treated the Magus with scorn, and rebuked his lust. She would prefer to die courageously rather than betray her virginity.'
'It is said that this Tarbula was beautiful and very stately in form, and that one of the Magi, having become deeply enamoured with her, secretly sent a proposal for intercourse, and promised to save her and her companions if she would consent. But she would give no ear to his licentiousness, treated the Magus with scorn, and rebuked his lust. She would prefer to die courageously rather than betray her virginity.'
In ancient Rome, April 21 was the Parilia, held in honor of Pales, a god of shepherds, flocks and livestock. Regarded as a male by some sources and a female by others, and even possibly as a pair of deities (as Pales could be either singular or plural in Latin). Pales was an obscure deity about which little information remains. Cattle were driven through bonfires on this day. Another festival to Pales, apparently dedicated "to the two Pales" ( Palibus duobus) was held on July 7.
753 BC. According to tradition, Romulus and his twin brother, Remus, found Rome on the site where they were suckled by a she-wolf as orphaned infants. Actually, the Romulus and Remus myth originated sometime in the fourth century B.C., and the exact date of Rome's founding was set by the Roman scholar Marcus Terentius Varro in the first century B.C.
The founding of Rome can be investigated through archaeology, but traditional stories handed down by the ancient Romans themselves explain the earliest history of their city in terms of legend and myth. The most familiar of these myths, and perhaps the most famous of all Roman myths, is the story of Romulus and Remus, the twins who were suckled by a she-wolf. This story had to be reconciled with a dual tradition, set earlier in time, that had the Trojan refugee Aeneas escape to Italy and found the line of Romans through his son Iulus, the namesake of the Julio-Claudian dynasty.
According to legend, the foundation of Rome took place 438 years after the capture of Troy (1182 BC), according to Velleius Paterculus. It took place "shortly" before an eclipse of the sun; some have identified this eclipse as the one observed at Rome on June 25, 745 BC, which had a magnitude of 50.3%. Varro may have used the consular list with its mistakes, calling the year of the first consuls "245 a.u.c.".
During the Roman Republic, several dates were given for the founding of the city between 758 BC and 728 BC. Finally, under the Roman Empire, the date suggested by Marcus Terentius Varro, 753 BC, was agreed upon, but in the Fasti Capitolini the year given was 752. Although the proposed years varied, all versions agreed that the city was founded on April 21.
43 BC. At the Battle of Mutina, Mark Antony is again defeated by Aulus Hirtius, who is killed. Although Antony fails to capture Mutina, Decimus Brutus is murdered shortly afterwards.
Around one year after Julius Caesar's assassination, negotiations between the Roman Senate and Antony broke off. Antony gathered his legions and marched against one of the assassins Decimus Junius Brutus Albinus, who was governor of Cisalpine Gaul.
Octavian's forces were now present and fought on the side of the remaining consul Hirtius. Antony was defeated again, but Hirtius himself was killed, leaving the army and republic leaderless. Hirtius died during the attack of Anthony's camp. Octavian recovered his body and according to Suetonius, "in the thick of the fight, when the eagle-bearer of his legion was sorely wounded, he shouldered the eagle and carried it for some time."
Mutina is essentially where Octavian turns from an inferior young man to an equal of Antony. Soon after the battle, a truce was formed between Antony and Octavian at Bologna leading eventually to the Second Triumvirate with Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, Octavian, and Marc Antony. They would set aside their differences and turn on the Senators involved in Caesar's assassination while assuming a three-way dictatorship. Eventually in the ensuing power struggles many years later, Octavian would defeat Antony and Cleopatra at Actium in 31 BC and usher in the Principate where he would be known as Augustus, but Mutina was the milestone where Octavian first established himself as a force to be reckoned with.
866. Byzantine noble and minister Bardas is assassinated. As the brother of Empress Theodora, he rose to high office under Theophilos (r. 829–842). Although sidelined after Theophilos's death by Theodora and Theoktistos, in 856 he engineered Theoktistos's fall and became the regent for his nephew, Michael III (r. 842–867). Rising to the rank of Caesar, he was the effective ruler of the Byzantine Empire for ten years, a period which saw military success, renewed diplomatic and missionary activity, and an intellectual revival that heralded the Macedonian Renaissance. He was assassinated in 866 at the instigation of Michael III's new favorite, Basil the Macedonian, who a year later would usurp the throne for himself and install his own dynasty on the Byzantine throne.
1073. Pope Alexander II dies. In 1065, Alexander admonished Landulf VI of Benevento "that the conversion of Jews is not to be obtained by force." Also in the same year, Alexander called for a crusade against the Moors in Spain.
In 1066, he entertained an embassy from the illegitimate Duke of Normandy Guillaume II, Guillaume le Bâtard, (subsequently also known as William the Conqueror) which had been sent to obtain his blessing for the Norman conquest of England. This he gave to them, gifting to them a papal ring, the Standard of St. Peter, and a papal edict to present to the English clergy saying that William was given the papal blessing for his bid to the throne. These favors were instrumental in the submission of the English church and people following the Battle of Hastings.
1509. Henry VIII ascends the throne of England on the death of his father, Henry VII. Henry VIII is famous for having been married six times and breaking with the Roman Catholic Church. He wielded perhaps the most unfettered power of any English monarch, and brought about the Dissolution of the Monasteries and the union of England and Wales.
Henry VIII was an avid gambler and dice player. In his youth, he excelled at sports, especially jousting, hunting, and real tennis. He was also an accomplished musician, author, and poet; his best known piece of music is Pastyme With Good Company ("The Kynges Ballade") and, possibly, Greensleeves.
1649. The Maryland assembly passes the Maryland Toleration Act, which provides freedom of worship to all Christians.
1777. During the American Revolution, British troops under the command of General William Tryon attack the town of Danbury, Connecticut, and begin destroying everything in sight. Facing little, if any, opposition from Patriot forces, the British went on a rampage, setting fire to homes, farmhouses, storehouses and more than 1,500 tents.
1792. Brazilian revolutionary Tiradentes is hanged and quartered. Influenced by the writings of Rousseau, and by the American and French Revolutions, Tiradentes joined with a number of like-minded citizens in the Inconfidência. Rejecting Portuguese taxation and rule, they wanted to found a republic with its capital at São João del Rei.
The plot was betrayed and Tiradentes and 11 others were sentenced to death. Other members of the Inconfidência were sentenced to public whippings and life imprisonment. Of those sentenced to death, only Tiradentes was executed. He was hanged on April 21, 1792, in Rio de Janeiro. His body was quartered and his head displayed publicly in the Vila Rica square as a warning to other revolutionaries.
1836. Republic of Texas forces under Sam Houston defeat troops under Mexican General Antonio López de Santa Anna in the Battle of San Jacinto during the Texas Revolution.
1865. A train carrying the coffin of assassinated President Abraham Lincoln leaves Washington, D.C. on its way to Springfield, Illinois, where he would be buried on May 4.
The train carrying Lincoln's body traveled through 180 cities and seven states on its way to Lincoln's home state of Illinois. Scheduled stops for the special funeral train were published in newspapers. At each stop, Lincoln's coffin was taken off the train, placed on an elaborately decorated horse-drawn hearse and led by solemn processions to a public building for viewing. In cities as large as Columbus, Ohio, and as small as Herkimer, New York, thousands of mourners flocked to pay tribute to the slain president. Newspapers reported that people had to wait more than five hours to pass by the president's coffin in some cities.
1895. Woodville Latham and his sons, Otway and Gray, demonstrate their “Panopticon,” the first movie projector developed in the United States.
1918. During World War I, German fighter ace Manfred von Richthofen, known as "The Red Baron," is shot down and killed over Vaux sur Somme in France.
Von Richthofen was an air squadron leader and flying ace and the most successful fighter pilot of World War I, credited with 80 confirmed air combat victories. Richthofen is also known as "le Baron Rouge ", "le Diable Rouge" ("Red Devil") or "Le Petit Rouge" ("Little Red") in French, and the "Red Knight" or the "Red Baron" in the English-speaking world. (See picture.) He was buried by the Allies with full military honors.
1930. A fire at an Ohio prison kills 320 inmates, some of whom burn to death when they are not unlocked from their cells. It is one of the worst prison disasters in American history. The prison, built to hold 1,500 people, was almost always overcrowded and notorious for its poor conditions. At the time of the 1930 fire, there were 4,300 prisoners living in the jail. Construction crews were working on an expansion and scaffolding was set up along one side of the building. On the night of April 21, a fire broke out on the scaffolding.
The cell block adjacent to the scaffolding housed 800 prisoners, most of whom were already locked in for the night. The inmates begged to be let out of their cells as smoke filled the cell block. However, most reports claim that the guards not only refused to unlock the cells, they continued to lock up other prisoners.
Although some guards did work to save the lives of their charges, the seemingly willful indifference displayed by other guards led to a general riot. Firefighters initially could not get access to the fire because angry prisoners were pelting them with rocks. By the time the fire was controlled, 320 people were dead and another 130 were seriously injured.
1934. The "Surgeon's Photograph", the most famous photo allegedly showing the Loch Ness Monster, is published in the Daily Mail (in 1999, it is revealed to be a hoax).
1944. Women in France receive the right to vote.
753 BC. According to tradition, Romulus and his twin brother, Remus, found Rome on the site where they were suckled by a she-wolf as orphaned infants. Actually, the Romulus and Remus myth originated sometime in the fourth century B.C., and the exact date of Rome's founding was set by the Roman scholar Marcus Terentius Varro in the first century B.C.
The founding of Rome can be investigated through archaeology, but traditional stories handed down by the ancient Romans themselves explain the earliest history of their city in terms of legend and myth. The most familiar of these myths, and perhaps the most famous of all Roman myths, is the story of Romulus and Remus, the twins who were suckled by a she-wolf. This story had to be reconciled with a dual tradition, set earlier in time, that had the Trojan refugee Aeneas escape to Italy and found the line of Romans through his son Iulus, the namesake of the Julio-Claudian dynasty.
According to legend, the foundation of Rome took place 438 years after the capture of Troy (1182 BC), according to Velleius Paterculus. It took place "shortly" before an eclipse of the sun; some have identified this eclipse as the one observed at Rome on June 25, 745 BC, which had a magnitude of 50.3%. Varro may have used the consular list with its mistakes, calling the year of the first consuls "245 a.u.c.".
During the Roman Republic, several dates were given for the founding of the city between 758 BC and 728 BC. Finally, under the Roman Empire, the date suggested by Marcus Terentius Varro, 753 BC, was agreed upon, but in the Fasti Capitolini the year given was 752. Although the proposed years varied, all versions agreed that the city was founded on April 21.
43 BC. At the Battle of Mutina, Mark Antony is again defeated by Aulus Hirtius, who is killed. Although Antony fails to capture Mutina, Decimus Brutus is murdered shortly afterwards.
Around one year after Julius Caesar's assassination, negotiations between the Roman Senate and Antony broke off. Antony gathered his legions and marched against one of the assassins Decimus Junius Brutus Albinus, who was governor of Cisalpine Gaul.
Octavian's forces were now present and fought on the side of the remaining consul Hirtius. Antony was defeated again, but Hirtius himself was killed, leaving the army and republic leaderless. Hirtius died during the attack of Anthony's camp. Octavian recovered his body and according to Suetonius, "in the thick of the fight, when the eagle-bearer of his legion was sorely wounded, he shouldered the eagle and carried it for some time."
Mutina is essentially where Octavian turns from an inferior young man to an equal of Antony. Soon after the battle, a truce was formed between Antony and Octavian at Bologna leading eventually to the Second Triumvirate with Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, Octavian, and Marc Antony. They would set aside their differences and turn on the Senators involved in Caesar's assassination while assuming a three-way dictatorship. Eventually in the ensuing power struggles many years later, Octavian would defeat Antony and Cleopatra at Actium in 31 BC and usher in the Principate where he would be known as Augustus, but Mutina was the milestone where Octavian first established himself as a force to be reckoned with.
866. Byzantine noble and minister Bardas is assassinated. As the brother of Empress Theodora, he rose to high office under Theophilos (r. 829–842). Although sidelined after Theophilos's death by Theodora and Theoktistos, in 856 he engineered Theoktistos's fall and became the regent for his nephew, Michael III (r. 842–867). Rising to the rank of Caesar, he was the effective ruler of the Byzantine Empire for ten years, a period which saw military success, renewed diplomatic and missionary activity, and an intellectual revival that heralded the Macedonian Renaissance. He was assassinated in 866 at the instigation of Michael III's new favorite, Basil the Macedonian, who a year later would usurp the throne for himself and install his own dynasty on the Byzantine throne.
1073. Pope Alexander II dies. In 1065, Alexander admonished Landulf VI of Benevento "that the conversion of Jews is not to be obtained by force." Also in the same year, Alexander called for a crusade against the Moors in Spain.
In 1066, he entertained an embassy from the illegitimate Duke of Normandy Guillaume II, Guillaume le Bâtard, (subsequently also known as William the Conqueror) which had been sent to obtain his blessing for the Norman conquest of England. This he gave to them, gifting to them a papal ring, the Standard of St. Peter, and a papal edict to present to the English clergy saying that William was given the papal blessing for his bid to the throne. These favors were instrumental in the submission of the English church and people following the Battle of Hastings.
1509. Henry VIII ascends the throne of England on the death of his father, Henry VII. Henry VIII is famous for having been married six times and breaking with the Roman Catholic Church. He wielded perhaps the most unfettered power of any English monarch, and brought about the Dissolution of the Monasteries and the union of England and Wales.
Henry VIII was an avid gambler and dice player. In his youth, he excelled at sports, especially jousting, hunting, and real tennis. He was also an accomplished musician, author, and poet; his best known piece of music is Pastyme With Good Company ("The Kynges Ballade") and, possibly, Greensleeves.
1649. The Maryland assembly passes the Maryland Toleration Act, which provides freedom of worship to all Christians.
1777. During the American Revolution, British troops under the command of General William Tryon attack the town of Danbury, Connecticut, and begin destroying everything in sight. Facing little, if any, opposition from Patriot forces, the British went on a rampage, setting fire to homes, farmhouses, storehouses and more than 1,500 tents.
1789. John Adams is sworn in as the first vice president of the United States.
1792. Brazilian revolutionary Tiradentes is hanged and quartered. Influenced by the writings of Rousseau, and by the American and French Revolutions, Tiradentes joined with a number of like-minded citizens in the Inconfidência. Rejecting Portuguese taxation and rule, they wanted to found a republic with its capital at São João del Rei.
The plot was betrayed and Tiradentes and 11 others were sentenced to death. Other members of the Inconfidência were sentenced to public whippings and life imprisonment. Of those sentenced to death, only Tiradentes was executed. He was hanged on April 21, 1792, in Rio de Janeiro. His body was quartered and his head displayed publicly in the Vila Rica square as a warning to other revolutionaries.
1836. Republic of Texas forces under Sam Houston defeat troops under Mexican General Antonio López de Santa Anna in the Battle of San Jacinto during the Texas Revolution.
1865. A train carrying the coffin of assassinated President Abraham Lincoln leaves Washington, D.C. on its way to Springfield, Illinois, where he would be buried on May 4.
The train carrying Lincoln's body traveled through 180 cities and seven states on its way to Lincoln's home state of Illinois. Scheduled stops for the special funeral train were published in newspapers. At each stop, Lincoln's coffin was taken off the train, placed on an elaborately decorated horse-drawn hearse and led by solemn processions to a public building for viewing. In cities as large as Columbus, Ohio, and as small as Herkimer, New York, thousands of mourners flocked to pay tribute to the slain president. Newspapers reported that people had to wait more than five hours to pass by the president's coffin in some cities.
1895. Woodville Latham and his sons, Otway and Gray, demonstrate their “Panopticon,” the first movie projector developed in the United States.
1910. Author Mark Twain dies at age 74.
Born Samuel Langhorne Clemens, Twain is most noted for his novels, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), and its sequel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885), the latter often called "the Great American Novel." Twain was born during a visit by Halley's Comet, and he predicted that he would "go out with it" as well. He died the day following the comet's subsequent return. He was lauded as the "greatest American humorist of his age," and William Faulkner called Twain "the father of American literature."1918. During World War I, German fighter ace Manfred von Richthofen, known as "The Red Baron," is shot down and killed over Vaux sur Somme in France.
Von Richthofen was an air squadron leader and flying ace and the most successful fighter pilot of World War I, credited with 80 confirmed air combat victories. Richthofen is also known as "le Baron Rouge ", "le Diable Rouge" ("Red Devil") or "Le Petit Rouge" ("Little Red") in French, and the "Red Knight" or the "Red Baron" in the English-speaking world. (See picture.) He was buried by the Allies with full military honors.
1930. A fire at an Ohio prison kills 320 inmates, some of whom burn to death when they are not unlocked from their cells. It is one of the worst prison disasters in American history. The prison, built to hold 1,500 people, was almost always overcrowded and notorious for its poor conditions. At the time of the 1930 fire, there were 4,300 prisoners living in the jail. Construction crews were working on an expansion and scaffolding was set up along one side of the building. On the night of April 21, a fire broke out on the scaffolding.
The cell block adjacent to the scaffolding housed 800 prisoners, most of whom were already locked in for the night. The inmates begged to be let out of their cells as smoke filled the cell block. However, most reports claim that the guards not only refused to unlock the cells, they continued to lock up other prisoners.
Although some guards did work to save the lives of their charges, the seemingly willful indifference displayed by other guards led to a general riot. Firefighters initially could not get access to the fire because angry prisoners were pelting them with rocks. By the time the fire was controlled, 320 people were dead and another 130 were seriously injured.
1934. The "Surgeon's Photograph", the most famous photo allegedly showing the Loch Ness Monster, is published in the Daily Mail (in 1999, it is revealed to be a hoax).
1944. Women in France receive the right to vote.
Attachments
after WW II
1945. Soviet forces fighting south of Berlin, at Zossen, assault the headquarters of the German High Command. The only remaining opposing "force" to the Russian invasion of Berlin are the "battle groups" of Hitler Youth, teenagers with anti-tank guns, strategically placed in parks and suburban streets. In a battle at Eggersdorf, 70 of these Hitler teens strove to fight off a Russian assault with a mere three anti-tank guns. They were bulldozed by Russian tanks and infantry.
1952. Secretary's Day (now Administrative Professionals' Day) is first celebrated in the United States.
1960. Brasília, Brazil's capital, is officially inaugurated. At 9:30 AM the Three Powers of the Republic are simultaneously transferred from the old capital, Rio de Janeiro. The Brazilian capital is the only city in the world built in the 20th century to be considered a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.
1962. The Seattle World's Fair (Century 21 Exposition) opens. It is the first World's Fair in the United States since World War II.
1965. American model and actress Karen Foster is born in Lufkin, Texas. She was chosen as Playboy's Playmate of the Month in October, 1989. Prior to her national exposure, she worked as a cheerleader for the Houston Rockets, following in the footsteps of her sister. (See pictures.)
1967. A few days before the general election in Greece, Colonel Ge orge Papadopoulos leads a coup d'état, establishing a military regime that lasts for seven years.
1975. President of South Vietnam Nguyen Van Thieu flees Saigon, as the last South Vietnamese outpost blocking a direct North Vietnamese assault on Saigon, falls during the Vietnam War.
1977. Canadian figure skater Jamie Salé is born in Calgary, Alberta. She and partner David Pelletier are 2002 Olympic champions in pair skating. (See pictures.)
1989. In Beijing, around 100,000 students gather in Tiananmen Square to commemorate Chinese reform leader Hu Yaobang.
The Tiananmen Square Protests were a series of demonstrations led by students, intellectuals and labor activists in the People's Republic of China between April 15, 1989, and June 4, 1989. The demonstrations centered on Tiananmen Square in Beijing, but large-scale protests also occurred in cities throughout China, including Shanghai, which stayed peaceful throughout the protests.
In Beijing, the resulting government crackdown on the protesters left many civilians dead or injured. The toll ranges from 200–300 (PRC government figures), to 2,000–3,000 (Chinese student associations and Chinese Red Cross).
Following the violence, the government conducted widespread arrests to suppress protestors and their supporters, cracked down on other protests around China, banned the foreign press from the country and strictly controlled coverage of the events in the PRC press. Members of the Communist Party who had publicly sympathized with the protesters were purged, with several high-ranking members placed under house arrest, such as General Secretary Zhao Ziyang.
1992. Robert Alton Harris becomes the first person executed by the state of California in 25 years as he is put to death in the gas chamber for the 1978 murder of two teenage boys.
1993. The Supreme Court in La Paz, Bolivia, sentences former dictator Luis Garcia Meza to 30 years in prison without parole for murder, theft, fraud and violating the constitution.
1994. The first discoveries of extrasolar planets are announced by astronomer Alexander Wolszczan. An extrasolar planet, or exoplanet, is a planet outside the Solar System. There are 544 candidate extra-solar planets that have been identified as of April 19, 2011
2004. Five suicide bombers attack police buildings in Basra, Iraq, killing at least 74 people.
2009. The Wall Street Journal reports that cyber-spies have hacked the U.S. Joint Strike Fighter Program.
2011. In the Libyan civil war, Muammar Gaddafi's forces continue to use artillery shelling against civilians and rebels in Misrata. Rebels from the Nafusa Mountains region capture Libya's west border, where over 100 loyalist soldiers surrender to Tunisian authorities after being chased out by rebels. Meanwhile, United State Secretary of Defense Robert Gates says NATO will begin using armed predator drones to combat Muammar Gaddafi's forces.
Elsewhere, U.S. Congressman Ed Markey (D-Mass.) sends Apple chief executive Steve Jobs a letter asking him to explain the purpose of a file embedded on iPhones and iPads that keeps a detailed log of the devices' location. The controversy escalates as some governments announce an intent to investigate any violation of privacy laws
1945. Soviet forces fighting south of Berlin, at Zossen, assault the headquarters of the German High Command. The only remaining opposing "force" to the Russian invasion of Berlin are the "battle groups" of Hitler Youth, teenagers with anti-tank guns, strategically placed in parks and suburban streets. In a battle at Eggersdorf, 70 of these Hitler teens strove to fight off a Russian assault with a mere three anti-tank guns. They were bulldozed by Russian tanks and infantry.
1952. Secretary's Day (now Administrative Professionals' Day) is first celebrated in the United States.
1960. Brasília, Brazil's capital, is officially inaugurated. At 9:30 AM the Three Powers of the Republic are simultaneously transferred from the old capital, Rio de Janeiro. The Brazilian capital is the only city in the world built in the 20th century to be considered a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.
1962. The Seattle World's Fair (Century 21 Exposition) opens. It is the first World's Fair in the United States since World War II.
1965. American model and actress Karen Foster is born in Lufkin, Texas. She was chosen as Playboy's Playmate of the Month in October, 1989. Prior to her national exposure, she worked as a cheerleader for the Houston Rockets, following in the footsteps of her sister. (See pictures.)
1967. A few days before the general election in Greece, Colonel Ge orge Papadopoulos leads a coup d'état, establishing a military regime that lasts for seven years.
1975. President of South Vietnam Nguyen Van Thieu flees Saigon, as the last South Vietnamese outpost blocking a direct North Vietnamese assault on Saigon, falls during the Vietnam War.
1977. Canadian figure skater Jamie Salé is born in Calgary, Alberta. She and partner David Pelletier are 2002 Olympic champions in pair skating. (See pictures.)
1977. The musical Annie, based on the comic strip Little Orphan Annie, opens on Broadway.
1982. In Major League Baseball, the aptly named Rollie Fingers of the Milwaukee Brewers becomes the first pitcher to record 300 saves.1986. A vault in Chicago's Lexington Hotel that was linked to Al Capone is opened during a live TV special hosted by Geraldo Rivera. Except for a few bottles and a sign, the vault is empty.
1987. The Tamil Tigers are blamed for a car bomb that explodes in the Sri Lankan city of Colombo, killing 106 people. 1989. In Beijing, around 100,000 students gather in Tiananmen Square to commemorate Chinese reform leader Hu Yaobang.
The Tiananmen Square Protests were a series of demonstrations led by students, intellectuals and labor activists in the People's Republic of China between April 15, 1989, and June 4, 1989. The demonstrations centered on Tiananmen Square in Beijing, but large-scale protests also occurred in cities throughout China, including Shanghai, which stayed peaceful throughout the protests.
In Beijing, the resulting government crackdown on the protesters left many civilians dead or injured. The toll ranges from 200–300 (PRC government figures), to 2,000–3,000 (Chinese student associations and Chinese Red Cross).
Following the violence, the government conducted widespread arrests to suppress protestors and their supporters, cracked down on other protests around China, banned the foreign press from the country and strictly controlled coverage of the events in the PRC press. Members of the Communist Party who had publicly sympathized with the protesters were purged, with several high-ranking members placed under house arrest, such as General Secretary Zhao Ziyang.
1992. Robert Alton Harris becomes the first person executed by the state of California in 25 years as he is put to death in the gas chamber for the 1978 murder of two teenage boys.
1993. The Supreme Court in La Paz, Bolivia, sentences former dictator Luis Garcia Meza to 30 years in prison without parole for murder, theft, fraud and violating the constitution.
1994. The first discoveries of extrasolar planets are announced by astronomer Alexander Wolszczan. An extrasolar planet, or exoplanet, is a planet outside the Solar System. There are 544 candidate extra-solar planets that have been identified as of April 19, 2011
2004. Five suicide bombers attack police buildings in Basra, Iraq, killing at least 74 people.
2009. The Wall Street Journal reports that cyber-spies have hacked the U.S. Joint Strike Fighter Program.
2011. In the Libyan civil war, Muammar Gaddafi's forces continue to use artillery shelling against civilians and rebels in Misrata. Rebels from the Nafusa Mountains region capture Libya's west border, where over 100 loyalist soldiers surrender to Tunisian authorities after being chased out by rebels. Meanwhile, United State Secretary of Defense Robert Gates says NATO will begin using armed predator drones to combat Muammar Gaddafi's forces.
Elsewhere, U.S. Congressman Ed Markey (D-Mass.) sends Apple chief executive Steve Jobs a letter asking him to explain the purpose of a file embedded on iPhones and iPads that keeps a detailed log of the devices' location. The controversy escalates as some governments announce an intent to investigate any violation of privacy laws
April 22 is the anniversary of a deadly explosion in Mexico, the opening of a world's fair, and the signing of a pair of treaties that were largely ignored.
238. In the Year of the Six Emperors, the Roman Senate outlaws emperor Maximinus Thrax for his bloodthirsty proscriptions in Rome and nominates two of its members, Pupienus and Balbinus, to the throne. This choice was not popular with the people however, and mobs threw stones and sticks at the new emperors. Together Pupienus and Balbinus ruled for only 99 days. They argued often and during one quarrel, the Praetorian guard decided to intervene. They stormed into the room containing the emperors, seized them both, stripping them, dragging them naked through the streets, torturing and eventually murdering them. On the same day Gordian III was proclaimed sole emperor (238-244), though in reality his advisors exercised most of his power.
455. The Roman Emperor Petronius Maximus is killed. Maximus was a Roman aristocrat, and briefly Western Roman Emperor during part of the year 455.
Within two months of Maximus gaining the throne, word came that Gaiseric, king of the Vandals, had arrived in Italy, news that panicked the inhabitants of Rome. In the disorder Maximus was killed, either stoned to death by a mob or assassinated by "a certain Roman soldier named Ursus."
Three days after Maximus' death on April 22, Gaiseric entered Rome with his army. While the Vandals looted the city and captured people as slaves or hostages, in response to the pleas of Pope Leo I, they desisted from more destructive behavior that accompanied a sack of a city -- arson, torture, and murder.
1451. Queen Isabella of Castile and Leon is born. She and her husband, Ferdinand II of Aragon, laid the foundation for the political unification of Spain under their grandson, Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor. They also financed the Christopher Columbus expedition.
1500. Portuguese navigator Pedro Álvares Cabral becomes the first European to sight Brazil.
1509. Henry VIII accedes to the throne of England after the death of his father.
1529. The Treaty of Saragossa divides the eastern hemisphere between Spain and Portugal along a line 297.5 leagues or 17° east of the Moluccas. The agreement was instigated by the pope.
The remaining exploring nations of Europe such as France and England were explicitly refused access to the new lands, leaving them only options like piracy, unless they (as they did later) rejected the papal authority to divide undiscovered countries. The view taken by the rulers of these nations is epitomized by the quotation attributed to Francis I of France demanding to be shown the "clause in Adam's will" excluding France from the New World.
1778. During the American Revolution, Commander John Paul Jones leads a small detachment of two boats from his ship, the USS Ranger, to raid the shallow port at Whitehaven, England, where, by his own account, 400 British merchant ships are anchored. Jones was hoping to reach the port at midnight, when ebb tide would leave the shops at their most vulnerable.
Jones and his 30 volunteers had greater difficulty than anticipated rowing to the port, which was protected by two forts. They did not arrive until dawn. Jones' boat successfully took the southern fort, disabling its cannon, but the other boat returned without attempting an attack on the northern fort, after the sailors claimed to have been frightened away by a noise. To compensate, Jones set fire to the southern fort, which subsequently engulfed the entire town.
1836. A day after the Battle of San Jacinto in the Texas Revolution, forces under Texas General Sam Houston capture Mexican General Antonio López de Santa Anna.
1864. The U.S. Congress passes the Coinage Act of 1864 that mandates that the inscription In God We Trust be placed on all coins minted as United States currency.
1876. The Boston Red Stockings defeat the Philadelphia Athletics 6-5 in the first National League Baseball game.
1886. 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."
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.
1898. In the Spanish-American War, the United States Navy begins a blockade of Cuban ports; and firing the first shot of the war, the USS Nashville captures a Spanish merchant ship, .
1912. Pravda, the voice of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, begins publication in Saint Petersburg.
1915. The use of poison gas in World War I escalates when chlorine gas is released as a chemical weapon in the Second Battle of Ypres.
1923. American model Bettie Page is born Bettie Mae Page (though listed "Betty" on her birth certificate) in Nashville, Tennessee. She became famous in the 1950s for her fetish modeling and pin-up photos. While she faded into obscurity in the 1960s after her conversion to Christianity, she experienced a resurgence of popularity in the 1980s and now has a significant cult following. (See pictures.)
1930. The United Kingdom, Japan and the United States sign the London Naval Treaty regulating submarine warfare and limiting shipbuilding.
1944. The 1st Air Commando Group using Sikorsky R-4 helicopters stage the first use of helicopters in combat with search and rescue operations in the China-Burma-India theater during World War II.
1945. After learning that Soviet forces have taken Eberswalde without a fight in World War II, Adolf Hitler admits defeat in his underground bunker and states that suicide is his only recourse.
1948. In the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, Haifa, a major port of Israel, is captured from Arab forces.
1952. American porn icon Marilyn Chambers is born Marilyn Ann Briggs in Westport, Connecticut. She is perhaps best known for her 1972 hardcore debut Behind the Green Door while being featured as the "Ivory Snow Girl."
At the start of her career in the mainstream, Chambers landed some modeling gigs in New York, but she moved to California to get more work. There, she landed a small role in the Barbra Streisand starrer The Owl and the Pussycat (1970), where she was credited as Evelyn Lang. Chambers kept auditioning but didn't land anything other than a low-budget film Together (1971) in which she appeared nude. Depressed, she left Los Angeles and moved to San Francisco where she worked as a topless model and a bottomless dancer in order to pay bills.
Marilyn had seen an advertisement for a casting call. She rushed over to the audition only to find out that it was for a porno film. She was about to walk out the door when the Mitchell brothers stopped her, because she resembled Cybill Shepherd, feeling that a wholesome blond actress was needed for their film. They didn't know that earlier, she had modeled as the cover girl on the Ivory Snow soap box, where she posed holding the baby. The product's manufacturer, Procter & Gamble quickly dropped her after it discovered her double life as an adult film actress. (See pictures.)
Until her recent death, Chambers continued to appear in porn films for such companies as Naughty America and MILF Hunter, happily cashing in on the lucrative MILF market.
1954. Senator Joseph McCarthy begins hearings investigating the United States Army, which he charges with being "soft" on communism. These televised hearings gave the American public their first view of McCarthy in action, and his recklessness, indignant bluster, and bullying tactics quickly resulted in his fall from prominence.
1964. The 1964-1965 New York World's Fair opens for its first season.
1967. American actress Sheryl Lee is born in Bavaria, Germany. She is best known for playing the deceased Laura Palmer and Madeleine Ferguson on the cult TV series Twin Peaks and its prequel Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, for her roles in Vampires and Kingpin, and for portraying photographer Astrid Kirchherr in Backbeat. (See pictures.)
In 2004, Lee was the original choice for the role of Mary-Alice Young on Desperate Housewives. It would have been the second time she would have played a dead character on a series, however the producers ultimately chose to replace her with Brenda Strong.
1969. British yachtsman Sir Robin Knox-Johnston completes the first solo non-stop circumnavigation of the world.
1970. The First Earth Day is celebrated.
1972. Antiwar demonstrations prompted by the accelerated U.S. bombing in Southeast Asia draw somewhere between 30,000 to 60,000 marchers in New York; 30,000 to 40,000 in San Francisco; 10,000 to 12,000 in Los Angeles; and smaller gatherings in Chicago and other cities throughout the country. The new bombing campaign was in response to the North Vietnam's massive invasion of South Vietnam in March. As the demonstrations were happening, bitter fighting continued all over South Vietnam. In the Mekong Delta, for example, the fighting was the heaviest it had been in 18 months.
1983. The German magazine, Der Stern claims that Adolf Hitler's diaries were found in wreckage in East Germany. Stern (English "Star") is a weekly news magazine.
Internationally, it is most famous for publishing the Hitler diaries. Soon after their publication, they were revealed by scientific testing to be forged, probably a disinformation campaign launched by the Soviet KGB to drive a wedge between West Germany and its allies. This led to the resignation of the magazine's editors and a major scandal that is still seen as a low point in German journalism.
Der Stern is known more for its excellent photographic coverage of stories than for the quality of its text. I used to be a regular reader when I lived in Cambridge, Mass., where foreign-language periodicals are readily available. (Then I moved out to the boonies and I haven't seen it since.)
1994. Richard M. Nixon, the 37th president of the United States, dies at age 81 in New York City, four days after suffering a stroke.
1997. Government commandos storm the Japanese ambassador's residence in Lima, Peru, ending a 126-day hostage crisis. All 14 Tupac Amaru rebels are killed; 71 hostages are rescued.
2000. In a pre-dawn raid, federal agents seize six-year-old Elián González from his relatives' home in Miami, Florida.
2006. 243 people are injured in a pro-democracy protest in Nepal after Nepali security forces open fire on protesters against King Gyanendra.
2010. Deepwater Horizon, an oil rig owned by BP and Transocean, sinks to the bottom of the Gulf Of Mexico after having a blowout two days earlier. The well then created the largest oil spill in U.S. history by constantly gushing oil through the damaged wellhead.
2011. At least 88 people are killed as a result of police firing at massive "Great Friday" anti-government protests across Syria, the deadliest day of protest there yet.
Elsewhere, Cambodia and Thailand exchange fire across their mutual border; with casualties on both sides.
238. In the Year of the Six Emperors, the Roman Senate outlaws emperor Maximinus Thrax for his bloodthirsty proscriptions in Rome and nominates two of its members, Pupienus and Balbinus, to the throne. This choice was not popular with the people however, and mobs threw stones and sticks at the new emperors. Together Pupienus and Balbinus ruled for only 99 days. They argued often and during one quarrel, the Praetorian guard decided to intervene. They stormed into the room containing the emperors, seized them both, stripping them, dragging them naked through the streets, torturing and eventually murdering them. On the same day Gordian III was proclaimed sole emperor (238-244), though in reality his advisors exercised most of his power.
455. The Roman Emperor Petronius Maximus is killed. Maximus was a Roman aristocrat, and briefly Western Roman Emperor during part of the year 455.
Within two months of Maximus gaining the throne, word came that Gaiseric, king of the Vandals, had arrived in Italy, news that panicked the inhabitants of Rome. In the disorder Maximus was killed, either stoned to death by a mob or assassinated by "a certain Roman soldier named Ursus."
Three days after Maximus' death on April 22, Gaiseric entered Rome with his army. While the Vandals looted the city and captured people as slaves or hostages, in response to the pleas of Pope Leo I, they desisted from more destructive behavior that accompanied a sack of a city -- arson, torture, and murder.
1451. Queen Isabella of Castile and Leon is born. She and her husband, Ferdinand II of Aragon, laid the foundation for the political unification of Spain under their grandson, Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor. They also financed the Christopher Columbus expedition.
1500. Portuguese navigator Pedro Álvares Cabral becomes the first European to sight Brazil.
1509. Henry VIII accedes to the throne of England after the death of his father.
1529. The Treaty of Saragossa divides the eastern hemisphere between Spain and Portugal along a line 297.5 leagues or 17° east of the Moluccas. The agreement was instigated by the pope.
The remaining exploring nations of Europe such as France and England were explicitly refused access to the new lands, leaving them only options like piracy, unless they (as they did later) rejected the papal authority to divide undiscovered countries. The view taken by the rulers of these nations is epitomized by the quotation attributed to Francis I of France demanding to be shown the "clause in Adam's will" excluding France from the New World.
1778. During the American Revolution, Commander John Paul Jones leads a small detachment of two boats from his ship, the USS Ranger, to raid the shallow port at Whitehaven, England, where, by his own account, 400 British merchant ships are anchored. Jones was hoping to reach the port at midnight, when ebb tide would leave the shops at their most vulnerable.
Jones and his 30 volunteers had greater difficulty than anticipated rowing to the port, which was protected by two forts. They did not arrive until dawn. Jones' boat successfully took the southern fort, disabling its cannon, but the other boat returned without attempting an attack on the northern fort, after the sailors claimed to have been frightened away by a noise. To compensate, Jones set fire to the southern fort, which subsequently engulfed the entire town.
1836. A day after the Battle of San Jacinto in the Texas Revolution, forces under Texas General Sam Houston capture Mexican General Antonio López de Santa Anna.
1864. The U.S. Congress passes the Coinage Act of 1864 that mandates that the inscription In God We Trust be placed on all coins minted as United States currency.
1876. The Boston Red Stockings defeat the Philadelphia Athletics 6-5 in the first National League Baseball game.
1886. 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."
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.
1898. In the Spanish-American War, the United States Navy begins a blockade of Cuban ports; and firing the first shot of the war, the USS Nashville captures a Spanish merchant ship, .
1912. Pravda, the voice of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, begins publication in Saint Petersburg.
1915. The use of poison gas in World War I escalates when chlorine gas is released as a chemical weapon in the Second Battle of Ypres.
1923. American model Bettie Page is born Bettie Mae Page (though listed "Betty" on her birth certificate) in Nashville, Tennessee. She became famous in the 1950s for her fetish modeling and pin-up photos. While she faded into obscurity in the 1960s after her conversion to Christianity, she experienced a resurgence of popularity in the 1980s and now has a significant cult following. (See pictures.)
1930. The United Kingdom, Japan and the United States sign the London Naval Treaty regulating submarine warfare and limiting shipbuilding.
1944. The 1st Air Commando Group using Sikorsky R-4 helicopters stage the first use of helicopters in combat with search and rescue operations in the China-Burma-India theater during World War II.
1945. After learning that Soviet forces have taken Eberswalde without a fight in World War II, Adolf Hitler admits defeat in his underground bunker and states that suicide is his only recourse.
1948. In the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, Haifa, a major port of Israel, is captured from Arab forces.
1952. American porn icon Marilyn Chambers is born Marilyn Ann Briggs in Westport, Connecticut. She is perhaps best known for her 1972 hardcore debut Behind the Green Door while being featured as the "Ivory Snow Girl."
At the start of her career in the mainstream, Chambers landed some modeling gigs in New York, but she moved to California to get more work. There, she landed a small role in the Barbra Streisand starrer The Owl and the Pussycat (1970), where she was credited as Evelyn Lang. Chambers kept auditioning but didn't land anything other than a low-budget film Together (1971) in which she appeared nude. Depressed, she left Los Angeles and moved to San Francisco where she worked as a topless model and a bottomless dancer in order to pay bills.
Marilyn had seen an advertisement for a casting call. She rushed over to the audition only to find out that it was for a porno film. She was about to walk out the door when the Mitchell brothers stopped her, because she resembled Cybill Shepherd, feeling that a wholesome blond actress was needed for their film. They didn't know that earlier, she had modeled as the cover girl on the Ivory Snow soap box, where she posed holding the baby. The product's manufacturer, Procter & Gamble quickly dropped her after it discovered her double life as an adult film actress. (See pictures.)
Until her recent death, Chambers continued to appear in porn films for such companies as Naughty America and MILF Hunter, happily cashing in on the lucrative MILF market.
1954. Senator Joseph McCarthy begins hearings investigating the United States Army, which he charges with being "soft" on communism. These televised hearings gave the American public their first view of McCarthy in action, and his recklessness, indignant bluster, and bullying tactics quickly resulted in his fall from prominence.
1964. The 1964-1965 New York World's Fair opens for its first season.
1967. American actress Sheryl Lee is born in Bavaria, Germany. She is best known for playing the deceased Laura Palmer and Madeleine Ferguson on the cult TV series Twin Peaks and its prequel Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, for her roles in Vampires and Kingpin, and for portraying photographer Astrid Kirchherr in Backbeat. (See pictures.)
In 2004, Lee was the original choice for the role of Mary-Alice Young on Desperate Housewives. It would have been the second time she would have played a dead character on a series, however the producers ultimately chose to replace her with Brenda Strong.
1969. British yachtsman Sir Robin Knox-Johnston completes the first solo non-stop circumnavigation of the world.
1970. The First Earth Day is celebrated.
1972. Antiwar demonstrations prompted by the accelerated U.S. bombing in Southeast Asia draw somewhere between 30,000 to 60,000 marchers in New York; 30,000 to 40,000 in San Francisco; 10,000 to 12,000 in Los Angeles; and smaller gatherings in Chicago and other cities throughout the country. The new bombing campaign was in response to the North Vietnam's massive invasion of South Vietnam in March. As the demonstrations were happening, bitter fighting continued all over South Vietnam. In the Mekong Delta, for example, the fighting was the heaviest it had been in 18 months.
1983. The German magazine, Der Stern claims that Adolf Hitler's diaries were found in wreckage in East Germany. Stern (English "Star") is a weekly news magazine.
Internationally, it is most famous for publishing the Hitler diaries. Soon after their publication, they were revealed by scientific testing to be forged, probably a disinformation campaign launched by the Soviet KGB to drive a wedge between West Germany and its allies. This led to the resignation of the magazine's editors and a major scandal that is still seen as a low point in German journalism.
Der Stern is known more for its excellent photographic coverage of stories than for the quality of its text. I used to be a regular reader when I lived in Cambridge, Mass., where foreign-language periodicals are readily available. (Then I moved out to the boonies and I haven't seen it since.)
1994. Richard M. Nixon, the 37th president of the United States, dies at age 81 in New York City, four days after suffering a stroke.
1997. Government commandos storm the Japanese ambassador's residence in Lima, Peru, ending a 126-day hostage crisis. All 14 Tupac Amaru rebels are killed; 71 hostages are rescued.
2000. In a pre-dawn raid, federal agents seize six-year-old Elián González from his relatives' home in Miami, Florida.
2006. 243 people are injured in a pro-democracy protest in Nepal after Nepali security forces open fire on protesters against King Gyanendra.
2010. Deepwater Horizon, an oil rig owned by BP and Transocean, sinks to the bottom of the Gulf Of Mexico after having a blowout two days earlier. The well then created the largest oil spill in U.S. history by constantly gushing oil through the damaged wellhead.
2011. At least 88 people are killed as a result of police firing at massive "Great Friday" anti-government protests across Syria, the deadliest day of protest there yet.
Elsewhere, Cambodia and Thailand exchange fire across their mutual border; with casualties on both sides.
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'wouldn't be caught dead in fur'
Is this another shaved pussy picture???
Ah, thank you waitress....
Tree
Is this another shaved pussy picture???
Ah, thank you waitress....
Tree
Naraku
Draconarius
Interesting that 2 sexual icons share the same birthday.
Bettie Page passed away December 11, 2008 at age 85. She is buried in Los Angeles & her headstone calls her "Queen of the Pin-Ups"
Marilyn Chambers died April 12, 2009, 10 days short of her 59th birthday. The cause was a cerebral hemorage due to an aneurysm.
Marilyn's Ivory Soap box makes a cameo appearane in "Insatiable" & some other films.
Attachments
Naraku,
would you just please draw???
T
would you just please draw???
T
thx Naraku for your illustration
23 april St George Day
April 23 is St. George's Day, honoring the patron saint of England. St. George's Day has been a significant day in British history. On the flip side of the Pond, April 23 is also the birthday of one of the two worst presidents the United States ever had, which is probably karmic payback for the American Revolution. It was up to America's secular saint, Abraham Lincoln, to clean up the mess he left behind.
215 BC. A temple is built on the Capitoline Hill dedicated to Venus Erycina to commemorate the Roman defeat at Lake Trasimene. Roman deities were given various epithets to describe the diifferent facets of their roles. Venus Erycina ("Venus from Eryx"), also called Venus Erucina, originated on Mount Eryx in western Sicily. Temples were erected to her on the Capitoline Hill and outside the Porta Collina. She embodied "impure" love, and was the patron goddess of prostitutes.
AD 303. Saint George is put to death. Saint George was a soldier of the Roman Empire, from Anatolia, now modern day Turkey, who is venerated as an Islamic and Christian martyr. Saint George is the most venerated saint in the Eastern Orthodox Church and Oriental Orthodox Churches. Immortalized in the tale of George and the Dragon, he is the patron saint of Canada, Catalonia, England, Ethiopia, Georgia, Greece, Montenegro, Portugal, Serbia, the cities of Istanbul, Ljubljana and Moscow, as well as a wide range of professions, organizations and disease sufferers.
In 303 Emperor Diocletian issued an edict authorizing the systematic persecution of Christians across the Empire. The emperor Galerius was supposedly responsible for this decision and would continue the persecution during his own reign (305–311). George was ordered to take part in the persecution but instead confessed to being a Christian himself and criticized the imperial decision. An enraged Diocletian ordered the torture of this apparent traitor, and his execution. After various tortures, beginning with being lacerated on a wheel of swords, George was executed by decapitation before Nicomedia's defensive wall on April 23, 303.
997. Saint Adalbert of Prague is killed for chopping down a tree. After he had converted Hungary, he was sent by the Pope to convert the heathen Prussians. It was a standard procedure of Christian missionaries to chop down sacred oak trees. Because the trees were worshipped and the spirits who were believed to inhabit the trees were feared for their powers, this was done to demonstrate to non-Christians that no supernatural powers protected the trees from the Christians. When he did not heed warnings to stay away from the sacred oak groves, Adalbert was executed for sacrilege, which his co-religionists interpreted as martyrdom.
1014. The Battle of Clontarf is fought in Ireland. High King Brian Boru defeats Viking invaders, but is killed in battle. The Battle of Clontarf took place on Good Friday in 1014 between the forces of Brian Boru and the forces led by the King of Leinster, Máelmorda mac Murchada: composed mainly of his own men, Viking mercenaries from Dublin and the Orkney Islands led by his cousin Sigtrygg, as well as the one rebellious king from the province of Ulster. It ended in a rout of the Máelmorda's forces, along with the death of Brian; who was killed by a few Norsemen who were fleeing the battle and stumbled upon his tent. After the battle Ireland returned to a fractious status quo between the many small, separate kingdoms that had existed before Brian's rule.
1343. The St. George's Night Uprising takes place in Estonia. The uprising was an unsuccessful attempt by the indigenous Estonian population in the Duchy of Estonia, the Bishopric of Ösel-Wiek, and the insular territories of the State of the Teutonic Order to annihilate the Danish and German rulers and landlords, who had conquered the country in the 13th century during the Livonian crusade, and to eradicate the non-indigenous Christian religion. After initial success the revolt was ended by the invasion of the Teutonic Order.
1348. The founding of the Order of the Garter by King Edward III of England is announced on St George's Day. The Most Noble Order of the Garter is an English order of chivalry dating from medieval times. It is the world's oldest national order of knighthood, and the pinnacle of the British honours system.
As the name suggests, the Order's primary emblem, depicted on several insignia, is a garter bearing the motto Honi soit qui mal y pense in gold letters. The motto is Old French for "shame upon him who thinks evil of it."
Various legends account for the origin of the Order. The most popular legend involves the "Countess of Salisbury" (possibly Joan of Kent). While she was dancing with or near King Edward at Eltham Palace, her garter is said to have slipped from her leg. When the surrounding courtiers sniggered, the king picked it up and tied it to his leg, exclaiming Honi soit qui mal y pense ("shamed be the person who thinks evil of it") -- the phrase that has become the motto of the Order.
1564. William Shakespeare is born. The record of Shakespeare's christening dates this to 26 April of that year. As christenings were performed within three days of birth, tradition has settled on April 23 as his birthday. This date has a convenient symmetry, for Shakespeare died on the same day: April 23 (May 3 on the modern Gregorian calendar), in 1616.
Shakespeare's works have been translated into every major living language, and his plays are continually performed all around the world. Shakespeare is the most quoted writer in the literature and history of the English-speaking world, and many of his quotations and neologisms have passed into everyday usage in English and other languages. The Bard also invented new words for the English language, for example, "assassin."
1597. Shakespeare's The Merry Wives of Windsor is first performed, with Queen Elizabeth I of England in attendance.
1635. The first public school in America, Boston Latin School, is founded in Boston, Massachusetts.
The Public Latin School was a bastion for educating the sons of the Boston Brahmin elite, enabling the school to claim many influential Bostonians as alumni. Its curriculum follows that of the 18th century Latin-school movement, which holds the Classics to be the basis of an educated mind. Four years of Latin are mandatory for all pupils who enter the school in 7th grade, three years for those who enter in 9th. In 2007 the school was named one of the top twenty high schools in the United States by U.S. News & World Report.
1661. King Charles II of England, Scotland and Ireland is crowned in Westminster Abbey. Charles II was king from 30 January 1649 (de jure) or 29 May 1660 (de facto) until his death.
His father Charles I had been executed in 1649, following the English Civil War; the monarchy was then abolished and England, and subsequently Scotland and Ireland became a united republic under Oliver Cromwell, the Lord Protector, albeit with Scotland and Ireland under military occupation and de facto martial law. In 1660, shortly after Cromwell's death, the monarchy was restored under Charles II. He was popularly known as the "Merry Monarch" in reference to the liveliness and hedonism of his court.
1789. President-elect George Washington and his wife move into the first executive mansion, the Franklin House in New York City.
1791. James Buchanan is born; he would grow up to be the 15th President of the United States. Scholars consistently rank him as one of the two or three worst American presidents. Although he claimed secession was illegal, he asserted that going to war to stop it was also illegal. This inaction laid the grounds for President Abraham Lincoln to fight the American Civil War.
Buchanan is the only person from Pennsylvania to have been elected president. He is also the only bachelor to hold the office (and some speculate that he might also have been the first homosexual president). Columnist, commentator and erstwhile presidental candidate Pat Buchanan is a descendant.
1815. The Second Serbian Uprising, a second phase of the national revolution of the Serbs against the Ottoman Empire, erupts shortly after the annexation of the country to the Ottoman Empire. The occupation was enforced following the defeat of the First Serbian Uprising (1804-1813), during which Serbia existed as a de facto independent state for over a decade. The second revolution ultimately resulted in Serbian semi-independence from the Ottoman Empire. The Principality of Serbia was established, governed by its own Parliament, Constitution and its own royal dynasty. De jure independence followed during the second half of the 19th century.
1859. Beating a rival publisher by a mere 20 minutes, William Byers distributes the first newspaper ever published in the frontier boomtown of Denver, Colorado. As was the case in many western frontier towns, would-be journalists in Denver were vying for the honor of publishing the first newspaper. In Byers' case, his competitor was the Cherry Creek Pioneer. Rushing to beat the Pioneer into print, Byers set to work on the first edition of his newspaper shortly after he arrived in Denver in March. Working with a handpress in the attic of a local saloon, Byers printed and distributed the first edition of his newspaper on this day in 1859, beating the first release of The Pioneer by only 20 minutes. In honor of the rugged mountain range that rose up abruptly to the west of Denver, Byers named his new venture in frontier journalism The Rocky Mountain News. Byers remained the editor and publisher of the News until 1878, using the paper as a platform to promote the development of agriculture in the area as an alternative to relying solely on mining. Never trained as a professional journalist, Byers also unapologetically used the paper to express his own views. He died in 1903, having witnessed and shaped Denver's transformation from a rugged frontier-mining town to a sophisticated business and financial center of the Rocky Mountain West.
1865. Confederate President Jefferson Davis writes to his wife, Varina, of the desperate situating facing the Confederates. "Panic has seized the country," he wrote to his wife in Georgia. Davis was in Charlotte, North Carolina, on his flight away from Yankee troops. It was three weeks since Davis had fled the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia, as Union troops were overrunning the trenches nearby. Davis continued to his wife, "The issue is one which it is very painful for me to meet. On one hand is the long night of oppression which will follow the return of our people to the 'Union'; on the other, the suffering of the women and children, and carnage among the few brave patriots who would still oppose the invader."
Two weeks later, Union troops finally captured the Confederate president in northern Georgia. Davis was charged with treason, but never tried. In 1889, he died at age 81.
April 23 is St. George's Day, honoring the patron saint of England. St. George's Day has been a significant day in British history. On the flip side of the Pond, April 23 is also the birthday of one of the two worst presidents the United States ever had, which is probably karmic payback for the American Revolution. It was up to America's secular saint, Abraham Lincoln, to clean up the mess he left behind.
215 BC. A temple is built on the Capitoline Hill dedicated to Venus Erycina to commemorate the Roman defeat at Lake Trasimene. Roman deities were given various epithets to describe the diifferent facets of their roles. Venus Erycina ("Venus from Eryx"), also called Venus Erucina, originated on Mount Eryx in western Sicily. Temples were erected to her on the Capitoline Hill and outside the Porta Collina. She embodied "impure" love, and was the patron goddess of prostitutes.
AD 303. Saint George is put to death. Saint George was a soldier of the Roman Empire, from Anatolia, now modern day Turkey, who is venerated as an Islamic and Christian martyr. Saint George is the most venerated saint in the Eastern Orthodox Church and Oriental Orthodox Churches. Immortalized in the tale of George and the Dragon, he is the patron saint of Canada, Catalonia, England, Ethiopia, Georgia, Greece, Montenegro, Portugal, Serbia, the cities of Istanbul, Ljubljana and Moscow, as well as a wide range of professions, organizations and disease sufferers.
In 303 Emperor Diocletian issued an edict authorizing the systematic persecution of Christians across the Empire. The emperor Galerius was supposedly responsible for this decision and would continue the persecution during his own reign (305–311). George was ordered to take part in the persecution but instead confessed to being a Christian himself and criticized the imperial decision. An enraged Diocletian ordered the torture of this apparent traitor, and his execution. After various tortures, beginning with being lacerated on a wheel of swords, George was executed by decapitation before Nicomedia's defensive wall on April 23, 303.
997. Saint Adalbert of Prague is killed for chopping down a tree. After he had converted Hungary, he was sent by the Pope to convert the heathen Prussians. It was a standard procedure of Christian missionaries to chop down sacred oak trees. Because the trees were worshipped and the spirits who were believed to inhabit the trees were feared for their powers, this was done to demonstrate to non-Christians that no supernatural powers protected the trees from the Christians. When he did not heed warnings to stay away from the sacred oak groves, Adalbert was executed for sacrilege, which his co-religionists interpreted as martyrdom.
1014. The Battle of Clontarf is fought in Ireland. High King Brian Boru defeats Viking invaders, but is killed in battle. The Battle of Clontarf took place on Good Friday in 1014 between the forces of Brian Boru and the forces led by the King of Leinster, Máelmorda mac Murchada: composed mainly of his own men, Viking mercenaries from Dublin and the Orkney Islands led by his cousin Sigtrygg, as well as the one rebellious king from the province of Ulster. It ended in a rout of the Máelmorda's forces, along with the death of Brian; who was killed by a few Norsemen who were fleeing the battle and stumbled upon his tent. After the battle Ireland returned to a fractious status quo between the many small, separate kingdoms that had existed before Brian's rule.
1343. The St. George's Night Uprising takes place in Estonia. The uprising was an unsuccessful attempt by the indigenous Estonian population in the Duchy of Estonia, the Bishopric of Ösel-Wiek, and the insular territories of the State of the Teutonic Order to annihilate the Danish and German rulers and landlords, who had conquered the country in the 13th century during the Livonian crusade, and to eradicate the non-indigenous Christian religion. After initial success the revolt was ended by the invasion of the Teutonic Order.
1348. The founding of the Order of the Garter by King Edward III of England is announced on St George's Day. The Most Noble Order of the Garter is an English order of chivalry dating from medieval times. It is the world's oldest national order of knighthood, and the pinnacle of the British honours system.
As the name suggests, the Order's primary emblem, depicted on several insignia, is a garter bearing the motto Honi soit qui mal y pense in gold letters. The motto is Old French for "shame upon him who thinks evil of it."
Various legends account for the origin of the Order. The most popular legend involves the "Countess of Salisbury" (possibly Joan of Kent). While she was dancing with or near King Edward at Eltham Palace, her garter is said to have slipped from her leg. When the surrounding courtiers sniggered, the king picked it up and tied it to his leg, exclaiming Honi soit qui mal y pense ("shamed be the person who thinks evil of it") -- the phrase that has become the motto of the Order.
1564. William Shakespeare is born. The record of Shakespeare's christening dates this to 26 April of that year. As christenings were performed within three days of birth, tradition has settled on April 23 as his birthday. This date has a convenient symmetry, for Shakespeare died on the same day: April 23 (May 3 on the modern Gregorian calendar), in 1616.
Shakespeare's works have been translated into every major living language, and his plays are continually performed all around the world. Shakespeare is the most quoted writer in the literature and history of the English-speaking world, and many of his quotations and neologisms have passed into everyday usage in English and other languages. The Bard also invented new words for the English language, for example, "assassin."
1597. Shakespeare's The Merry Wives of Windsor is first performed, with Queen Elizabeth I of England in attendance.
1635. The first public school in America, Boston Latin School, is founded in Boston, Massachusetts.
The Public Latin School was a bastion for educating the sons of the Boston Brahmin elite, enabling the school to claim many influential Bostonians as alumni. Its curriculum follows that of the 18th century Latin-school movement, which holds the Classics to be the basis of an educated mind. Four years of Latin are mandatory for all pupils who enter the school in 7th grade, three years for those who enter in 9th. In 2007 the school was named one of the top twenty high schools in the United States by U.S. News & World Report.
1661. King Charles II of England, Scotland and Ireland is crowned in Westminster Abbey. Charles II was king from 30 January 1649 (de jure) or 29 May 1660 (de facto) until his death.
His father Charles I had been executed in 1649, following the English Civil War; the monarchy was then abolished and England, and subsequently Scotland and Ireland became a united republic under Oliver Cromwell, the Lord Protector, albeit with Scotland and Ireland under military occupation and de facto martial law. In 1660, shortly after Cromwell's death, the monarchy was restored under Charles II. He was popularly known as the "Merry Monarch" in reference to the liveliness and hedonism of his court.
1789. President-elect George Washington and his wife move into the first executive mansion, the Franklin House in New York City.
1791. James Buchanan is born; he would grow up to be the 15th President of the United States. Scholars consistently rank him as one of the two or three worst American presidents. Although he claimed secession was illegal, he asserted that going to war to stop it was also illegal. This inaction laid the grounds for President Abraham Lincoln to fight the American Civil War.
Buchanan is the only person from Pennsylvania to have been elected president. He is also the only bachelor to hold the office (and some speculate that he might also have been the first homosexual president). Columnist, commentator and erstwhile presidental candidate Pat Buchanan is a descendant.
1815. The Second Serbian Uprising, a second phase of the national revolution of the Serbs against the Ottoman Empire, erupts shortly after the annexation of the country to the Ottoman Empire. The occupation was enforced following the defeat of the First Serbian Uprising (1804-1813), during which Serbia existed as a de facto independent state for over a decade. The second revolution ultimately resulted in Serbian semi-independence from the Ottoman Empire. The Principality of Serbia was established, governed by its own Parliament, Constitution and its own royal dynasty. De jure independence followed during the second half of the 19th century.
1859. Beating a rival publisher by a mere 20 minutes, William Byers distributes the first newspaper ever published in the frontier boomtown of Denver, Colorado. As was the case in many western frontier towns, would-be journalists in Denver were vying for the honor of publishing the first newspaper. In Byers' case, his competitor was the Cherry Creek Pioneer. Rushing to beat the Pioneer into print, Byers set to work on the first edition of his newspaper shortly after he arrived in Denver in March. Working with a handpress in the attic of a local saloon, Byers printed and distributed the first edition of his newspaper on this day in 1859, beating the first release of The Pioneer by only 20 minutes. In honor of the rugged mountain range that rose up abruptly to the west of Denver, Byers named his new venture in frontier journalism The Rocky Mountain News. Byers remained the editor and publisher of the News until 1878, using the paper as a platform to promote the development of agriculture in the area as an alternative to relying solely on mining. Never trained as a professional journalist, Byers also unapologetically used the paper to express his own views. He died in 1903, having witnessed and shaped Denver's transformation from a rugged frontier-mining town to a sophisticated business and financial center of the Rocky Mountain West.
1865. Confederate President Jefferson Davis writes to his wife, Varina, of the desperate situating facing the Confederates. "Panic has seized the country," he wrote to his wife in Georgia. Davis was in Charlotte, North Carolina, on his flight away from Yankee troops. It was three weeks since Davis had fled the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia, as Union troops were overrunning the trenches nearby. Davis continued to his wife, "The issue is one which it is very painful for me to meet. On one hand is the long night of oppression which will follow the return of our people to the 'Union'; on the other, the suffering of the women and children, and carnage among the few brave patriots who would still oppose the invader."
Two weeks later, Union troops finally captured the Confederate president in northern Georgia. Davis was charged with treason, but never tried. In 1889, he died at age 81.
part 2
1910. Theodore Roosevelt delivers his "The Man in the Arena" speech at the Sorbonne in Paris, France. It was rapturously received by the French. In it, Roosevelt said: "It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."
In later years, it was a favorite passage of a fellow Republican President Richard Nixon, who used it both in his victory speech on November 6, 1968, and almost six years later, in his resignation address to the nation. Nelson Mandela also gave a copy of this speech to François Pienaar, captain of the South African rugby team, before the start of the 1995 Rugby World Cup, in which the South African side eventually defeated the heavily favored All Blacks.
1920. The national council in Turkey denounces the government of Sultan Mehmed VI and announces a temporary constitution. The Grand National Assembly of Turkey is founded in Ankara.
1932. The 153-year old De Adriaan Windmill in Haarlem, the Netherlands burns down.
1940. The Rhythm Night Club fire at a dance hall in Natchez, Mississippi kills 198 people.
1941. In World War II, the Greek government and King George II evacuate Athens before the invading Wehrmacht.
1945. Adolf Hitler's designated successor Hermann Göring sends him a telegram to asking permission to take leadership of the Third Reich, which causes Hitler to replace him with Joseph Goebbels and Karl Dönitz. Hermann Göring had been the second most-powerful man in the Nazi Party for some time before Hitler came to power in 1933. On the first day of World War II, Hitler made a speech stating that Göring would succeed him "if anything should befall me."
According to Albert Speer, the Göring Telegram initiated an important crisis in Hitler's psychological breakdown which precipitated the political disintegration of military command and control in the ultimate stage of the destruction of the Third Reich. Upon learning of other communiques between Göring and other officers which referred to his invocation of Hitler's testament, Hitler flew into a rage. Göring's action, combined with Heinrich Himmler's attempt to seize power without even asking Hitler for permission, prompted Hitler to write his last will and testament. In this document, Hitler dismissed Göring from all of his offices and expelled him from the Nazi Party. Over the following week, Hitler's depression deepened culminating in his suicide pact with Eva Braun. Hitler and Braun committed suicide exactly one week after the arrival of the Göring Telegram.
1945. Less than two weeks after taking over as president after the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman gives a tongue-lashing to Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov. The incident indicated that Truman was determined to take a "tougher" stance with the Soviets than his predecessor had.
On April 23, 1945, Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov arrived at the White House for a meeting with the new president. Truman immediately lashed out at Molotov, "in words of one syllable," as the president later recalled. As Molotov listened incredulously, Truman charged that the Soviets were breaking their agreements and that Stalin needed to keep his word. At the end of Truman's tirade, Molotov indignantly declared that he had never been talked to in such a manner. Truman, not to be outdone, replied that if Molotov had kept his promises, he would not need to be talked to like that. Molotov stormed out of the meeting. Truman was delighted with his own performance, telling one friend that he gave the Soviet official "the straight one-two to the jaw." The president was convinced that a tough stance was the only way to deal with the communists, a policy that came to dominate America's early Cold War policies toward the Soviets.
1967. Soviet cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov is killed when his parachute fails to deploy during his spacecraft's landing.
1968. Student protesters at Columbia University in New York City take over administration buildings and shut down the university.
1969. Sirhan Sirhan is sentenced to death after being convicted in the assassination of politician Robert F. Kennedy. However, in 1972, the California Supreme Court abolished the death penalty and Sirhan's sentence was commuted to life in prison. His requests for parole have been denied over a dozen times, and he continues to serve his time in a California prison.
1975. At a speech at Tulane University, President Gerald Ford says the Vietnam War is finished as far as America is concerned. "Today, Americans can regain the sense of pride that existed before Vietnam. But it cannot be achieved by re-fighting a war." This was devastating news to the South Vietnamese, who were desperately pleading for U.S. support as the North Vietnamese surrounded Saigon for the final assault on the capital city.
1979. American model and actress Jaime King is born in the suburbs of Omaha, Nebraska. She is reputed to be named after Jaime Sommers of the 1970s television series, The Bionic Woman. King was discovered at the age of fourteen while attending a school for modeling.
Considered "One of the world's top fashion models," she also goes by the names James King, which was a childhood nickname given to King by her parents. She used "James" during her early modeling years because her agency already represented another Jaime -- the older, then-more famous model Jaime Rishar. King is sometimes referred to as the "Model with a man's name."
King had a successful early career as a fashion model and by age fifteen she had modeled in Vogue, Mademoiselle, Allure, and Seventeen. At sixteen, King had graced the pages of Glamour and Harper's Bazaar.
In 1999 King began her acting career and made her debut in the film Happy Campers which was screened at the Sundance Film Festival in 2001. 2005 saw King in the film adaptation of Frank Miller's graphic novel titled Sin City as twins Goldie and Wendy. King was one of the few in the black and white film to appear in color and was featured in the segment The Hard Goodbye opposite Mickey Rourke. She returned in 2007 for the sequel to Sin City, Sin City 2. (See pictures.)
1985. Coca-Cola changes its formula and releases New Coke. The response is overwhelmingly negative, and the original formula is back on the market in less than three months.
1988. Pink Floyd's legendary album Dark Side Of The Moon, after spending the record total of 741 consecutive weeks (over 14 years) on the Billboard 200, left the charts for its first time ever.
1990. Namibia becomes the 160th member of the United Nations and the 50th member of the Commonwealth of Nations.
1993. Eritreans vote overwhelmingly for independence from Ethiopia in a United Nations-monitored referendum.
1997. Forty-two villagers are slaughtered in the Omaria massacre in Algeria. Attackers armed with knives, sabers, and guns killed 42 people -- including 17 women and 3 babies -- in three hours, mutilating and sometimes burning the bodies. A pregnant women was cut open, and her baby hacked apart. The atrocities were the work of Islamic extremists. A previous massacre had taken place at Omaria on January 22, in which 23 people were killed.
2005. The first video is uploaded to YouTube.com.
2006. Mount Merapi erupts in Indonesia. It is the most active volcano in Indonesia and has erupted regularly since 1548. Its name means Mountain of Fire. It is very close to the city of Yogyakarta, and thousands of people live on the flanks of the volcano, with villages as high as 1700 m above sea level.
Because of the hazards it poses to populated areas, it has been designated a "Decade Volcano." The Decade Volcanoes are 16 volcanoes identified by the International Association of Volcanology and Chemistry of the Earth's Interior (IAVCEI) as being worthy of particular study in light of their history of large, destructive eruptions and proximity to populated areas.
2009. The gamma ray burst GRB 090423 is observed for 10 seconds. The event signals the most distant object of any kind and also the oldest known object in the universe. A gamma-ray burst is an extremely luminous event flash of gamma rays that occurs as the result of an explosion, and is thought to be associated with the formation of a black hole. The universe was only 630 million years old when the light from GRB 090423 was emitted, and its detection confirms that massive stars were born and dying even very early on in the life of the universe.
2010. Arizona Governor Jan Brewer signs the nation's toughest illegal immigration measure into law.
2011. The United States Air Force confirms an air strike by a predator drone in Misrata during the Libyan civil war. Meanwhile in Syria, at least twelve people are killed by security forces during funerals.
1910. Theodore Roosevelt delivers his "The Man in the Arena" speech at the Sorbonne in Paris, France. It was rapturously received by the French. In it, Roosevelt said: "It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."
In later years, it was a favorite passage of a fellow Republican President Richard Nixon, who used it both in his victory speech on November 6, 1968, and almost six years later, in his resignation address to the nation. Nelson Mandela also gave a copy of this speech to François Pienaar, captain of the South African rugby team, before the start of the 1995 Rugby World Cup, in which the South African side eventually defeated the heavily favored All Blacks.
1920. The national council in Turkey denounces the government of Sultan Mehmed VI and announces a temporary constitution. The Grand National Assembly of Turkey is founded in Ankara.
1932. The 153-year old De Adriaan Windmill in Haarlem, the Netherlands burns down.
1940. The Rhythm Night Club fire at a dance hall in Natchez, Mississippi kills 198 people.
1941. In World War II, the Greek government and King George II evacuate Athens before the invading Wehrmacht.
1945. Adolf Hitler's designated successor Hermann Göring sends him a telegram to asking permission to take leadership of the Third Reich, which causes Hitler to replace him with Joseph Goebbels and Karl Dönitz. Hermann Göring had been the second most-powerful man in the Nazi Party for some time before Hitler came to power in 1933. On the first day of World War II, Hitler made a speech stating that Göring would succeed him "if anything should befall me."
According to Albert Speer, the Göring Telegram initiated an important crisis in Hitler's psychological breakdown which precipitated the political disintegration of military command and control in the ultimate stage of the destruction of the Third Reich. Upon learning of other communiques between Göring and other officers which referred to his invocation of Hitler's testament, Hitler flew into a rage. Göring's action, combined with Heinrich Himmler's attempt to seize power without even asking Hitler for permission, prompted Hitler to write his last will and testament. In this document, Hitler dismissed Göring from all of his offices and expelled him from the Nazi Party. Over the following week, Hitler's depression deepened culminating in his suicide pact with Eva Braun. Hitler and Braun committed suicide exactly one week after the arrival of the Göring Telegram.
1945. Less than two weeks after taking over as president after the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman gives a tongue-lashing to Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov. The incident indicated that Truman was determined to take a "tougher" stance with the Soviets than his predecessor had.
On April 23, 1945, Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov arrived at the White House for a meeting with the new president. Truman immediately lashed out at Molotov, "in words of one syllable," as the president later recalled. As Molotov listened incredulously, Truman charged that the Soviets were breaking their agreements and that Stalin needed to keep his word. At the end of Truman's tirade, Molotov indignantly declared that he had never been talked to in such a manner. Truman, not to be outdone, replied that if Molotov had kept his promises, he would not need to be talked to like that. Molotov stormed out of the meeting. Truman was delighted with his own performance, telling one friend that he gave the Soviet official "the straight one-two to the jaw." The president was convinced that a tough stance was the only way to deal with the communists, a policy that came to dominate America's early Cold War policies toward the Soviets.
1967. Soviet cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov is killed when his parachute fails to deploy during his spacecraft's landing.
1968. Student protesters at Columbia University in New York City take over administration buildings and shut down the university.
1969. Sirhan Sirhan is sentenced to death after being convicted in the assassination of politician Robert F. Kennedy. However, in 1972, the California Supreme Court abolished the death penalty and Sirhan's sentence was commuted to life in prison. His requests for parole have been denied over a dozen times, and he continues to serve his time in a California prison.
1975. At a speech at Tulane University, President Gerald Ford says the Vietnam War is finished as far as America is concerned. "Today, Americans can regain the sense of pride that existed before Vietnam. But it cannot be achieved by re-fighting a war." This was devastating news to the South Vietnamese, who were desperately pleading for U.S. support as the North Vietnamese surrounded Saigon for the final assault on the capital city.
1979. American model and actress Jaime King is born in the suburbs of Omaha, Nebraska. She is reputed to be named after Jaime Sommers of the 1970s television series, The Bionic Woman. King was discovered at the age of fourteen while attending a school for modeling.
Considered "One of the world's top fashion models," she also goes by the names James King, which was a childhood nickname given to King by her parents. She used "James" during her early modeling years because her agency already represented another Jaime -- the older, then-more famous model Jaime Rishar. King is sometimes referred to as the "Model with a man's name."
King had a successful early career as a fashion model and by age fifteen she had modeled in Vogue, Mademoiselle, Allure, and Seventeen. At sixteen, King had graced the pages of Glamour and Harper's Bazaar.
In 1999 King began her acting career and made her debut in the film Happy Campers which was screened at the Sundance Film Festival in 2001. 2005 saw King in the film adaptation of Frank Miller's graphic novel titled Sin City as twins Goldie and Wendy. King was one of the few in the black and white film to appear in color and was featured in the segment The Hard Goodbye opposite Mickey Rourke. She returned in 2007 for the sequel to Sin City, Sin City 2. (See pictures.)
1985. Coca-Cola changes its formula and releases New Coke. The response is overwhelmingly negative, and the original formula is back on the market in less than three months.
1988. Pink Floyd's legendary album Dark Side Of The Moon, after spending the record total of 741 consecutive weeks (over 14 years) on the Billboard 200, left the charts for its first time ever.
1990. Namibia becomes the 160th member of the United Nations and the 50th member of the Commonwealth of Nations.
1993. Eritreans vote overwhelmingly for independence from Ethiopia in a United Nations-monitored referendum.
1997. Forty-two villagers are slaughtered in the Omaria massacre in Algeria. Attackers armed with knives, sabers, and guns killed 42 people -- including 17 women and 3 babies -- in three hours, mutilating and sometimes burning the bodies. A pregnant women was cut open, and her baby hacked apart. The atrocities were the work of Islamic extremists. A previous massacre had taken place at Omaria on January 22, in which 23 people were killed.
2005. The first video is uploaded to YouTube.com.
2006. Mount Merapi erupts in Indonesia. It is the most active volcano in Indonesia and has erupted regularly since 1548. Its name means Mountain of Fire. It is very close to the city of Yogyakarta, and thousands of people live on the flanks of the volcano, with villages as high as 1700 m above sea level.
Because of the hazards it poses to populated areas, it has been designated a "Decade Volcano." The Decade Volcanoes are 16 volcanoes identified by the International Association of Volcanology and Chemistry of the Earth's Interior (IAVCEI) as being worthy of particular study in light of their history of large, destructive eruptions and proximity to populated areas.
2009. The gamma ray burst GRB 090423 is observed for 10 seconds. The event signals the most distant object of any kind and also the oldest known object in the universe. A gamma-ray burst is an extremely luminous event flash of gamma rays that occurs as the result of an explosion, and is thought to be associated with the formation of a black hole. The universe was only 630 million years old when the light from GRB 090423 was emitted, and its detection confirms that massive stars were born and dying even very early on in the life of the universe.
2010. Arizona Governor Jan Brewer signs the nation's toughest illegal immigration measure into law.
2011. The United States Air Force confirms an air strike by a predator drone in Misrata during the Libyan civil war. Meanwhile in Syria, at least twelve people are killed by security forces during funerals.
Attachments
April 24 is Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day, commemorating the "forgotten holocaust." This is also the anniversary of a royal wedding, an embassy bombing, and a failed rescue that contributed to a president's downfall.
1479 BC. Thutmose III ascends to the throne of Egypt, although power effectively shifts to his step-mother Hatshepsut (according to the Low Chronology of the 18th Dynasty).
Hatshepsut (meaning Foremost of Noble Ladies) was the fifth pharaoh of the Eighteenth dynasty of ancient Egypt. She is generally regarded by Egyptologists as one of the most successful female pharaohs of Egypt, who reigned longer than any other female ruler of an indigenous dynasty. Hatshepsut is believed to have served as a co-regent from about 1479 to 1458 BC (Years 7 to 21 of Thutmose III). She is regarded as the earliest known queen regnant in history and only the second woman known to have assumed the throne as "King of Upper and Lower Egypt" after Queen Sobekneferu of the 12th Dynasty. After her death and his subsequent rise to being the pharaoh of the kingdom, Thutmose created the largest empire Egypt had ever seen; no fewer than seventeen campaigns were conducted, and he conquered from Niy in north Syria to the fourth cataract of the Nile in Nubia. After his years of campaigning were over, he established himself as a great builder pharaoh as well. Thutmose III was responsible for building over fifty temples in Egypt and building massive additions to Egypt's chief temple at Karnak.
1184 BC. The Greeks enter Troy using the Trojan Horse (traditional date). Historian Kenneth J. Dillon argues that the Trojans were originally a steppe people related to the Magyars. After attacking and destroying the Hittite Empire, they came to control the Straits. During the Trojan War, the Greeks used a naval blockade to prevent Trojans on the European shore and on Lemnos from coming to the aid of Troy. Once Troy fell, the Trojans on the European shore fled northward and ended up as the Etruscans in Italy.
British historian Michael Wood in his television series on Troy suggested that stolen horses, not a runaway queen, was the casus belli. As often happens, an oft-told tale is often embellished with only traces of the truth remaining -- that trace being the fabled Trojan Horse.
1558. Mary Queen of Scots marries the Dauphin of France, François, at Notre Dame de Paris. Mary, alas, was unlucky in love. Her first husband ascended the French throne as Francis II in 1559, and Mary became Queen consort of France until she was widowed on 5 December 1560. Mary then returned to Scotland in 1561. Four years later, she married her first cousin, Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley. Their union was unhappy and in February 1567, there was a huge explosion at their house, and Darnley was found dead, apparently strangled, in the garden.
She soon married James Hepburn, 4th Earl of Bothwell, who was generally believed to be Darnley's murderer. Following an uprising against the couple, Mary was imprisoned in Loch Leven Castle on 15 June and forced to abdicate in favor of her one-year-old son, James VI. After an unsuccessful attempt to regain the throne, Mary fled to England seeking the protection of her first cousin once removed, Queen Elizabeth I of England, whose kingdom she hoped to inherit. Perceiving her as a threat, Elizabeth had her arrested. After 19 years in custody in a number of castles and manor houses in England, she was tried and executed for treason for her alleged involvement in three plots to assassinate Elizabeth.
1704. The first regular newspaper in the United States, the Boston, Massachusetts New-Letter, is published.
1781. During the American Revolution, British General William Phillips lands on the banks of the James River at City Port, Virginia. Once there, he combined forces with British General Benedict Arnold, the former American general and notorious traitor, to launch an attack on the town of Petersburg, Virginia, located about 12 miles away.
Defending the town of Petersburg from the approaching British troops was a contingent of 1,000 troops from the Virginia militia led by Major General Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben. General von Steuben had set up defensive lines of resistance, but had no real hope of victory as the Americans were severely outnumbered by the British army of 2,500 troops. Although Petersburg was lost, General von Steuben and the Virginia militia were able to resist the British force long enough for Patriot troops to assemble and set up defensive positions in nearby towns.
1792. The French national anthem, La Marseillaise, is composed by Captain Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle.
1800. The United States Library of Congress is established when President John Adams signs legislation to appropriate $5,000 to purchase "such books as may be necessary for the use of Congress."
1862. During the American Civil War, a flotilla commanded by Union Admiral David Farragut passes two Confederate forts on the Mississippi River on its way to capture New Orleans, Louisiana.
1877. At the outbreak of the Russo-Turkish War, Russia declares war on Ottoman Empire.
The Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878 had its origins in the Russian goal of gaining access to the Mediterranean Sea and liberating the Orthodox Christian Slavic peoples of the Balkan Peninsula (Bulgarians, Serbians) from the Islamic-ruled Ottoman Empire. These nations delivered by the Russians from the centuries of Ottoman rule regard this war as the second beginning of their nationhood.
The war also provided an opportunity to gain full independence for the Kingdom of Romania. Although unlike the rest of the Balkan countries it had never been part of the Ottoman Empire, it was still officially under Ottoman suzerainty. Hence, in Romanian historic works, the war is known as the Romanian War of Independence.
1885. American sharpshooter Annie Oakley is hired by Nate Salsbury to be a part of Buffalo Bill's Wild West show. Oakley's amazing marksmanship led to a starring role in the Wild West show, which propelled her to become the first American female superstar. In Europe, she performed for Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom, King Umberto I of Italy, Marie François Sadi Carnot (the President of France) and other crowned heads of state. Oakley had such good aim that, at his request, she knocked the ashes off a cigarette held by the newly crowned German Kaiser Wilhelm II, which inspired the quip, "Some uncharitable people later ventured that if Annie had shot Wilhelm and not his cigarette, she could have prevented World War I." After the outbreak of World War I, however, Oakley did send a letter to the Kaiser, requesting a second shot. The Kaiser did not respond.
1908. 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.
1915. The Armenian Genocide begins with the arrests of hundreds of prominent Armenians in Constantinople (now Istanbul).
The Armenian Genocide refers to the deliberate and systematic extermination of the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire during and just after World War I. It was characterised by the use of massacres, and the use of deportations involving forced marches under conditions designed to lead to the death of the deportees, with the total number of Armenian deaths generally held to have been between one and one-and-a-half million.
The date of the onset of the genocide is conventionally held to be April 24, 1915, the day that Ottoman authorities arrested some 250 Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Istanbul. Thereafter, the Ottoman military uprooted Armenians from their homes and forced them to march for hundreds of miles, depriving them of food and water, to the desert of what is now Syria. Massacres were indiscriminate of age or gender, and rape and other sexual abuse were commonplace.
1479 BC. Thutmose III ascends to the throne of Egypt, although power effectively shifts to his step-mother Hatshepsut (according to the Low Chronology of the 18th Dynasty).
Hatshepsut (meaning Foremost of Noble Ladies) was the fifth pharaoh of the Eighteenth dynasty of ancient Egypt. She is generally regarded by Egyptologists as one of the most successful female pharaohs of Egypt, who reigned longer than any other female ruler of an indigenous dynasty. Hatshepsut is believed to have served as a co-regent from about 1479 to 1458 BC (Years 7 to 21 of Thutmose III). She is regarded as the earliest known queen regnant in history and only the second woman known to have assumed the throne as "King of Upper and Lower Egypt" after Queen Sobekneferu of the 12th Dynasty. After her death and his subsequent rise to being the pharaoh of the kingdom, Thutmose created the largest empire Egypt had ever seen; no fewer than seventeen campaigns were conducted, and he conquered from Niy in north Syria to the fourth cataract of the Nile in Nubia. After his years of campaigning were over, he established himself as a great builder pharaoh as well. Thutmose III was responsible for building over fifty temples in Egypt and building massive additions to Egypt's chief temple at Karnak.
1184 BC. The Greeks enter Troy using the Trojan Horse (traditional date). Historian Kenneth J. Dillon argues that the Trojans were originally a steppe people related to the Magyars. After attacking and destroying the Hittite Empire, they came to control the Straits. During the Trojan War, the Greeks used a naval blockade to prevent Trojans on the European shore and on Lemnos from coming to the aid of Troy. Once Troy fell, the Trojans on the European shore fled northward and ended up as the Etruscans in Italy.
British historian Michael Wood in his television series on Troy suggested that stolen horses, not a runaway queen, was the casus belli. As often happens, an oft-told tale is often embellished with only traces of the truth remaining -- that trace being the fabled Trojan Horse.
1558. Mary Queen of Scots marries the Dauphin of France, François, at Notre Dame de Paris. Mary, alas, was unlucky in love. Her first husband ascended the French throne as Francis II in 1559, and Mary became Queen consort of France until she was widowed on 5 December 1560. Mary then returned to Scotland in 1561. Four years later, she married her first cousin, Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley. Their union was unhappy and in February 1567, there was a huge explosion at their house, and Darnley was found dead, apparently strangled, in the garden.
She soon married James Hepburn, 4th Earl of Bothwell, who was generally believed to be Darnley's murderer. Following an uprising against the couple, Mary was imprisoned in Loch Leven Castle on 15 June and forced to abdicate in favor of her one-year-old son, James VI. After an unsuccessful attempt to regain the throne, Mary fled to England seeking the protection of her first cousin once removed, Queen Elizabeth I of England, whose kingdom she hoped to inherit. Perceiving her as a threat, Elizabeth had her arrested. After 19 years in custody in a number of castles and manor houses in England, she was tried and executed for treason for her alleged involvement in three plots to assassinate Elizabeth.
1704. The first regular newspaper in the United States, the Boston, Massachusetts New-Letter, is published.
1781. During the American Revolution, British General William Phillips lands on the banks of the James River at City Port, Virginia. Once there, he combined forces with British General Benedict Arnold, the former American general and notorious traitor, to launch an attack on the town of Petersburg, Virginia, located about 12 miles away.
Defending the town of Petersburg from the approaching British troops was a contingent of 1,000 troops from the Virginia militia led by Major General Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben. General von Steuben had set up defensive lines of resistance, but had no real hope of victory as the Americans were severely outnumbered by the British army of 2,500 troops. Although Petersburg was lost, General von Steuben and the Virginia militia were able to resist the British force long enough for Patriot troops to assemble and set up defensive positions in nearby towns.
1792. The French national anthem, La Marseillaise, is composed by Captain Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle.
1800. The United States Library of Congress is established when President John Adams signs legislation to appropriate $5,000 to purchase "such books as may be necessary for the use of Congress."
1862. During the American Civil War, a flotilla commanded by Union Admiral David Farragut passes two Confederate forts on the Mississippi River on its way to capture New Orleans, Louisiana.
1877. At the outbreak of the Russo-Turkish War, Russia declares war on Ottoman Empire.
The Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878 had its origins in the Russian goal of gaining access to the Mediterranean Sea and liberating the Orthodox Christian Slavic peoples of the Balkan Peninsula (Bulgarians, Serbians) from the Islamic-ruled Ottoman Empire. These nations delivered by the Russians from the centuries of Ottoman rule regard this war as the second beginning of their nationhood.
The war also provided an opportunity to gain full independence for the Kingdom of Romania. Although unlike the rest of the Balkan countries it had never been part of the Ottoman Empire, it was still officially under Ottoman suzerainty. Hence, in Romanian historic works, the war is known as the Romanian War of Independence.
1885. American sharpshooter Annie Oakley is hired by Nate Salsbury to be a part of Buffalo Bill's Wild West show. Oakley's amazing marksmanship led to a starring role in the Wild West show, which propelled her to become the first American female superstar. In Europe, she performed for Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom, King Umberto I of Italy, Marie François Sadi Carnot (the President of France) and other crowned heads of state. Oakley had such good aim that, at his request, she knocked the ashes off a cigarette held by the newly crowned German Kaiser Wilhelm II, which inspired the quip, "Some uncharitable people later ventured that if Annie had shot Wilhelm and not his cigarette, she could have prevented World War I." After the outbreak of World War I, however, Oakley did send a letter to the Kaiser, requesting a second shot. The Kaiser did not respond.
1908. 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.
1915. The Armenian Genocide begins with the arrests of hundreds of prominent Armenians in Constantinople (now Istanbul).
The Armenian Genocide refers to the deliberate and systematic extermination of the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire during and just after World War I. It was characterised by the use of massacres, and the use of deportations involving forced marches under conditions designed to lead to the death of the deportees, with the total number of Armenian deaths generally held to have been between one and one-and-a-half million.
The date of the onset of the genocide is conventionally held to be April 24, 1915, the day that Ottoman authorities arrested some 250 Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Istanbul. Thereafter, the Ottoman military uprooted Armenians from their homes and forced them to march for hundreds of miles, depriving them of food and water, to the desert of what is now Syria. Massacres were indiscriminate of age or gender, and rape and other sexual abuse were commonplace.
1916. The Easter Rising begins. The Irish Republican Brotherhood, led by nationalists Patrick Pearse, James Connolly, and Joseph Plunkett, start a rebellion in Ireland.
The Rising was mounted with the aims of ending British rule in Ireland and establishing an Irish Republic. It was the most significant uprising in Ireland since the rebellion of 1798. It was suppressed after seven days of fighting, and its leaders were court-martialled and executed, but it succeeded in bringing armed republicanism back to the forefront of Irish politics.
1918. In World War I, the first tank-to-tank combat takes place at Villers-Bretonneux, France, when three British Mark IVs meet three German A7Vs.
1926. The Treaty of Berlin is signed, under which Germany and the Soviet Union each pledge neutrality in the event of an attack on the other by a third party for the next five years.
1932. Benny Rothman leads the mass trespass of Kinder Scout, leading to substantial legal reforms in the United Kingdom. The mass trespass of Kinder Scout was a notable act of willful trespass by walkers. It was undertaken at Kinder Scout, in the Peak District of Derbyshire, England on 24 April 1932, to highlight that walkers in England and Wales were denied access to areas of open country. The mass trespass marked the beginning of a media campaign by The Ramblers Association, culminating in the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000, which legislates rights to walk on mapped access land. The introduction of this Act was a key promise in the manifesto which brought New Labour to power in 1997.
1941. The United Kingdom begins evacuating Greece in World War II.
1953. Winston Churchill is knighted by Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom.
1961. Bob Dylan earns a $50 session fee for playing harmonica on Harry Belafonte's Midnight Special. It is Dylan's recording debut.
1965. Civil war breaks out in the Dominican Republic when civilians led by some members of the armed forces, including Colonel Francisco Caamaño, overthrow the triumvirate that was in power since the coup d'état against Juan Bosch, who was legally elected president in 1963.
1967. At a news conference in Washington, Gen. William Westmoreland, senior U.S. commander in South Vietnam, causes controversy by saying that the enemy had "gained support in the United States that gives him hope that he can win politically that which he cannot win militarily." Though he said that, "Ninety-five percent of the people were behind the United States effort in Vietnam," he asserted that the American soldiers in Vietnam were "dismayed, and so am I, by recent unpatriotic acts at home."
1968. American actress Stacy Haiduk is born in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Haiduk first achieved national fame when she was cast in the role of Lana Lang in the live-action Superboy TV series of 1988. The series ran for four years (1988-1992), and Haiduk was one of the only cast members to remain for its entire 100 episode run. After the series ended, she appeared in the cult film Luther the Geekfor Troma Entertainment. (See pictures.)
Haiduk subsequently landed a role in seaQuest DSV, in which she played Lt. Cmdr. Katherine Hitchcock, the chief engineer, and third in command of the high-tech submarine. Major cast changes occurred for season two. Haiduk declined to reappear for the second season.
Haiduk went on to play a female vampire in the short-lived series, Kindred: The Embraced. After this stint, much of her acting consisted of the occasional film and TV appearances on such shows as Charmed , The X-Files and CSI: Miami. In 2007 she joined the cast of the ABC TV network's soap opera All My Children as Hannah Nichols.
1970. The first Chinese satellite, Dong Fang Hong I, is launched.
1975. The Baader-Meinhof Gang blows up the West German embassy in Stockholm.
The Baader-Meinhof Gang was one of postwar West Germany's most active and prominent militant left-wing groups. It described itself as a communist "urban guerrilla" group engaged in armed resistance, while it was described by the West German government as a terrorist group.
Also known as the Red Army Faction, the gang operated from the 1970s to 1998, committing numerous crimes, especially in the autumn of 1977. It was responsible for 34 deaths including many secondary targets such as chauffeurs and bodyguards -- and many injuries in its almost 30 years of existence.
1980. Eight U.S. servicemen die in Operation Eagle Claw as they attempt to end the Iran hostage crisis.
Operation Eagle Claw was a United States military operation to rescue the 53 hostages from the U.S. embassy in Tehran, Iran on April 24, 1980. The operation was a failure, and had a severe impact on U.S. President Jimmy Carter's re-election prospects.
The hostages were eventually released via diplomatic negotiations on January 20, 1981, Carter's last day in office, after 444 days of captivity.
1993. An IRA bomb devastates the Bishopsgate area of the City of London.
1996. The main assembly of the Palestine Liberation Organization votes to revoke clauses in its charter that call for an armed struggle to destroy Israel.
2004. The U.S. lifts economic sanctions imposed on Libya 18 years previously, as a reward for its cooperation in eliminating weapons of mass destruction.
2005. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger is enthroned as the 265th Pope of the Roman Catholic Church taking the name Pope Benedict XVI. One of the best-known Catholic theologians since the 1950s and a prolific author, Benedict XVI is viewed as a defender of traditional Catholic doctrine and values.
Benedict XVI was elected Pope at the age of 78. He is the oldest person to have been elected Pope since Pope Clement XII (1730–40). He had served longer as a cardinal than any Pope since Benedict XIII (1724–30). He is the ninth German Pope, the eighth having been the Dutch-German Pope Adrian VI (1522–23) from Utrecht. The last Pope named Benedict was Benedict XV, an Italian who reigned from 1914 to 1922, during World War I (1914–18).
As well as his native German, Benedict XVI fluently speaks Italian, French, English, Spanish and Latin, and has a knowledge of Portuguese. He can read Ancient Greek and biblical Hebrew.
2007. Gliese 581 d is discovered by a Chilean observatory and believed to be a planet capable of holding extraterresial life. In October 2008, members of the networking website Bebo beamed A Message From Earth, a high-power transmission at Gliese 581, using the RT-70 radio telescope belonging to the National Space Agency of Ukraine. This transmission is due to arrive in the Gliese 581 system's vicinity by the year 2029; the earliest possible arrival for a response, should there be one, would be in 2049.
2011. A group of 15 Israeli Jewish worshipers entered the Palestinian city of Nablus to pray in the Jewish holy site Joseph's Tomb, without coordinating their visit with the IDF as required by law. After finishing praying, as the Jewish worshipers were leaving Nablus, their cars came under fire from a Palestinian Authority police jeep. Five Israelis were injured in the attack and the nephew of Israeli Culture and Sport Minister Limor Livnat was killed. After the shooting, Ynet reports "Palestinian sources reported local Palestinian youths gathered around the Joseph Tomb's compound shortly after the incident and set it on fire."
In Syria, police and soldiers open fire from rooftops in Jabla, killing and injuring nearby people; no protest was taking place at the time. An independent investigation is urged into Friday's massacre of close to 100 people as well as Saturday's killings of mourners at the funerals.
Meanwhile, Pope Benedict XVI blesses Easter Mass in Saint Peter's Square in Vatican City, calling for diplomacy and dialogue to bring ongoing events in Libya to a peaceful conclusion as deaths continue to climb in the besieged Libyan city of Misrata.
The Rising was mounted with the aims of ending British rule in Ireland and establishing an Irish Republic. It was the most significant uprising in Ireland since the rebellion of 1798. It was suppressed after seven days of fighting, and its leaders were court-martialled and executed, but it succeeded in bringing armed republicanism back to the forefront of Irish politics.
1918. In World War I, the first tank-to-tank combat takes place at Villers-Bretonneux, France, when three British Mark IVs meet three German A7Vs.
1926. The Treaty of Berlin is signed, under which Germany and the Soviet Union each pledge neutrality in the event of an attack on the other by a third party for the next five years.
1932. Benny Rothman leads the mass trespass of Kinder Scout, leading to substantial legal reforms in the United Kingdom. The mass trespass of Kinder Scout was a notable act of willful trespass by walkers. It was undertaken at Kinder Scout, in the Peak District of Derbyshire, England on 24 April 1932, to highlight that walkers in England and Wales were denied access to areas of open country. The mass trespass marked the beginning of a media campaign by The Ramblers Association, culminating in the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000, which legislates rights to walk on mapped access land. The introduction of this Act was a key promise in the manifesto which brought New Labour to power in 1997.
1941. The United Kingdom begins evacuating Greece in World War II.
1953. Winston Churchill is knighted by Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom.
1961. Bob Dylan earns a $50 session fee for playing harmonica on Harry Belafonte's Midnight Special. It is Dylan's recording debut.
1965. Civil war breaks out in the Dominican Republic when civilians led by some members of the armed forces, including Colonel Francisco Caamaño, overthrow the triumvirate that was in power since the coup d'état against Juan Bosch, who was legally elected president in 1963.
1967. At a news conference in Washington, Gen. William Westmoreland, senior U.S. commander in South Vietnam, causes controversy by saying that the enemy had "gained support in the United States that gives him hope that he can win politically that which he cannot win militarily." Though he said that, "Ninety-five percent of the people were behind the United States effort in Vietnam," he asserted that the American soldiers in Vietnam were "dismayed, and so am I, by recent unpatriotic acts at home."
1968. American actress Stacy Haiduk is born in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Haiduk first achieved national fame when she was cast in the role of Lana Lang in the live-action Superboy TV series of 1988. The series ran for four years (1988-1992), and Haiduk was one of the only cast members to remain for its entire 100 episode run. After the series ended, she appeared in the cult film Luther the Geekfor Troma Entertainment. (See pictures.)
Haiduk subsequently landed a role in seaQuest DSV, in which she played Lt. Cmdr. Katherine Hitchcock, the chief engineer, and third in command of the high-tech submarine. Major cast changes occurred for season two. Haiduk declined to reappear for the second season.
Haiduk went on to play a female vampire in the short-lived series, Kindred: The Embraced. After this stint, much of her acting consisted of the occasional film and TV appearances on such shows as Charmed , The X-Files and CSI: Miami. In 2007 she joined the cast of the ABC TV network's soap opera All My Children as Hannah Nichols.
1970. The first Chinese satellite, Dong Fang Hong I, is launched.
1975. The Baader-Meinhof Gang blows up the West German embassy in Stockholm.
The Baader-Meinhof Gang was one of postwar West Germany's most active and prominent militant left-wing groups. It described itself as a communist "urban guerrilla" group engaged in armed resistance, while it was described by the West German government as a terrorist group.
Also known as the Red Army Faction, the gang operated from the 1970s to 1998, committing numerous crimes, especially in the autumn of 1977. It was responsible for 34 deaths including many secondary targets such as chauffeurs and bodyguards -- and many injuries in its almost 30 years of existence.
1980. Eight U.S. servicemen die in Operation Eagle Claw as they attempt to end the Iran hostage crisis.
Operation Eagle Claw was a United States military operation to rescue the 53 hostages from the U.S. embassy in Tehran, Iran on April 24, 1980. The operation was a failure, and had a severe impact on U.S. President Jimmy Carter's re-election prospects.
The hostages were eventually released via diplomatic negotiations on January 20, 1981, Carter's last day in office, after 444 days of captivity.
1993. An IRA bomb devastates the Bishopsgate area of the City of London.
1996. The main assembly of the Palestine Liberation Organization votes to revoke clauses in its charter that call for an armed struggle to destroy Israel.
2004. The U.S. lifts economic sanctions imposed on Libya 18 years previously, as a reward for its cooperation in eliminating weapons of mass destruction.
2005. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger is enthroned as the 265th Pope of the Roman Catholic Church taking the name Pope Benedict XVI. One of the best-known Catholic theologians since the 1950s and a prolific author, Benedict XVI is viewed as a defender of traditional Catholic doctrine and values.
Benedict XVI was elected Pope at the age of 78. He is the oldest person to have been elected Pope since Pope Clement XII (1730–40). He had served longer as a cardinal than any Pope since Benedict XIII (1724–30). He is the ninth German Pope, the eighth having been the Dutch-German Pope Adrian VI (1522–23) from Utrecht. The last Pope named Benedict was Benedict XV, an Italian who reigned from 1914 to 1922, during World War I (1914–18).
As well as his native German, Benedict XVI fluently speaks Italian, French, English, Spanish and Latin, and has a knowledge of Portuguese. He can read Ancient Greek and biblical Hebrew.
2007. Gliese 581 d is discovered by a Chilean observatory and believed to be a planet capable of holding extraterresial life. In October 2008, members of the networking website Bebo beamed A Message From Earth, a high-power transmission at Gliese 581, using the RT-70 radio telescope belonging to the National Space Agency of Ukraine. This transmission is due to arrive in the Gliese 581 system's vicinity by the year 2029; the earliest possible arrival for a response, should there be one, would be in 2049.
2011. A group of 15 Israeli Jewish worshipers entered the Palestinian city of Nablus to pray in the Jewish holy site Joseph's Tomb, without coordinating their visit with the IDF as required by law. After finishing praying, as the Jewish worshipers were leaving Nablus, their cars came under fire from a Palestinian Authority police jeep. Five Israelis were injured in the attack and the nephew of Israeli Culture and Sport Minister Limor Livnat was killed. After the shooting, Ynet reports "Palestinian sources reported local Palestinian youths gathered around the Joseph Tomb's compound shortly after the incident and set it on fire."
In Syria, police and soldiers open fire from rooftops in Jabla, killing and injuring nearby people; no protest was taking place at the time. An independent investigation is urged into Friday's massacre of close to 100 people as well as Saturday's killings of mourners at the funerals.
Meanwhile, Pope Benedict XVI blesses Easter Mass in Saint Peter's Square in Vatican City, calling for diplomacy and dialogue to bring ongoing events in Libya to a peaceful conclusion as deaths continue to climb in the besieged Libyan city of Misrata.
Attachments
April 25th: Callista ("loveliest, most beautiful"), Virgin Martyr. Very obscure - she may have been thrown into a furnace with her brothers Evodius and Hermogenes at Syracuse in 304, but other traditions turn her into a brother, Callistus, and locate the martyrdom in Nicea. Nice name though.
There's an Eastern Orthodox St Callista who, with her sister Christina, renounced Christianity under torture, but, when they were sent to try to persuade St Dorothy to do the same, were instead persuaded by her to return to the fold, so were martyred tied back to back and burned in a vat of tar - their feast-day is Feb 6th.
Callista is also the heroine of a 'Christian romance' by John Henry (Cardinal, and lately beatified) Newman, she's a Greek teenage orphan girl who (to cut a long story short) is falsely accused of being a Christian, but becomes one while in prison, so gets martyred. I don't think he based her on any "actual" saint of that name. Here's an extract with some juicy details in the dense Victorian prose:
"Then the procurator entered into the Secretary, and drew the veil; and dictated the sentence for the tabella. Then he came out, and the præco read it:—Callista, a senseless and reprobate woman, is hereby sentenced to be thrown into the Tullianum; then to be stretched on the equuleus; then to be placed on a slow fire; lastly, to be beheaded, and left to the dogs and birds.
"CALLISTA said: Thanks to my Lord and King."
Here the Acta end: and though they seem to want their conclusion, yet they supply nearly every thing which is necessary for our purpose. The one subject on which a comment is needed, is the state prison, {363} which, though so little is said of it in the above Report, is in fact the real medium, as we may call it, for appreciating its information; a few words will suffice for our purpose.
The state prison, then, was arranged on pretty much one and the same plan through the Roman empire, nay, we may say, throughout the ancient world. It was commonly attached to the government buildings, and consisted of two parts. The first was the vestibule, or outward prison, which was a hall, approached from the prætorium, and surrounded by cells, opening into it. The prisoners, who were confined in these cells, had the benefit of the air and light, which the hall admitted. Such was the place of confinement allotted to St. Paul at Cæsarea, which is said to be the "prætorium of Herod." And hence, perhaps, it is that, in the touching Passion of St. Perpetua and St. Felicitas, St. Perpetua tells us that, when permitted to have her child, though she was in the inner portion, which will next be described, "suddenly the prison seemed to her like the prætorium."
From this vestibule there was a passage into the interior prison, called Robur or Lignum, from the beams of wood, which were the instruments of confinement, or from the character of its floor. It had no window or outlet, except this door, which, when closed, absolutely shut out light and air. Air, indeed, and coolness might be obtained for it by the barathrum, presently to be spoken of, but of what nature we shall then see. The apartment, called Lignum, was the {364} place into which St. Paul and St. Silas were cast at Philippi, before it was known that they were Romans. After scourging them severely, the magistrates, who nevertheless were but the local authorities, and had no proper jurisdiction in criminal cases, "put them in prison, bidding the jailer to keep them carefully; who, on receiving such a command, put them in the inner prison, and fastened them in the lignum." And in the Acts of the Scillitane Martyrs we read of the Proconsul giving sentence, "Let them be thrown into prison, let them be put into the Lignum, till tomorrow."
The utter darkness, the heat, and the stench of this miserable place, in which the inmates were confined day and night, is often dwelt upon by the martyrs and their biographers. "After a few days," says St. Perpetua, "we were taken to the prison, and I was frightened, for I never had known such darkness. O bitter day! the heat was excessive by reason of the crowd there." In the Acts of St. Pionius, and others of Smyrna, we read that the jailers "shut them up in the inner part of the prison, so that, bereaved of all comfort and light, they were forced to sustain extreme torment, from the darkness and stench of the prison." And, in like manner, other martyrs of Africa, about the time of St. Cyprian's martyrdom, that is, eight or ten years later than the date of this story, say, "We were not frightened at the foul darkness of that place; for soon that murky prison was radiant with the brightness of the Spirit. What days, what nights we passed there {365} no words can describe. The torments of that prison no statement can equal."
Yet there was a place of confinement even worse than this. In the floor of this inner prison was a sort of trap-door, or hole, opening into the barathrum, or pit, and called, from the original prison at Rome, the Tullianum. Sometimes prisoners were confined here, sometimes despatched by being cast headlong into it through the opening. It was into this pit at Rome that St. Chrysanthus was cast; and there, and probably in other cities, it was nothing short of the public cesspool.
It may be noticed that the Prophet Jeremiah seems to have had personal acquaintance with Vestibule, Robur, and Barathrum. We read in one place of his being shut up in the "atrium," that is, the vestibule, "of the prison, which was in the house of the king." At another time he is in the "ergastulum," which would seem to be the inner prison. Lastly his enemies let him down by ropes into the lacus or pit, in which "there was no water, but mud."
As to Callista, then, after the first day's examination, she was thrown for nearly twenty-four hours into the stifling Robur, or inner prison. After the sentence, on the second day, she was let down, as the commencement of her punishment, that is, of her martyrdom, into the loathsome Barathrum, lacus, or pit, called Tullianum, there to lie for another twenty hours before she was brought out to the equulous or rack.
There's an Eastern Orthodox St Callista who, with her sister Christina, renounced Christianity under torture, but, when they were sent to try to persuade St Dorothy to do the same, were instead persuaded by her to return to the fold, so were martyred tied back to back and burned in a vat of tar - their feast-day is Feb 6th.
Callista is also the heroine of a 'Christian romance' by John Henry (Cardinal, and lately beatified) Newman, she's a Greek teenage orphan girl who (to cut a long story short) is falsely accused of being a Christian, but becomes one while in prison, so gets martyred. I don't think he based her on any "actual" saint of that name. Here's an extract with some juicy details in the dense Victorian prose:
"Then the procurator entered into the Secretary, and drew the veil; and dictated the sentence for the tabella. Then he came out, and the præco read it:—Callista, a senseless and reprobate woman, is hereby sentenced to be thrown into the Tullianum; then to be stretched on the equuleus; then to be placed on a slow fire; lastly, to be beheaded, and left to the dogs and birds.
"CALLISTA said: Thanks to my Lord and King."
Here the Acta end: and though they seem to want their conclusion, yet they supply nearly every thing which is necessary for our purpose. The one subject on which a comment is needed, is the state prison, {363} which, though so little is said of it in the above Report, is in fact the real medium, as we may call it, for appreciating its information; a few words will suffice for our purpose.
The state prison, then, was arranged on pretty much one and the same plan through the Roman empire, nay, we may say, throughout the ancient world. It was commonly attached to the government buildings, and consisted of two parts. The first was the vestibule, or outward prison, which was a hall, approached from the prætorium, and surrounded by cells, opening into it. The prisoners, who were confined in these cells, had the benefit of the air and light, which the hall admitted. Such was the place of confinement allotted to St. Paul at Cæsarea, which is said to be the "prætorium of Herod." And hence, perhaps, it is that, in the touching Passion of St. Perpetua and St. Felicitas, St. Perpetua tells us that, when permitted to have her child, though she was in the inner portion, which will next be described, "suddenly the prison seemed to her like the prætorium."
From this vestibule there was a passage into the interior prison, called Robur or Lignum, from the beams of wood, which were the instruments of confinement, or from the character of its floor. It had no window or outlet, except this door, which, when closed, absolutely shut out light and air. Air, indeed, and coolness might be obtained for it by the barathrum, presently to be spoken of, but of what nature we shall then see. The apartment, called Lignum, was the {364} place into which St. Paul and St. Silas were cast at Philippi, before it was known that they were Romans. After scourging them severely, the magistrates, who nevertheless were but the local authorities, and had no proper jurisdiction in criminal cases, "put them in prison, bidding the jailer to keep them carefully; who, on receiving such a command, put them in the inner prison, and fastened them in the lignum." And in the Acts of the Scillitane Martyrs we read of the Proconsul giving sentence, "Let them be thrown into prison, let them be put into the Lignum, till tomorrow."
The utter darkness, the heat, and the stench of this miserable place, in which the inmates were confined day and night, is often dwelt upon by the martyrs and their biographers. "After a few days," says St. Perpetua, "we were taken to the prison, and I was frightened, for I never had known such darkness. O bitter day! the heat was excessive by reason of the crowd there." In the Acts of St. Pionius, and others of Smyrna, we read that the jailers "shut them up in the inner part of the prison, so that, bereaved of all comfort and light, they were forced to sustain extreme torment, from the darkness and stench of the prison." And, in like manner, other martyrs of Africa, about the time of St. Cyprian's martyrdom, that is, eight or ten years later than the date of this story, say, "We were not frightened at the foul darkness of that place; for soon that murky prison was radiant with the brightness of the Spirit. What days, what nights we passed there {365} no words can describe. The torments of that prison no statement can equal."
Yet there was a place of confinement even worse than this. In the floor of this inner prison was a sort of trap-door, or hole, opening into the barathrum, or pit, and called, from the original prison at Rome, the Tullianum. Sometimes prisoners were confined here, sometimes despatched by being cast headlong into it through the opening. It was into this pit at Rome that St. Chrysanthus was cast; and there, and probably in other cities, it was nothing short of the public cesspool.
It may be noticed that the Prophet Jeremiah seems to have had personal acquaintance with Vestibule, Robur, and Barathrum. We read in one place of his being shut up in the "atrium," that is, the vestibule, "of the prison, which was in the house of the king." At another time he is in the "ergastulum," which would seem to be the inner prison. Lastly his enemies let him down by ropes into the lacus or pit, in which "there was no water, but mud."
As to Callista, then, after the first day's examination, she was thrown for nearly twenty-four hours into the stifling Robur, or inner prison. After the sentence, on the second day, she was let down, as the commencement of her punishment, that is, of her martyrdom, into the loathsome Barathrum, lacus, or pit, called Tullianum, there to lie for another twenty hours before she was brought out to the equulous or rack.
Eul, I think your tortures are spilling onto others!!!
...Yes, I will have another, thank you...
TREE
...Yes, I will have another, thank you...
TREE
April 25 is the 115th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (116th in leap years). There are 250 days remaining. It is also the latest possible day that Easter can occur.
In the Roman Empire it was yet another festival day -- the Robigalia in honor of the goddess Robiga and her brother Robigus. Robiga (meaning green or life) along with her brother, Robigus, were the fertility gods of the Romans. Her festival was the Robigalia on April 25. Worshipers would make offerings that were colored red, such as red wine or the sacrifice of red dogs, as this is the color of wheat rust.
April 25 is ANZAC Day in Australia and New Zealand. The holiday commemorates the members of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) who landed at Gallipoli in Turkey during World War I.
404 BC. In the Peloponnesian War, Lysander's Spartan Armies defeat the Athenians and the war ends. The Peloponnesian War reshaped the Ancient Greek world. On the level of international relations, Athens, the strongest city-state in Greece prior to the war's beginning, was reduced to a state of near-complete subjection, while Sparta became established as the leading power of Greece.
Greek warfare, meanwhile, originally a limited and formalized form of conflict, was transformed into an all-out struggle between city-states, complete with atrocities on a large scale. Shattering religious and cultural taboos, devastating vast swathes of countryside, and destroying whole cities, the Peloponnesian War marked the dramatic end to the fifth century BC golden age of Greece.
AD 32. Roman Emperor Marcus Salvius Otho is born. He ruled from January 15 to April 16, in 69, the second emperor of the Year of the Four Emperors. Ortho died a suicide, reportedly to spare Rome from civil war. Just as he had come to power, many Romans learned to respect Otho in his death. Few could believe that a renowned former companion of Nero had chosen such an honorable end. The soldiers were so moved and impressed that some even threw themselves on the funeral pyre to die with their emperor.
1507. "America" is first used as the name of a continent on a map. German cartographer Martin Waldseemueller used the name in honor of Italian navigator Amerigo Vespucci.
1607. In the Eighty Years' War, Dutch warships destroy the anchored Spanish fleet at Gibraltar.
1644. The Chongzhen Emperor, the last Emperor of Ming Dynasty China, commits suicide during a peasant rebellion led by Li Zicheng. The collapse of the Ming intensified during Chongzhen's reign. Popular uprisings broke out throughout China, including those of Zhang Xianzhong and the more important Li Zicheng. These could not be put down by the already hard-pressed Ming armies, who had to contend with the Manchu threat to the north.
In April 1644, Li prepared to take the Ming capital of Beijing. Rather than face capture and probable execution at the hands of the newly-proclaimed Shun Dynasty, Chongzhen arranged a feast and gathered all members of the imperial household aside from his sons. Using his sword, he killed all of them there. All died except his second daughter, Princess Chang Ping, whose attempt to resist the sword blow resulted in her left arm being severed by her father. Then, still wearing his imperial attire, Chongzhen fled to Jingshan Hill and committed suicide when he hanged himself from a tree.
1684. A patent is granted for the thimble.
1719. Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe is published.
1781. In the American Revolution, British General Lord Charles Cornwallis retreats to Wilmington, North Carolina, after being defeated at Guilford Courthouse by 4,500 Continental Army soldiers and militia under the command of American Major General Nathanael Greene.
1792. Highwayman Nicolas J. Pelletier becomes the first person executed by guillotine.
In the Roman Empire it was yet another festival day -- the Robigalia in honor of the goddess Robiga and her brother Robigus. Robiga (meaning green or life) along with her brother, Robigus, were the fertility gods of the Romans. Her festival was the Robigalia on April 25. Worshipers would make offerings that were colored red, such as red wine or the sacrifice of red dogs, as this is the color of wheat rust.
April 25 is ANZAC Day in Australia and New Zealand. The holiday commemorates the members of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) who landed at Gallipoli in Turkey during World War I.
404 BC. In the Peloponnesian War, Lysander's Spartan Armies defeat the Athenians and the war ends. The Peloponnesian War reshaped the Ancient Greek world. On the level of international relations, Athens, the strongest city-state in Greece prior to the war's beginning, was reduced to a state of near-complete subjection, while Sparta became established as the leading power of Greece.
Greek warfare, meanwhile, originally a limited and formalized form of conflict, was transformed into an all-out struggle between city-states, complete with atrocities on a large scale. Shattering religious and cultural taboos, devastating vast swathes of countryside, and destroying whole cities, the Peloponnesian War marked the dramatic end to the fifth century BC golden age of Greece.
AD 32. Roman Emperor Marcus Salvius Otho is born. He ruled from January 15 to April 16, in 69, the second emperor of the Year of the Four Emperors. Ortho died a suicide, reportedly to spare Rome from civil war. Just as he had come to power, many Romans learned to respect Otho in his death. Few could believe that a renowned former companion of Nero had chosen such an honorable end. The soldiers were so moved and impressed that some even threw themselves on the funeral pyre to die with their emperor.
1507. "America" is first used as the name of a continent on a map. German cartographer Martin Waldseemueller used the name in honor of Italian navigator Amerigo Vespucci.
1607. In the Eighty Years' War, Dutch warships destroy the anchored Spanish fleet at Gibraltar.
1644. The Chongzhen Emperor, the last Emperor of Ming Dynasty China, commits suicide during a peasant rebellion led by Li Zicheng. The collapse of the Ming intensified during Chongzhen's reign. Popular uprisings broke out throughout China, including those of Zhang Xianzhong and the more important Li Zicheng. These could not be put down by the already hard-pressed Ming armies, who had to contend with the Manchu threat to the north.
In April 1644, Li prepared to take the Ming capital of Beijing. Rather than face capture and probable execution at the hands of the newly-proclaimed Shun Dynasty, Chongzhen arranged a feast and gathered all members of the imperial household aside from his sons. Using his sword, he killed all of them there. All died except his second daughter, Princess Chang Ping, whose attempt to resist the sword blow resulted in her left arm being severed by her father. Then, still wearing his imperial attire, Chongzhen fled to Jingshan Hill and committed suicide when he hanged himself from a tree.
1684. A patent is granted for the thimble.
1719. Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe is published.
1781. In the American Revolution, British General Lord Charles Cornwallis retreats to Wilmington, North Carolina, after being defeated at Guilford Courthouse by 4,500 Continental Army soldiers and militia under the command of American Major General Nathanael Greene.
1792. Highwayman Nicolas J. Pelletier becomes the first person executed by guillotine.
Attachments
1847. The last survivors of the Donner Party emerge from the wilderness. The Donner Party was a group of California-bound American emigrants caught up in the "westering fever" of the 1840s. After becoming snowbound in the Sierra Nevada in the winter of 1846–1847, some of them resorted to cannibalism.
1849. The Governor General of Canada, Lord Elgin, signs the Rebellion Losses Bill, outraging Montreal's English population and triggering the Montreal Riots. The bill was enacted to compensate Lower Canadians who lost property during the Rebellions of 1837 and was modeled on similar measures which provided compensation in Upper Canada. Those who had participated in the Rebellion were to be compensated with taxpayer's money except for those who had been tried and convicted of high treason. These provisions angered some of Montreal's Tory citizens and provoked weeks of violent disturbances known as the Montreal Riots. It culminated in the burning of the Parliament building which until then was in Montreal.
1859. British and French engineers break ground for the Suez Canal.
1864. For the second time in a week during the American Civil War, a Confederate force captures a Union wagon train trying to supply the Federal force at Camden, Arkansas. This time, the loss forced Union General Frederick Steele to withdraw back to Little Rock, leaving southern Arkansas under Rebel control.
Lieutenant Colonel Francis Drake and 1,700 Union troops accompanied the 240 wagons that had left Camden on April 22. Three hundred runaway slaves traveled along as well. Three days later, Confederate troops under General James Fagan pounced on Drake's command near Marks' Mills. Drake was wounded and captured early in the battle along with 1,400 of his troops. The Confederates lost 41 killed and 108 wounded, but they captured the entire wagon train. The Rebels followed up their victory much as they had at Poison Spring on April 18, where they massacred captured black soldiers. At Marks' Mills, at least half of the runaways were killed in cold blood. Even one of the Confederate officers admitted in his report that "No orders, threat, or commands could restrain the men from vengeance on the Negroes..." Drake survived his wounds and later became governor of Iowa. Drake University in Des Moines now bears his name.
1901. New York becomes the first U.S. state to require automobile license plates, acknowledging that the horseless carriage is here to stay -- and not just a passing fad as many had hoped.
1915. The ANZAC legend begins during World War I with a landing at Gallipoli on the Turkish coast. As part of an allied force of British and French troops, ANZAC landed at Anzac Cove, two kilometers south of their target (Suvla Bay) at the western end of the Peninsula. The campaign was largely successful for the Turks and the Germans and a catastrophe for Russia, whose civil war is partly attributable to this failure.
There were around 180,000 Allied casualties and 220,000 Turkish casualties. This campaign has become a "founding myth" for both Australia and New Zealand, and ANZAC Day is still commemorated as a holiday in both countries. In fact, it is one of those rare battles that both sides seem to remember fondly, as the Turks consider it a great turning point for their (future) nation as well. The Turkish field commander went on to become Kemal Ataturk, the founding father of modern Turkey.
1926. Reza Khan is crowned Shah of Iran under the name Reza Shah Pahlavi.
1935. Fire destroys the state capitol building in Salem, Oregon.
1939. Batman makes his debut when DC Comics publishes its second major superhero in Detective Comics #27.
1944. The United Negro College Fund is incorporated.
1945. American and Russian troops meet in Torgau along the River Elbe, cutting the Wehrmacht of Nazi Germany in two, a milestone in the approaching end of World War II in Europe.
1947. U.S. President Harry S. Truman officially opens the first White House bowling alley. According to Smithsonian Magazine, a group of Truman's fellow Missourians funded the construction of the bowling alley in honor of the president. They had intended to open the alley as part of Truman's 63rd birthday celebration on May 8, but construction was completed ahead of schedule. Truman's favorite pastime was poker and although he had not bowled since he was a teenager, he gamely hoisted the first ball, knocking down 7 out of 10 pins. One of the pins is now on display at the Smithsonian Institution. Truman did not use the alley much himself, but supported a group of White House employees in forming a White House Bowling League in 1950.
1952. The American Bowling Congress approves the use of the automatic pin-setter.
1953. Francis Crick and James D. Watson publish Molecular structure of nucleic acids: a structure for deoxyribose nucleic acid describing the double helix structure of DNA.
1959.The St. Lawrence Seaway, linking the North American Great Lakes and the Atlantic Ocean, officially opens to shipping.
1960. The U.S.Navy submarine USS Triton completes the first submerged circumnavigation of the globe.
1964.The Toronto Maple Leafs defeat the Detroit Red Wings, 4-0, and win the National Hockey League’s Stanley Cup championship, four games to three. The victory marked the Maple Leafs’ third consecutive Stanley Cup victory.
1965.Teenage sniper Michael Andrew Clark kills three and wounds six others shooting from a hilltop along Highway 101 just south of Santa Maria, California. The shooting continued for hours before Santa Barbara County sheriff deputies rushed the hill and Clark committed suicide as they closed in.
1969. American actress Renée Zellweger is born in Katy, Texas. Zellweger first became widely known to audiences around the world with her role in the 1996's Jerry Maguire, where she played the romantic interest of Tom Cruise's character. However it wasn't until her role in Bridget Jones's Diary that she caught the attention of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. For her performance as a lonely British singleton in the 2001 film, Zellweger received her first Best Actress Academy Award nomination. In 2004, Zellweger finally received an Academy Award, this time as Best Supporting Actress in Anthony Minghella's Cold Mountain opposite Jude Law and Nicole Kidman.
(See pictures.)
1975. As North Vietnamese forces close in on the South Vietnamese capital Saigon, the Australian Embassy is closed and evacuated, almost ten years to the day since the first Australian troop commitment to South Vietnam.
1978. Brazilian supermodel Letícia Birkheuer is born in Passo Fundo, Rio Grande do Sul. Discovered while playing Volleyball in Porto Alegre, Southern Brazil, she went on to become the 7th richest Brazilian model.. Until recently she lived in New York City, but has since moved back to Brazil to work as an actress in the soap opera Belíssima. No less a light than Giorgio Armani once declared that Birkheuer is the most beautiful model in the world. (See pictures.)
1983. Pioneer 10 travels beyond Pluto's orbit. Pioneer 10 was the first spacecraft to travel through the asteroid belt, and was the first spacecraft to make direct observations of Jupiter. It was launched from Cape Canaveral Air on March 2, 1972. Now headed in the direction of Aldebaran, located in Taurus (constellation), Pioneer 10 has become the first man-made object to leave the solar system.
1989. James Richardson is freed from a Florida prison 21 years after being wrongfully convicted of the murder of his seven children. Special prosecutor Janet Reno agreed to the release after evidence showed that the conviction resulted from misconduct by the prosecutor. In addition, neighbor Betsy Reese had confessed to the crime to a nursing home employee.
On October 25, 1967, James and his wife, Annie, were working in a field picking fruit when Reese came over to heat up a meal for the Richardsons' seven kids. After they finished eating, the children began foaming at the mouth. They were dead moments later from poisoning. Police found that the rice and beans had been laced with the pesticide parathion. Reese then reported that she saw a bag of the poison in a shed behind the Richardsons' home.
Police discovered that an insurance salesman had visited the Richardsons' home shortly before the poisoning and that James had discussed life insurance for the entire family. The prosecution made a big deal of this fact at trial but neglected to inform the jury that the salesman had made an unsolicited visit and that Richardson never bought the insurance because he couldn't afford the premiums. The prosecutors also introduced three convicts who claimed that Richardson had admitted to the mass murder while he was being held in jail. It was later revealed that this testimony was manufactured in return for leniency on their sentences.
The jurors were not told about Reese's criminal history. She was on parole at the time for killing her second husband and was suspected of killing her first husband with poison. After less than an hour and a half of deliberation, the jury convicted Richardson.
1990. The crew of the U.S. space shuttle Discovery places the Hubble Space Telescope, a long-term space-based observatory, into a low orbit around Earth. About the size of a bus, the telescope is solar-powered and orbits Earth once every 97 minutes. Among its many astronomical achievements, Hubble has been used to record a comet's collision with Jupiter, provide a direct look at the surface of Pluto, view distant galaxies, gas clouds, and black holes, and see billions of years into the universe's past.
1990. Violeta Barrios de Chamorro is inaugurated as president of Nicaragua, ending 11 years of leftist Sandinista rule.
1992.Islamic forces take control of most of the Afghan capital Kabul following the collapse of the Communist government.
2005. 107 people die in the Amagasaki rail crash in Japan. The accident was Japan's most serious since 1963's Yokohama rail crash where two passenger trains collided with a derailed freight train, killing 162 people.
2007. Boris Yeltsin's funeral is held in Russia – the first to be sanctioned by the Russian Orthodox Church for a head of state since the funeral of Emperor Alexander III in 1894.
2011. At least 300 people are killed in deadliest tornado outbreak in the Southern United States since the 1974 Super Outbreak. The Governor of Arkansas Mike Beebe declares a state of emergency after heavy storms including tornadoes hit the U.S. state of Arkansas with at least two people dead and 100,000 without power. Meanwhile, The Governor of Kentucky Steve Beshear declares a state of emergency due to rising flood waters from the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers.
In the Libyan civil war, NATO jets fly over Tripoli on their mission to destroy Muammar Gaddafi's forces as loud explosions knock out three television stations. At least 45 people are wounded, with others missing, following a strike by NATO warplanes on Muammar Gaddafi's Tripoli compound
1849. The Governor General of Canada, Lord Elgin, signs the Rebellion Losses Bill, outraging Montreal's English population and triggering the Montreal Riots. The bill was enacted to compensate Lower Canadians who lost property during the Rebellions of 1837 and was modeled on similar measures which provided compensation in Upper Canada. Those who had participated in the Rebellion were to be compensated with taxpayer's money except for those who had been tried and convicted of high treason. These provisions angered some of Montreal's Tory citizens and provoked weeks of violent disturbances known as the Montreal Riots. It culminated in the burning of the Parliament building which until then was in Montreal.
1859. British and French engineers break ground for the Suez Canal.
1864. For the second time in a week during the American Civil War, a Confederate force captures a Union wagon train trying to supply the Federal force at Camden, Arkansas. This time, the loss forced Union General Frederick Steele to withdraw back to Little Rock, leaving southern Arkansas under Rebel control.
Lieutenant Colonel Francis Drake and 1,700 Union troops accompanied the 240 wagons that had left Camden on April 22. Three hundred runaway slaves traveled along as well. Three days later, Confederate troops under General James Fagan pounced on Drake's command near Marks' Mills. Drake was wounded and captured early in the battle along with 1,400 of his troops. The Confederates lost 41 killed and 108 wounded, but they captured the entire wagon train. The Rebels followed up their victory much as they had at Poison Spring on April 18, where they massacred captured black soldiers. At Marks' Mills, at least half of the runaways were killed in cold blood. Even one of the Confederate officers admitted in his report that "No orders, threat, or commands could restrain the men from vengeance on the Negroes..." Drake survived his wounds and later became governor of Iowa. Drake University in Des Moines now bears his name.
1901. New York becomes the first U.S. state to require automobile license plates, acknowledging that the horseless carriage is here to stay -- and not just a passing fad as many had hoped.
1915. The ANZAC legend begins during World War I with a landing at Gallipoli on the Turkish coast. As part of an allied force of British and French troops, ANZAC landed at Anzac Cove, two kilometers south of their target (Suvla Bay) at the western end of the Peninsula. The campaign was largely successful for the Turks and the Germans and a catastrophe for Russia, whose civil war is partly attributable to this failure.
There were around 180,000 Allied casualties and 220,000 Turkish casualties. This campaign has become a "founding myth" for both Australia and New Zealand, and ANZAC Day is still commemorated as a holiday in both countries. In fact, it is one of those rare battles that both sides seem to remember fondly, as the Turks consider it a great turning point for their (future) nation as well. The Turkish field commander went on to become Kemal Ataturk, the founding father of modern Turkey.
1926. Reza Khan is crowned Shah of Iran under the name Reza Shah Pahlavi.
1935. Fire destroys the state capitol building in Salem, Oregon.
1939. Batman makes his debut when DC Comics publishes its second major superhero in Detective Comics #27.
1944. The United Negro College Fund is incorporated.
1945. American and Russian troops meet in Torgau along the River Elbe, cutting the Wehrmacht of Nazi Germany in two, a milestone in the approaching end of World War II in Europe.
1947. U.S. President Harry S. Truman officially opens the first White House bowling alley. According to Smithsonian Magazine, a group of Truman's fellow Missourians funded the construction of the bowling alley in honor of the president. They had intended to open the alley as part of Truman's 63rd birthday celebration on May 8, but construction was completed ahead of schedule. Truman's favorite pastime was poker and although he had not bowled since he was a teenager, he gamely hoisted the first ball, knocking down 7 out of 10 pins. One of the pins is now on display at the Smithsonian Institution. Truman did not use the alley much himself, but supported a group of White House employees in forming a White House Bowling League in 1950.
1952. The American Bowling Congress approves the use of the automatic pin-setter.
1953. Francis Crick and James D. Watson publish Molecular structure of nucleic acids: a structure for deoxyribose nucleic acid describing the double helix structure of DNA.
1959.The St. Lawrence Seaway, linking the North American Great Lakes and the Atlantic Ocean, officially opens to shipping.
1960. The U.S.Navy submarine USS Triton completes the first submerged circumnavigation of the globe.
1964.The Toronto Maple Leafs defeat the Detroit Red Wings, 4-0, and win the National Hockey League’s Stanley Cup championship, four games to three. The victory marked the Maple Leafs’ third consecutive Stanley Cup victory.
1965.Teenage sniper Michael Andrew Clark kills three and wounds six others shooting from a hilltop along Highway 101 just south of Santa Maria, California. The shooting continued for hours before Santa Barbara County sheriff deputies rushed the hill and Clark committed suicide as they closed in.
1969. American actress Renée Zellweger is born in Katy, Texas. Zellweger first became widely known to audiences around the world with her role in the 1996's Jerry Maguire, where she played the romantic interest of Tom Cruise's character. However it wasn't until her role in Bridget Jones's Diary that she caught the attention of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. For her performance as a lonely British singleton in the 2001 film, Zellweger received her first Best Actress Academy Award nomination. In 2004, Zellweger finally received an Academy Award, this time as Best Supporting Actress in Anthony Minghella's Cold Mountain opposite Jude Law and Nicole Kidman.
(See pictures.)
1975. As North Vietnamese forces close in on the South Vietnamese capital Saigon, the Australian Embassy is closed and evacuated, almost ten years to the day since the first Australian troop commitment to South Vietnam.
1978. Brazilian supermodel Letícia Birkheuer is born in Passo Fundo, Rio Grande do Sul. Discovered while playing Volleyball in Porto Alegre, Southern Brazil, she went on to become the 7th richest Brazilian model.. Until recently she lived in New York City, but has since moved back to Brazil to work as an actress in the soap opera Belíssima. No less a light than Giorgio Armani once declared that Birkheuer is the most beautiful model in the world. (See pictures.)
1983. Pioneer 10 travels beyond Pluto's orbit. Pioneer 10 was the first spacecraft to travel through the asteroid belt, and was the first spacecraft to make direct observations of Jupiter. It was launched from Cape Canaveral Air on March 2, 1972. Now headed in the direction of Aldebaran, located in Taurus (constellation), Pioneer 10 has become the first man-made object to leave the solar system.
1989. James Richardson is freed from a Florida prison 21 years after being wrongfully convicted of the murder of his seven children. Special prosecutor Janet Reno agreed to the release after evidence showed that the conviction resulted from misconduct by the prosecutor. In addition, neighbor Betsy Reese had confessed to the crime to a nursing home employee.
On October 25, 1967, James and his wife, Annie, were working in a field picking fruit when Reese came over to heat up a meal for the Richardsons' seven kids. After they finished eating, the children began foaming at the mouth. They were dead moments later from poisoning. Police found that the rice and beans had been laced with the pesticide parathion. Reese then reported that she saw a bag of the poison in a shed behind the Richardsons' home.
Police discovered that an insurance salesman had visited the Richardsons' home shortly before the poisoning and that James had discussed life insurance for the entire family. The prosecution made a big deal of this fact at trial but neglected to inform the jury that the salesman had made an unsolicited visit and that Richardson never bought the insurance because he couldn't afford the premiums. The prosecutors also introduced three convicts who claimed that Richardson had admitted to the mass murder while he was being held in jail. It was later revealed that this testimony was manufactured in return for leniency on their sentences.
The jurors were not told about Reese's criminal history. She was on parole at the time for killing her second husband and was suspected of killing her first husband with poison. After less than an hour and a half of deliberation, the jury convicted Richardson.
1990. The crew of the U.S. space shuttle Discovery places the Hubble Space Telescope, a long-term space-based observatory, into a low orbit around Earth. About the size of a bus, the telescope is solar-powered and orbits Earth once every 97 minutes. Among its many astronomical achievements, Hubble has been used to record a comet's collision with Jupiter, provide a direct look at the surface of Pluto, view distant galaxies, gas clouds, and black holes, and see billions of years into the universe's past.
1990. Violeta Barrios de Chamorro is inaugurated as president of Nicaragua, ending 11 years of leftist Sandinista rule.
1992.Islamic forces take control of most of the Afghan capital Kabul following the collapse of the Communist government.
2005. 107 people die in the Amagasaki rail crash in Japan. The accident was Japan's most serious since 1963's Yokohama rail crash where two passenger trains collided with a derailed freight train, killing 162 people.
2007. Boris Yeltsin's funeral is held in Russia – the first to be sanctioned by the Russian Orthodox Church for a head of state since the funeral of Emperor Alexander III in 1894.
2011. At least 300 people are killed in deadliest tornado outbreak in the Southern United States since the 1974 Super Outbreak. The Governor of Arkansas Mike Beebe declares a state of emergency after heavy storms including tornadoes hit the U.S. state of Arkansas with at least two people dead and 100,000 without power. Meanwhile, The Governor of Kentucky Steve Beshear declares a state of emergency due to rising flood waters from the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers.
In the Libyan civil war, NATO jets fly over Tripoli on their mission to destroy Muammar Gaddafi's forces as loud explosions knock out three television stations. At least 45 people are wounded, with others missing, following a strike by NATO warplanes on Muammar Gaddafi's Tripoli compound
Attachments
In the American states of Florida and Georgia, April 26 is Confederate Memorial Day. Confederate Memorial Day, also known as Confederate Decoration Day (Tennessee) and Confederate Heroes Day (Texas), is a holiday in parts of the United States.
It is recognized by several states of the U.S. South as a day to honor those who died fighting for the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War. However, the date of the holiday varies by state so it is not a uniform national observance. It is more than passing strange to this observer, however, that more U.S. states celebrate Confederate Memorial Day than the start of the American Revolution.
AD 121. Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius is born. Marcus Aurelius was Roman Emperor from 161 to his death on March 17, 180. He was the last of the "Five Good Emperors" who governed the Roman Empire from 96 to 180, and is also considered one of the most important stoic philosophers.
His tenure was marked by wars in Asia against a revitalized Parthian Empire, and with Germanic tribes along the limes Germanicus into Gaul and across the Danube. A revolt in the East, led by Avidius Cassius, failed.
Marcus Aurelius' work Meditations, written on campaign between 170–180, is still revered as a literary monument to a government of service and duty and has been praised for its "exquisite accent and its infinite tenderness."
Aurelius was not murdered by his son, as depicted in the movie Gladiator, but died of natural causes.
570. Muhammed, founder of Islam, is born, according to the Shi'a sect. Other sources suggest April 20. Muslims consider him the restorer of the original, uncorrupted monotheistic faith of Adam, Abraham et al.
He is the first founder of a major world religion who lived in the full light of history and about whom there are numerous records in historical texts. By the time of his death in 622 most of the Arabian Peninsula had converted to Islam.
1478. The Pazzi family attacks Lorenzo de' Medici and kill his brother Giuliano during High Mass in the Duomo of Florence.
The Pazzi family were Tuscan nobles who had become bankers in Florence in the 14th century. They are now best known for the "Pazzi conspiracy" to assassinate Lorenzo and Giuliano de' Medici on April 26, 1478.
Giuliano de' Medici was stabbed nineteen times by a gang that included a priest, and bled to death on the cathedral floor, while his brother Lorenzo escaped with serious, but non life-threatening wounds.
The coup d'état failed, and the enraged Florentines seized and killed the conspirators. Jacopo de' Pazzi was tossed from a window, finished off by the mob, and dragged naked through the streets and thrown into the Arno River. The Pazzi family were stripped of their possessions in Florence, every vestige of their name effaced. Salviati, though he was an archbishop, was hanged on the walls of the Palazzo della Signoria.
1564. Playwright William Shakespeare is baptized in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England (the date of his actual birth is unknown but baptisms were customarily performed within three days of birth, which permits an educated guess).
1607. English colonists of the Jamestown settlement make landfall at Cape Henry, Virginia, to establish the first permanent English settlement in the Western Hemisphere. (They later settled at Jamestown.)
1711. David Hume is born in Edinburgh, Scotland. (The date is according to the old style Julian calendar then in use in the UK; it is May 7 by the new style Gregorian calendar.) Although Hume died on August 25, 1776, when the American Revolution was barely underway, his essay "Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth" greatly affected the ideas of the drafters of the federal Constitution in 1787.
1777. Sybil Ludington rides from New York to Connecticut to rally her father's militia. Sybil, daughter of Col. Henry Ludington, was a heroine of the American Revolutionary War who became famous for her night ride on April 26, 1777 to alert American colonial forces to the approach of enemy troops. Her action was similar to that performed by Paul Revere though she rode more than twice the distance of Revere and was only 16 years old at the time of her action. Ludington's ride started at 9:00 P.M. and ended around dawn. She used a stick to prod her horse and knock on doors. She managed to defend herself against a highwayman with her father's musket.
1802. Napoleon Bonaparte signs a general amnesty to allow all but about one thousand of the most notorious émigrés of the French Revolution to return to France, as part of a reconciliary gesture with the factions of the Ancien Regime and to eventually consolidate his own rule.
1803. Thousands of meteor fragments fall from the skies of L'Aigle, France; the event convinces European science that meteors exist.
1805. In the First Barbary War, United States Marines captured Derne, Tripoli under the command of First Lieutenant Presley O'Bannon. The First Barbary War (1801–1805) was the first of two wars fought between the United States and the North African Berber Muslim states known collectively as the Barbary States.
The war stemmed from the Barbary pirates’ attacks upon American merchant shipping in an attempt to extort ransom for the lives of captured sailors, and ultimately tribute from the United States to avoid further attacks. The turning point in the war came with the Battle of Derna (April–May 1805). Ex-consul William Eaton, who went by the rank of general, and US Marine First Lieutenant Presley O'Bannon led a mixed force of eight United States Marines and 500 Greek, Arab, and Berber mercenaries on a march across the desert from Alexandria, Egypt to assault and to capture the Tripolitan city of Derna. This was the first time in history that the United States flag was raised in victory on foreign soil. This action was memorialized in a line from the Marines' Hymn -- "the shores of Tripoli."
1819. The first Odd Fellows Lodge is established in the United States. The Independent Order of Odd Fellows (IOOF), also known as the Three Link Fraternity, is an altruistic and benevolent fraternal organization derived from the similar British Oddfellows service organizations which came into being during the 18th century, at a time when altruistic and charitable acts were far less common. The Independent Order of Odd Fellows was founded on the North American Continent in Baltimore, Maryland, on April 26, 1819 when Thomas Wildey and four members of the Order from England instituted Washington Lodge No. 1. This lodge received its charter from Manchester Unity of Odd Fellows in England
1865. At the close of the American Civil War, Confederate General Joseph Johnston surrenders his army to General William Tecumseh Sherman at the Bennett Place near Durham, North Carolina.
1865. On the same day, Union cavalry troopers corner and shoot dead John Wilkes Booth, Abraham Lincoln's assassin, in Virginia.
Early in the morning of April 26, 1865, the soldiers caught up with Booth. Trapped in a tobacco barn owned by Richard H. Garrett, Booth's companion David Herold surrendered. Booth refused to surrender and Everton Conger ordered the soldiers to set the barn ablaze. Sergeant Boston Corbett fired at Booth against orders, fatally wounding him in the neck. Booth was dragged from the fire and died on the porch of the nearby farmhouse at age 26. The bullet had severed his spinal cord, paralyzing him. His last words were reportedly, "Useless, useless."
It is recognized by several states of the U.S. South as a day to honor those who died fighting for the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War. However, the date of the holiday varies by state so it is not a uniform national observance. It is more than passing strange to this observer, however, that more U.S. states celebrate Confederate Memorial Day than the start of the American Revolution.
AD 121. Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius is born. Marcus Aurelius was Roman Emperor from 161 to his death on March 17, 180. He was the last of the "Five Good Emperors" who governed the Roman Empire from 96 to 180, and is also considered one of the most important stoic philosophers.
His tenure was marked by wars in Asia against a revitalized Parthian Empire, and with Germanic tribes along the limes Germanicus into Gaul and across the Danube. A revolt in the East, led by Avidius Cassius, failed.
Marcus Aurelius' work Meditations, written on campaign between 170–180, is still revered as a literary monument to a government of service and duty and has been praised for its "exquisite accent and its infinite tenderness."
Aurelius was not murdered by his son, as depicted in the movie Gladiator, but died of natural causes.
570. Muhammed, founder of Islam, is born, according to the Shi'a sect. Other sources suggest April 20. Muslims consider him the restorer of the original, uncorrupted monotheistic faith of Adam, Abraham et al.
He is the first founder of a major world religion who lived in the full light of history and about whom there are numerous records in historical texts. By the time of his death in 622 most of the Arabian Peninsula had converted to Islam.
1478. The Pazzi family attacks Lorenzo de' Medici and kill his brother Giuliano during High Mass in the Duomo of Florence.
The Pazzi family were Tuscan nobles who had become bankers in Florence in the 14th century. They are now best known for the "Pazzi conspiracy" to assassinate Lorenzo and Giuliano de' Medici on April 26, 1478.
Giuliano de' Medici was stabbed nineteen times by a gang that included a priest, and bled to death on the cathedral floor, while his brother Lorenzo escaped with serious, but non life-threatening wounds.
The coup d'état failed, and the enraged Florentines seized and killed the conspirators. Jacopo de' Pazzi was tossed from a window, finished off by the mob, and dragged naked through the streets and thrown into the Arno River. The Pazzi family were stripped of their possessions in Florence, every vestige of their name effaced. Salviati, though he was an archbishop, was hanged on the walls of the Palazzo della Signoria.
1564. Playwright William Shakespeare is baptized in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England (the date of his actual birth is unknown but baptisms were customarily performed within three days of birth, which permits an educated guess).
1607. English colonists of the Jamestown settlement make landfall at Cape Henry, Virginia, to establish the first permanent English settlement in the Western Hemisphere. (They later settled at Jamestown.)
1711. David Hume is born in Edinburgh, Scotland. (The date is according to the old style Julian calendar then in use in the UK; it is May 7 by the new style Gregorian calendar.) Although Hume died on August 25, 1776, when the American Revolution was barely underway, his essay "Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth" greatly affected the ideas of the drafters of the federal Constitution in 1787.
1777. Sybil Ludington rides from New York to Connecticut to rally her father's militia. Sybil, daughter of Col. Henry Ludington, was a heroine of the American Revolutionary War who became famous for her night ride on April 26, 1777 to alert American colonial forces to the approach of enemy troops. Her action was similar to that performed by Paul Revere though she rode more than twice the distance of Revere and was only 16 years old at the time of her action. Ludington's ride started at 9:00 P.M. and ended around dawn. She used a stick to prod her horse and knock on doors. She managed to defend herself against a highwayman with her father's musket.
1802. Napoleon Bonaparte signs a general amnesty to allow all but about one thousand of the most notorious émigrés of the French Revolution to return to France, as part of a reconciliary gesture with the factions of the Ancien Regime and to eventually consolidate his own rule.
1803. Thousands of meteor fragments fall from the skies of L'Aigle, France; the event convinces European science that meteors exist.
1805. In the First Barbary War, United States Marines captured Derne, Tripoli under the command of First Lieutenant Presley O'Bannon. The First Barbary War (1801–1805) was the first of two wars fought between the United States and the North African Berber Muslim states known collectively as the Barbary States.
The war stemmed from the Barbary pirates’ attacks upon American merchant shipping in an attempt to extort ransom for the lives of captured sailors, and ultimately tribute from the United States to avoid further attacks. The turning point in the war came with the Battle of Derna (April–May 1805). Ex-consul William Eaton, who went by the rank of general, and US Marine First Lieutenant Presley O'Bannon led a mixed force of eight United States Marines and 500 Greek, Arab, and Berber mercenaries on a march across the desert from Alexandria, Egypt to assault and to capture the Tripolitan city of Derna. This was the first time in history that the United States flag was raised in victory on foreign soil. This action was memorialized in a line from the Marines' Hymn -- "the shores of Tripoli."
1819. The first Odd Fellows Lodge is established in the United States. The Independent Order of Odd Fellows (IOOF), also known as the Three Link Fraternity, is an altruistic and benevolent fraternal organization derived from the similar British Oddfellows service organizations which came into being during the 18th century, at a time when altruistic and charitable acts were far less common. The Independent Order of Odd Fellows was founded on the North American Continent in Baltimore, Maryland, on April 26, 1819 when Thomas Wildey and four members of the Order from England instituted Washington Lodge No. 1. This lodge received its charter from Manchester Unity of Odd Fellows in England
1865. At the close of the American Civil War, Confederate General Joseph Johnston surrenders his army to General William Tecumseh Sherman at the Bennett Place near Durham, North Carolina.
1865. On the same day, Union cavalry troopers corner and shoot dead John Wilkes Booth, Abraham Lincoln's assassin, in Virginia.
Early in the morning of April 26, 1865, the soldiers caught up with Booth. Trapped in a tobacco barn owned by Richard H. Garrett, Booth's companion David Herold surrendered. Booth refused to surrender and Everton Conger ordered the soldiers to set the barn ablaze. Sergeant Boston Corbett fired at Booth against orders, fatally wounding him in the neck. Booth was dragged from the fire and died on the porch of the nearby farmhouse at age 26. The bullet had severed his spinal cord, paralyzing him. His last words were reportedly, "Useless, useless."
1915. After receiving the promise of significant territorial gains, Italy signs the Treaty of London, committing itself to enter World War I on the side of the Allies.
1925. Paul von Hindenburg defeats Wilhelm Marx in the second round of the German presidential election to become the first directly elected head of state of the Weimar Republic.
1928. Los Angeles City Hall is dedicated.
1933. The Gestapo, the official secret police force of Nazi Germany, is established. The Gestapo was established in Prussia, from the existing organization of the Prussian Secret Police. The Gestapo was first simply a branch of the Prussian Police known as "Department 1A of the Prussian State Police."
Its first commander was Rudolf Diels, who recruited members from professional police departments and ran the Gestapo as a federal police agency, comparable to several modern examples such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the United States.
The Gestapo's role as a political police force was only established after Hermann Göring was appointed to succeed Diels as Gestapo commander in 1934. Göring coined the term Gestapo (it was originally called Gestapa), which came from the suggestion of an obscure postal employee who suggested it be called the Geheime Staatspolizei ("secret state police"); this was shortened to Gestapo. Göring urged the Nazi government to extend Gestapo power beyond Prussia to encompass all of Germany. In this Göring was mostly successful except in Bavaria, where Heinrich Himmler (head of the SS) served as the Bavarian police president and used local SS units as a political police force.
In April 1934, Göring and Himmler agreed to put aside their differences (due in large part to a combined hatred of the Sturmabteilung (SA)), the Nazi militia, and Göring transferred full authority over the Gestapo to the SS.
1937. In the Spanish Civil War, Guernica, Spain is bombed by the German Luftwaffe. The number of victims of the attack is disputed; The Basque government reported 1,654 people killed, although modern speculations suggests between 126 to 400 civilians died. Russian archives reveal 800 deaths on May 1, 1937, but this number may not include victims who later died of their injuries in hospitals or whose bodies were discovered buried in the rubble. The bombing has often been considered one of the first raids in the history of modern military aviation on a defenseless civilian population, and denounced as a terrorist act, although the capital (Madrid) had been bombed many times previously.
1942. The worst-ever mining accident in history kills 1,549 miners in an explosion at the Honkeiko Colliery, Manchuria.
1945. The Battle of Bautzen is fought. It is the last successful German tank-offensive of World War II and last noteworthy victory of the Wehrmacht.
1946. The Naperville train disaster kills 47. The crash at the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad station in Naperville, Illinois when the railroad's Exposition Flyer rammed into the Advance Flyer, which had made an unscheduled stop to check its running gear. The Exposition Flyer had been coming through on the same track at 85 miles per hour (137 km/h). 47 people died, and some 125 were injured. This crash is a major reason why most passenger trains in the United States only travel at a speed limit of 79 mph (127 km/h) or below. Following this disaster, advancements in train speed in the United States essentially halted.
1956. The first container ship leaves Port Newark, New Jersey for Houston, Texas.
1958. The final run is made of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad's Royal Blue from Washington, D.C., to New York City after 68 years, the first U.S. passenger train to use electric locomotives.
1964. Tanganyika and Zanzibar merge to form Tanzania.
1965. A Rolling Stones concert in London, Ontario, is shut down by police after 15 minutes because of rioting.
1966. A 7.5 magnitude earthquake destroys Tashkent.
1968. Students seize the administration building at Ohio State.
1970. Slovenian model and trophy wife Melania Trump is born Melanija Knavs (anglicized to Melania Knauss) in Sevnica, Slovenia, when it was part of the former Yugoslavia. She is the wife of the prolific American business executive and real estate magnate Donald Trump, who is twenty-four years her senior and whom she married on January 22, 2005.
In 1999, she met Trump at a fashion event. At the same time she secured a big modeling job for Allure magazine. Her notoriety was raised a few notches after appearing on the Howard Stern show with Trump and revealing their naughty sex life. This led to a nude layout in British GQ magazine, including the cover shot in January 2000.
She was considered a supermodel in many parts of Europe, although she did not achieve that level of fame in the United States. (See pictures.)
On September 27, 2005, the Trumps announced that Melania was pregnant with Donald Trump's fifth child. On March 20, 2006 Melania gave birth to a boy, whom the couple named Barron William Trump. Donald Trump made the announcement via phone on the Imus in the Morning show about 20 minutes after birth, stating that "Everyone's perfect."
1977. Studio 54 opens in New York City. It would soon become the global epicenter of the disco craze and the most famous nightclub in the world.
1983. The Dow Jones Industrial Average breaks 1200 for the first time.
1986. In Ukraine, a nuclear reactor accident occurs at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, causing the world's worst nuclear disaster.
1989. The deadliest tornado in world history strikes Central Bangladesh, killing upwards of 1,300, injuring 12,000, and leaving as many as 80,000 homeless. The tornado was estimated to be approximately one mile wide, and had a path that was about 50 miles long. Tornadoes are fairly common in Bangladesh as it is one of the most frequently hit countries in the world, behind the United States and Canada.
1990. 126 people are killed in a magnitude 6.9 earthquake in China.
1991. Seventy tornadoes break out in the central United States. Before its end, Andover, Kansas, would record the year's only F5 tornado.
1998. Auxiliary Bishop Juan Gerardi Conedera, a leading Guatemalan human rights activist, is bludgeoned to death two days after a report he compiled on atrocities during Guatemala's 36-year civil war is made public.
2002. 19-year-old Robert Steinhäuser shoots and kills 17 people at his school in Erfurt, Germany. Steinhäuser had been expelled a few months prior to the shootings for missing lessons and forging excuse notes. He had covered up his expulsion from his family who believed he was still a student.
2005. Under international pressure, Syria withdraws the last of its 14,000 troop military garrison in Lebanon, ending its 29-year military domination of that country.
2008. Austrian police arrest Josef Fritzl, freeing his daughter Elisabeth and her six children, whom he had fathered while holding her captive in a cellar for 24 years.
2011. In the Libyan civil war at least three people are killed by missiles at a port as Misrata is attacked by Muammar Gaddafi's forces. Meanwhile. Syria sends more troops into suburbs of Damascus and sends tanks into Deraa as the Syrian human rights organization Sawasiah claims that the Government of Syria has arrested 500 protestors since the crackdown began.
Elsewhere, thousands of residents in the U.S. town of Poplar Bluff, Missouri are evacuated as the Black River overflows its banks, President of Colombia Juan Manuel Santos calls for national unity after floods kill 91 people, and authorities in Ecuador evacuate nearby residents as the Tungurahua volcano erupts.
1925. Paul von Hindenburg defeats Wilhelm Marx in the second round of the German presidential election to become the first directly elected head of state of the Weimar Republic.
1928. Los Angeles City Hall is dedicated.
1933. The Gestapo, the official secret police force of Nazi Germany, is established. The Gestapo was established in Prussia, from the existing organization of the Prussian Secret Police. The Gestapo was first simply a branch of the Prussian Police known as "Department 1A of the Prussian State Police."
Its first commander was Rudolf Diels, who recruited members from professional police departments and ran the Gestapo as a federal police agency, comparable to several modern examples such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the United States.
The Gestapo's role as a political police force was only established after Hermann Göring was appointed to succeed Diels as Gestapo commander in 1934. Göring coined the term Gestapo (it was originally called Gestapa), which came from the suggestion of an obscure postal employee who suggested it be called the Geheime Staatspolizei ("secret state police"); this was shortened to Gestapo. Göring urged the Nazi government to extend Gestapo power beyond Prussia to encompass all of Germany. In this Göring was mostly successful except in Bavaria, where Heinrich Himmler (head of the SS) served as the Bavarian police president and used local SS units as a political police force.
In April 1934, Göring and Himmler agreed to put aside their differences (due in large part to a combined hatred of the Sturmabteilung (SA)), the Nazi militia, and Göring transferred full authority over the Gestapo to the SS.
1937. In the Spanish Civil War, Guernica, Spain is bombed by the German Luftwaffe. The number of victims of the attack is disputed; The Basque government reported 1,654 people killed, although modern speculations suggests between 126 to 400 civilians died. Russian archives reveal 800 deaths on May 1, 1937, but this number may not include victims who later died of their injuries in hospitals or whose bodies were discovered buried in the rubble. The bombing has often been considered one of the first raids in the history of modern military aviation on a defenseless civilian population, and denounced as a terrorist act, although the capital (Madrid) had been bombed many times previously.
1942. The worst-ever mining accident in history kills 1,549 miners in an explosion at the Honkeiko Colliery, Manchuria.
1945. The Battle of Bautzen is fought. It is the last successful German tank-offensive of World War II and last noteworthy victory of the Wehrmacht.
1946. The Naperville train disaster kills 47. The crash at the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad station in Naperville, Illinois when the railroad's Exposition Flyer rammed into the Advance Flyer, which had made an unscheduled stop to check its running gear. The Exposition Flyer had been coming through on the same track at 85 miles per hour (137 km/h). 47 people died, and some 125 were injured. This crash is a major reason why most passenger trains in the United States only travel at a speed limit of 79 mph (127 km/h) or below. Following this disaster, advancements in train speed in the United States essentially halted.
1956. The first container ship leaves Port Newark, New Jersey for Houston, Texas.
1958. The final run is made of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad's Royal Blue from Washington, D.C., to New York City after 68 years, the first U.S. passenger train to use electric locomotives.
1964. Tanganyika and Zanzibar merge to form Tanzania.
1965. A Rolling Stones concert in London, Ontario, is shut down by police after 15 minutes because of rioting.
1966. A 7.5 magnitude earthquake destroys Tashkent.
1968. Students seize the administration building at Ohio State.
1970. Slovenian model and trophy wife Melania Trump is born Melanija Knavs (anglicized to Melania Knauss) in Sevnica, Slovenia, when it was part of the former Yugoslavia. She is the wife of the prolific American business executive and real estate magnate Donald Trump, who is twenty-four years her senior and whom she married on January 22, 2005.
In 1999, she met Trump at a fashion event. At the same time she secured a big modeling job for Allure magazine. Her notoriety was raised a few notches after appearing on the Howard Stern show with Trump and revealing their naughty sex life. This led to a nude layout in British GQ magazine, including the cover shot in January 2000.
She was considered a supermodel in many parts of Europe, although she did not achieve that level of fame in the United States. (See pictures.)
On September 27, 2005, the Trumps announced that Melania was pregnant with Donald Trump's fifth child. On March 20, 2006 Melania gave birth to a boy, whom the couple named Barron William Trump. Donald Trump made the announcement via phone on the Imus in the Morning show about 20 minutes after birth, stating that "Everyone's perfect."
1977. Studio 54 opens in New York City. It would soon become the global epicenter of the disco craze and the most famous nightclub in the world.
1983. The Dow Jones Industrial Average breaks 1200 for the first time.
1986. In Ukraine, a nuclear reactor accident occurs at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, causing the world's worst nuclear disaster.
1989. The deadliest tornado in world history strikes Central Bangladesh, killing upwards of 1,300, injuring 12,000, and leaving as many as 80,000 homeless. The tornado was estimated to be approximately one mile wide, and had a path that was about 50 miles long. Tornadoes are fairly common in Bangladesh as it is one of the most frequently hit countries in the world, behind the United States and Canada.
1990. 126 people are killed in a magnitude 6.9 earthquake in China.
1991. Seventy tornadoes break out in the central United States. Before its end, Andover, Kansas, would record the year's only F5 tornado.
1998. Auxiliary Bishop Juan Gerardi Conedera, a leading Guatemalan human rights activist, is bludgeoned to death two days after a report he compiled on atrocities during Guatemala's 36-year civil war is made public.
2002. 19-year-old Robert Steinhäuser shoots and kills 17 people at his school in Erfurt, Germany. Steinhäuser had been expelled a few months prior to the shootings for missing lessons and forging excuse notes. He had covered up his expulsion from his family who believed he was still a student.
2005. Under international pressure, Syria withdraws the last of its 14,000 troop military garrison in Lebanon, ending its 29-year military domination of that country.
2008. Austrian police arrest Josef Fritzl, freeing his daughter Elisabeth and her six children, whom he had fathered while holding her captive in a cellar for 24 years.
2011. In the Libyan civil war at least three people are killed by missiles at a port as Misrata is attacked by Muammar Gaddafi's forces. Meanwhile. Syria sends more troops into suburbs of Damascus and sends tanks into Deraa as the Syrian human rights organization Sawasiah claims that the Government of Syria has arrested 500 protestors since the crackdown began.
Elsewhere, thousands of residents in the U.S. town of Poplar Bluff, Missouri are evacuated as the Black River overflows its banks, President of Colombia Juan Manuel Santos calls for national unity after floods kill 91 people, and authorities in Ecuador evacuate nearby residents as the Tungurahua volcano erupts.
