Today in History

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Today in History

By Correspondent

Today in History
YEARDAYEVENT
1681Apr 8England’s King Charles II received the 1st installment of a 5-million livre subsidy from King Louis of France. This provided him independence from Parliament and he ruled without it until his death in 1685.
1692Apr 8Giuseppe Tartini, Italy, violinist, composer (Trillo del Diavolo), was born.
1726Apr 8Lewis Morris, signer of the Declaration of Independence), was born. 
1731Apr 8William Williams, signer of the Declaration of Independence), was born. 
1741Apr 8Jose B. da Gama, Portuguese poet (O Uraguai), was born.
1759Apr 8Francois de La Croix (76), composer, died.
1766Apr 8The 1st fire escape was patented: a wicker basket on a pulley and chain.
1775Apr 8Adam A. earl von Neipperg, Austrian general, Napoleon’s wife Marie lover, was born.
1781Apr 8Premiere of Mozart’s violin sonata K379.
1789Apr 8The U.S. House of Representatives held its first meeting.
1794Apr 8Marie-Jean-Antoine-Nicholas-Caritat, mathematician died.
1795Apr 8The Prince of Wales, later England’s King George IV, married his German cousin, Caroline, to produce an heir and increase his income. On their wedding night the drunken bridegroom spent the night “under the grate, where he fell, and where I left him.” The story is told by Flora Fraser in her book: “The Unruly Queen: The Life of Queen Caroline.” Masterpiece Theater made a TV presentation in 1997.
1801Apr 8Soldiers rioted in Bucharest and killed 128 Jews.
1802Apr 8French Protestant church became state-supported and controlled.
1832Apr 8Charles Darwin began a trip through Rio de Janeiro.
1838Apr 8The British steamship “Great Western” set out on its maiden voyage from Bristol, England, to NYC.
1844Apr 8Ignaz Franz von Mosel (72), composer, died.
1848Apr 8Domenico Gaetano Maria Donizetti (50), Italian composer, died.
1850Apr 8William Henry Welch, US pathologist (founded John Hopkins), was born.
1860Apr 8Istvan Szechenyi (b.1791), Hungarian statesman, committed suicide.
1861Apr 8Elisha Graves Otis (50), US elevator builder (Otis), died.
1862Apr 8John D. Lynde patented an aerosol dispenser.
1864Apr 8In the Battle of Mansfield, Louisiana, Federals were routed by Confederate Gen. Richard Taylor. Keatchi girl’s school was taken over as a hospital for the injured soldiers.
1865Apr 8General Robert E. Lee’s retreat was cut off near Appomattox Court House. Lee requested to meet with Gen Ulysses Grant to discuss possible surrender.
1869Apr 8Harvey Cushing, US neurosurgeon (blood pressure studied), was born.
1875Apr 8Albert I LCMM von Saksen-Coburg, king of Belgium (1909-34), was born.
1876Apr 8Amilcare Ponchielli’s opera “La Gioconda,” premiered in Milan.
1878Apr 8Rudolf Nelson, composer, was born.
1879Apr 8Milk was sold in glass bottles for the 1st time.
1880Apr 8Victor Schertzinger, composer, director (Uptown NY), was born.
1881Apr 8Fernand Lamy, composer, was born.
1889Apr 8Adrian Boult, conductor, composer (BBC Sym Orch), was born in Chester, England.
1893Apr 8Mary Pickford (Gladys Smith), silent film actress (Poor Little Rich Girl), was born.
1898Apr 8British General Horatio Kitchener defeated the Khalifa, leader of the dervishes in Sudan, at the Battle of Atbara. Anglo-Egyptian forces crushed 6,000 Sudanese.
1902Apr 8Josef Krips, conductor (London Symph 1954-63), was born in Vienna, Austria.
1904Apr 8Britain and France signed a series of agreements dubbed the entente cordial. It marked the end of almost a century of intermittent conflict between the two nations and their predecessor states. The Entente cordiale, along with the Anglo-Russian Entente and the Franco-Russian Alliance, later became part of the Triple Entente among the UK, France, and Russia.
1910Apr 8Harriet Doerr (d.2002) was born as Harriet Huntington, grand-daughter of railroad tycoon Henry Edwards Huntington, in Pasadena. In 1984 she won the American Book Award for 1st fiction for “Stone for Ibarra.”
1911Apr 8Melvin Calvin, US chemist (photosynthesis, Nobel 1961), was born.
1912Apr 8Sonja Henie (d.1969), ice skater, actress (Olympic-gold-1928,32,36), was born in Oslo, Norway. Henie won 10 consecutive world championships.
1913Apr 8The US 17th Amendment was ratified, requiring direct election of senators, as opposed to appointment by state legislatures.
1914Apr 8U.S. and Columbia signed a treaty concerning Panama Canal Zone.
1918Apr 8The US First Aero Squadron was assigned to the Western Front for the first time on observation duty.
1919Apr 8Douglas Ian Smith, premier of Rhodesia, was born. He was Premier of the British Colony of Southern Rhodesia (13 Apr 1964 – 11 Nov 1965) and Prime Minister of the Republic of Rhodesia (11 Nov 1965 – 1 Jun 1979). He was Premier of the British Colony of Southern Rhodesia (13 Apr 1964 – 11 Nov 1965) and Prime Minister of the Republic of Rhodesia (11 Nov 1965 – 1 Jun 1979).
1920Apr 8Charles Tomlinson Griffes (35), US composer (White Peacock), died.
1921Apr 8Betty Bloomer Ford, first lady to President Gerald Ford, was born.
1923Apr 8Franco Corelli, tenor, was born in Anconia, Italy.
1928Apr 8The 1st Karastan rug, a machine-made product woven through the back, came off the loom in Leaksville, NC.
1929Apr 8Jacques Brel (d.1978), singer, actor, was born in Belgium.
1930Apr 8John Reardon, baritone (Falke-Die Fledermaus), was born in NYC.
1933Apr 8Manchester Guardian warned of unknown Nazi terror.
1935Apr 8Adolph Ochs (b.1858), publisher of the New York Times, died.
1937Apr 8Seymour Hersh, award winning investigative reporter (NY Times), was born.
1939Apr 8Italy, under Fascist dictatorship led by Benito Mussolini seized the country of Albania. The Albanian parliament voted to unite Albania with Italy; King Zog fled to Greece. Under Mussolini’s totalitarian rule Italy embarked on expansion and military conquest. Ethiopia fell victim, conquered by Italy in 1936. Italy’s foreign policy cooperation with Germany began in 1936 and both joined forces to intervene in the Spanish Civil War on the side of Francisco Franco’s rebel forces. Italy’s military alliance with Germany was struck in 1939.
1940Apr 8German battle cruisers sank British aircraft carrier Glorious.
1941Apr 8Eugene-Marcel Prevost, novelist, died.
1942Apr 8The Soviets opened a rail link to the besieged city of Leningrad.
1943Apr 8J.P. Kavanaugh, racehorse trainer, was born.
1943Apr 8Jomo Kenyatta (1891-1978) of Kenya was convicted of involvement with Mau Mau.
1944Apr 8Anthony Farrar Hockley, military historian, was born.
1945Apr 8Nazi occupiers were executed. Nazi general Christiansen fled the Netherlands.
1946Apr 8The League of Nations assembled in Geneva for its last session.
1950Apr 8A US Navy Privateer airplane flew from Wiesbaden, West Germany, to spy over the Soviet Union with 10 people on board. Soviet reconnaissance spotted the plane over Latvia and shot it down.
1952Apr 8President Truman, to avert a strike, ordered the Army to seize the nation’s steel mills after companies rejected Wage Stabilization Board recommendations. Truman’s attempt to take over the US steel industry was later denied by the Supreme Court and the mills were shut down by strikers for 8 weeks [see Jun 2].
1953Apr 8A Federal Grand Jury in SF indicted Hugh Bryson, pres. of the National Union of Marine Cooks and Stewards, on charges that he falsely claimed that he was not a communist in a Taft-Hartley affidavit.
1955Apr 8Barbara Kingsolver, novelist (The Bean Trees, Animal Dreams), was born.
1956Apr 8Six marine recruits drowned during exercise at Paradise Island, SC.
1962Apr 8Bay of Pigs invaders got thirty years imprisonment in Cuba.
1963Apr 8Julian Lennon, John Lennon’s son, singer (Too Late for Goodbyes), was born.
1965Apr 8Erik A. Blomberg (70), Swedish art historian, poet, author, died.
1966Apr 8The cover of Time magazine asked “Is God Dead?” An article inside examined the changing view of the Judeo-Christian god.
1968Apr 8In Czechoslovakia a new government was formed under Oldrich Cernik.
1970Apr 8The Senate rejected President Nixon’s nomination of G. Harold Carswell to the Supreme Court.
1971Apr 8The 1st legal off-track betting (OTB) system began in NYC
1974Apr 8Hank Aaron of the Atlanta Braves hit his 715th career home run in a game against the Los Angeles Dodgers, breaking Babe Ruth’s record. The round-tripper was off pitcher Al Downing.
1975Apr 8In the 47th Academy Awards “Godfather II,” Ellen Burstyn and Art Carney won.
1977Apr 8Israel premier Rabin resigned as prime minister due to a bank account scandal after it was revealed that his wife, Leah, had illegally maintained a foreign currency account containing about $3,000 in the United States.
1979Apr 8The 204th and final episode of “All in the Family” ran on TV.
1981Apr 8The short play “Rockaby” by Samuel Beckett (1906-1989), Irish novelist and playwright, premiered in Buffalo, NY.
1984Apr 8In the 4th Golden Raspberry Awards: “The Lonely Lady” won.
1985Apr 8India filed suit against Union Carbide over Bhopal disaster.
1986Apr 8Clint Eastwood (b.1930), filmstar and director, was elected mayor of Carmel, California.
1987Apr 8Al Campanis, Dodger executive for more than 40 years, was fired after saying on ABC’s “Nightline” that blacks may lack some of the “necessities” for becoming baseball managers.
1988Apr 8Pres. Reagan issued Executive Order 12365 ordering the immediate blocking of all property and interests in property of the Government of Panama.
1989Apr 8The Soviet Union acknowledged that one of its nuclear submarines, the Komsomolets, caught fire and sank 210 miles north of Norway the day before. 42 of 69 lives were reported lost.
1990Apr 8The cult series Twin Peaks premiered on ABC TV. It ran until Apr 18, 1991.
1991Apr 8The show Twin Peaks ended its run on TV.
1992Apr 8“Five Guys Named Moe” opened at Eugene O’Neill Theater in NYC for 445 performances.
1993Apr 8The U.N. General Assembly admitted the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia as its 181st member.
1994Apr 8Smoking was banned in Pentagon and all US military bases.
1995Apr 8Former Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara, in an interview with AP Network News and “Newsweek” magazine to promote his memoir “In Retrospect,” called America’s Vietnam War policy “terribly wrong.”
1996Apr 8Eve Ramsey, the pivotal character of the online soap opera “The East Village,” was born from the creative team at Marinex Multimedia Corp.
1997Apr 8The Vatican chose Archbishop Francis George of Portland, Ore., to head the Archdiocese of Chicago, succeeding the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin.
1998Apr 8The nation’s major cigarette makers withdrew support for a historic tobacco settlement, saying Congress had twisted their offer to help cut teen smoking into a harsh attack on their industry and sharp tax increases for American smokers.
1999Apr 8At a White House news conference, President Clinton said NATO could still win in Kosovo by air power alone, and he expressed hope for an early release of three American POW’s.
2000Apr 8US Catholic Bishops honored this day as a National Day of Atonement.”
2001Apr 8Eldrick Tiger Woods won the Masters golf tournament, his 4th straight major championship in a span of 294 days.
2002Apr 8US Sec. of State Colin Powell arrived in Morocco as a large pro-Palestinian paralyzed the capital.
2003Apr 8Connecticut won its second straight NCAA women’s basketball championship, defeating Tennessee 73-68.
2004Apr 8Condoleeza Rice, US national security advisor, testified before the National Commission on Terrorism Attacks and contended that that Pres. Bush did not ignore threats of terrorism in the months before Sep 11, 2001.
2005Apr 8In Washington DC Humayun A. Khan (47) of Islamabad, Pakistan, was indicted for supplying India and Pakistan with outlawed components for nuclear weapons and ballistic missile systems.
2006Apr 8The New Yorker magazine reported in its April 17 issue that the administration of Pres. George W. Bush is planning a massive bombing campaign against Iran, including use of bunker-buster nuclear bombs to destroy a key Iranian suspected nuclear weapons facility.
2007Apr 8Zach Johnson won the Masters with a two-shot victory over Tiger Woods.
2008Apr 8Congressional auditors reported that federal employees charged millions of dollars for Internet dating, tailor-made suits, lingerie, lavish dinners and other questionable expenses to their government credit cards over a 15-month period.
2009Apr 8The Passover holiday, which marks the Hebrews’ exodus from slavery in Egypt as recounted in the Bible, began this evening with a special meal known as the seder.
2010Apr 8The US EPA sent a notice of violation to the Chemical Waste Management, the largest hazardous waste facility in the West, involving federal laws on the disposal of PCBs. Neighbors blamed the landfill near Kettleman City, Ca., for at least 11 birth defects since 2007.
2011Apr 8US Republicans and Democrats agreed in late night talks to cut over $37 billion in federal spending narrowly avoiding a midnight shutdown that all sides say would inconvenience millions of people and damage a fragile economy. A final agreement was expected next week.
2012Apr 8The Afghan government and the US signed a deal governing special operations and night raids by American troops. The document gave the Afghans authority over the raids and gave the Americans an Afghan partner that will now be held equally to account if there are civilian casualties or allegations of mistreatment.
2013Apr 8In Washington state Walli Mujahidh (34), arrested on June 22, 2011, was sentenced to 17 years in prison after pleading guilty to chrages including conspiracy to use weapons of mass deastruction. A 2nd man, Abu Khalid Abdul-Latif, was sentenced last month to 18 years in prison.
2014Apr 8A US jury ordered Japanese drugmaker Takeda Pharmaceutical Co. and its US counterpart, Eli Lilly and Co., to pay $9 billion in punitive damages over Actos, a diabetes medicine linked to cancer. The drug companies said they will “vigorously challenge” the decision.
 Source: Timelines of History

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