Today in History

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Today in History

By Correspondent

YEARDAYEVENT
527Apr 1Emp. Justin named Justinianus co-emperor of Byzantium.
1504Apr 1English guilds went under state control.
1548Apr 1Sigismund I, the Elder (81), King of Poland, died.
1572Apr 1The Sea Beggars under Guillaume de la Marck landed in Holland and captured the small town of Briel.
1578Apr 1William Harvey England (d.1657), discoverer of blood circulation, was born.
1611Apr 1Gillis van Valkenborch (~72), Flemish painter, was buried.
1621Apr 1The Plymouth, Massachusetts colonists created the first treaty with Native Americans.
1647Apr 1John Wilmot (d.1680) Second Earl of Rochester, poet (A Satyr Upon Mankinde), scandalous pornographer and bawdy playwright, was born. He married Elizabeth Malet, and carried on an affair with the actress Elizabeth Barry. His friend, playwright George Etherege modeled the character Dorimont after him in “Man of Mode.” A 1994 play by Stephen Jeffrey titled “The Libertine,” is based on Wilmot’s life.
1683Apr 1Roger Williams (b.1603) died in poverty in Rhode Island. Williams died at Providence between, his wife Mary having predeceased him in 1676. Williams was the first champion of complete religious toleration in America. In 2005 Edwin S. Gaustad authored the biography “Roger Williams.”
1697Apr 1Abbe Prevost, French novelist, journalist (Manon Lescaut), was born.
1724Apr 1Jonathan Swift published Drapier’s letters.
1734Apr 1Louis Lully (69), French composer, died.
1748Apr 1The ruins of Pompeii were found.
1755Apr 1Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, French lawyer (Fisiologia del Gusto), was born.
1776Apr 1Friedrich von Klinger’s “Sturm und Drang,” premiered in Leipzig.
1778Apr 1Oliver Pollock, a New Orleans businessman, created the “$” symbol.
1789Apr 1The U.S. House of Representatives held its first full meeting, in New York City. Frederick Muhlenberg of Pennsylvania was elected the first House Speaker.
1792Apr 1Gronings feminist Etta Palm demanded women’s right to divorce
1793Apr 1The volcano Unsen on Japan erupted killing about 53,000.
1799Apr 1Narciso Casanovas (52), composer, died.
1815Apr 1Otto von Bismarck (d.1898), German statesman, was born. He founded the German Empire and was the chancellor of Germany, the Second Reich, from 1866-90 [1971-1990]. The Iron Chancellor created the modern social insurance state when he introduced transfer payments to appease worker insecurities. “History is simply a piece of paper covered with print; the main thing is still to make history, not to write it.” “Every man had his basic worth – from which must be subtracted his vanity.
   
1823Apr 1Simon Bolivar Buckner (d.1914), Lt. Gen. (Confederate Army), was born.
1826Apr 1Samuel Mory patented the internal combustion engine.
1834Apr 1Isidore Edouard Legouix, composer, was born.
1850Apr 1The San Francisco County government was established.
1852Apr 1Edward Austin Abbey, US, painter (Quest of the Holy Grail), was born.
1853Apr 1Cincinnati, Ohio, established a fire department made up of paid city employees.
1862Apr 1Shenandoah Valley campaign, Jackson’s Battle of Woodstock, VA.
1863Apr 1First wartime conscription law went into effect in the U.S.
1864Apr 1The first travel accident policy was issued to James Batterson by the Travelers Insurance Company.
1865Apr 1At the Battle of Five Forks in Petersburg, Va., Gen. Robert E. Lee began his final offensive.
1866Apr 1US Congress rejected presidential veto and gave all equal rights.
1867Apr 1Blacks voted in the municipal election in Tuscumbia, Alabama.
1868Apr 1Edmond Rostand, French dramatist (Cyrano de Bergerac), was born.
1872Apr 1The first edition of The Standard was published.
1875Apr 1Edgar Wallace, novelist, playwright, journalist (Terror), was born in England.
1876Apr 1The first official NL baseball game took place. Boston beat Philadelphia 6-5.
1878Apr 1Carl Sternheim, German playwright (Hyperion, Tabula Rasa), was born.
1881Apr 1Anti-Jewish riots took place in Jerusalem.
1883Apr 1Aleksander V. Aleksandrov, Russian composer, conductor, was born.
1889Apr 1The first dishwashing machine was marketed (in Chicago).
1891Apr 1The London-Paris telephone connection opened.
1894Apr 1The manufacture and sale of Kinetoscopes and films were assigned to the Edison Manufacturing Company, thus moving them out of the experimental laboratory. The Kinetograph Department, a new division in the Edison Company, was launched.
1895Apr 1Alberta Hunter, blues singer, was born.
1905Apr 1US Leather was removed from the Dow Jones. It was succeeded by Central Leather Co. It was one of the nation’s largest shoemakers in the first decades of this century.
1909Apr 1Eddie Duchin, society pianist, bandleader (Eddie Duchin Orch), was born in Mass.
1911Apr 1Gunther Rennert, opera director, producer, was born in Essen, Germany.
1913Apr 1In San Francisco Lee Quon Sing, an aged rag picker, was shot and killed by two members of the Bing Kong tong, a society at war with the Suey Sing tong. Police captured Yee Lick, one of the shooters. Lee Quon Sing was the 8th victim in the war that began three weeks ago over a slave girl.
1916Apr 1The first US national women’s swimming championships was held.
1917Apr 1Scott Joplin (b.1868), ragtime composer (Sting), died of syphilis in a NY mental hospital. His work included the opera “Treemonisha.”
1918Apr 1In England the Royal Flying Corps was replaced by the Royal Air Force.
1919Apr 1Joseph E. Murray, transplant physician, was born.
1920Apr 1Toshiro Mifune, writer, actor (Shogun), was born in Tsing-tao, China.
1922Apr 1William Manchester, historian (Death of a President), was born in Attleboro, Mass.
1924Apr 1Imperial Airways was formed in Britain.
1927Apr 1The first automatic record changer was introduced by His Master’s Voice.
1928Apr 1China’s Chiang Kai-shek began attacks on communists as his army crossed Yang-tse.
1929Apr 1Louie Marx introduced the Yo-Yo in the US.
1930Apr 1Cosima Liszt (92), wife of Austrian composer Richard Wagner, died.
1931Apr 1An Earthquake devastated Managua, Nicaragua, killing 2,000.
1933Apr 1Heinrich Himmler became Police Commander of Germany (Reichsfuhrer-SS).
1934Apr 1Two Texas Highway Patrol officers, E.B. Wheeler (26) and H.D. Murphy (24), were killed by Henry Methvin, a gang member of Bonnie and Clyde, as they approached the gang’s car near Grapevine, Texas.
1935Apr 1The first radio tube to be made of metal was announced in Schenectady, NY.
1937Apr 1Aden became a British colony.
1939Apr 1The United States recognized the Franco government in Spain following the end of the Spanish civil war. A Spanish official later said that without American petroleum and American trucks and American credit we could never have won the civil war.
1941Apr 1Nazi’s forbade Jews access to cafes in Paris.
1942Apr 1The U.S. Navy began a partial convoy system in the Atlantic.
1944Apr 1Japanese troops conquered Jessami, East-India.
1945Apr 1Canadian troop freed Doetinchem, Enschede, Borculo & Eibergen.
1946Apr 1Weight Watchers was formed.
1947Apr 1Greece’s King George II died.
1949Apr 1“Happy Pappy” premiered. It was the first all-black-cast variety show.
1950Apr 1The SF population was 775,357. The census later said 4 of 10 people in SF owned their own homes with a median value of $11,930. The average SF adult completed 11.7 years of school and over 19% went on to college.
1951Apr 1U.N. forces again crossed the 38th Parallel in Korea.
1952Apr 1The Big Bang theory was proposed in Physical Review by Alpher, Bethe & Gamow.
1953Apr 1Barry Sonnenfeld, director (When Harry Met Sally, Big), was born.
1954Apr 1U.S. Air Force Academy was founded in Colorado. President Dwight Eisenhower signed a bill authorizing the establishment of an Air Force Academy, similar to West Point and Annapolis. On July 11, 1955, the first class was sworn in at Lowry Air Force Base. The academy moved to a permanent site near Colorado Springs, Colorado, in 1958.
1955Apr 1“One Man’s Family” was seen on TV for the final time after a six-years on NBC-TV.
1956Apr 1Libby Riddles, dogsled racer: 1st woman to win Iditarod (1985), was born.
1958Apr 1President Eisenhower signed a $1.85 billion emergency housing measure.
1960Apr 1The first weather satellite, TIROS 1, was launched from Cape Canaveral, Fla.
1961Apr 1Jim Bakker, TV evangelist, married Tammy Faye.
1963Apr 1The daytime television drama “General Hospital” and “Doctors” premiered on ABC.
1965Apr 1Henry D.G. Crerar (b.1888), Canadian general and the country’s “leading field commander” in World War II, died.
1967Apr 1Sir Edward Compton, who had been appointed as Ombudsman-designate in September 1966, began work as Britain’s Parliamentary Ombudsman.
1968 Apr 1The U.S. Army launched Operation Pegasus to reopen a land route to the besieged Khe Sanh Marine base.
1969Apr 1Lin Biao (1907-1971) was named Mao’s constitutional successor. Chinese historical accounts later said Biao showed his true nature two years later as a murderous opportunist obsessed with seizing power.
1970Apr 1President Nixon signed a measure banning cigarette advertising on radio and television, to take effect after Jan. 1, 1971.
1971Apr 1President Richard M. Nixon ordered Lt. William Calley transferred from prison to house arrest at Fort Benning, Georgia, pending appeal.
1972Apr 1A US baseball strike began and lasted to April 13.
1976Apr 1Pakistan’s PM Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto appointed Zia-ul-Haq as Chief of Army Staff, ahead of a number of more senior officers.
1977Apr 1The U.S. Senate followed the example of the House by adopting a stringent code of ethics requiring full financial disclosure and limits on outside income.
1979Apr 1Iran proclaimed to be an Islamic Republic after the fall of the Shah.
1980Apr 1The pro-Iranian Dawah Party claims responsibility for an attack on Iraq’s Deputy Prime Minister, Tariq Aziz (b.1936), at Mustansiriyah University, Baghdad.
1981Apr 1Jack Welch began his term as the head of General Electric.
1982Apr 1The U.S. transferred the Canal Zone to Panama.
1983Apr 1Tens of thousands of anti-nuke demonstrators linked arms in 14-mile human chain spanning three defense installations in rural England, including the Greenham Common US Air Base.
1984Apr 1Stewart Brand and Larry Brilliant launched the Well (Whole Earth ”˜Lectronic Link) in Sausalito. In La Jolla, Ca., Larry Brilliant, physician and head of Network Technologies Int’l. in Michigan, pitched the idea for a public computer conferencing system to Stewart Brand, publisher of the Whole Earth Catalog. Their meeting led to the 1985 founding of “The Well” online service that operated as a collection of conferences. It used the PicoSpan conferencing software. In 2001 Katie Hafner authored “The Well: A Story of Love, Death and Real Life in the Seminal Online Community.”
1986Apr 1Crude oil prices fell below $11 a barrel.
1987Apr 1In his first major speech on the AIDS epidemic, President Reagan told doctors in Philadelphia, “We’ve declared AIDS public health enemy number one.”
1988Apr 1Independent US counsel James C. McKay found insufficient evidence to warrant a criminal indictment of Attorney General Edwin Meese III in connection with the Iraq-Jordan pipeline plan or his investment in telephone company stock.
1989Apr 1Alaska Gov. Steve Cowper announced that a “strike force” of state officials and local fishermen were taking over some of the cleanup operations following the massive Exxon Valdez oil spill.
1990Apr 1The US Federal Hourly Minimum Wage was set at $3.80 an hour.
1991Apr 1Duke defeated the University of Kansas 72-to-65 to win the NCAA college basketball championship.
1992Apr 1President Bush pledged the United States would help finance a $24 billion international aid fund for the former Soviet Union.
1993Apr 1In an impassioned plea for Russian aid, President Clinton told newspaper editors in Annapolis, Md., that America should help “not out of charity” but as a crucial investment in peace and prosperity.
   
1994Apr 1The US government reported the nation’s unemployment rate for March remained unchanged from February, at 6.5 percent.
1995Apr 1Aaron, a computer-driven robot began painting a new 25 sq. ft canvas on a daily basis. It was designed and programmed by Harold Cohen, a San Diego computer scientist. The event was scheduled to start in Boston at 300 Congress St. and go to May 29.
1996Apr 1The Mare Island Naval Shipyard in Vallejo, Ca., was decommissioned.
1997Apr 1The US Library of Congress began its Today in History web site @ http://www.loc.gov.
1998Apr 1Judge Susan Webber threw out the sexual harassment suit filed by Paula Jones against Pres. Clinton saying her claims of sexual harassment fell “far short” of being worthy of trial. Clinton later settled with Jones without apology or admission of guilt.
1999Apr 1The United States branded as an illegal abduction the capture of three U.S. Army soldiers near the Macedonian-Yugoslav border; President Clinton demanded their immediate release.
2000Apr 1Michelle Kwan won her third World Figure Skating title.
2001Apr 1The Pritzker Prize for Architecture was awarded to Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Mueron of Basel, Switzerland.
2002Apr 1Maryland won its first NCAA men’s basketball championship with a 64-52 victory over Indiana.
2003Apr 1In the 14th day of Operation Iraqi Freedom American soldiers on the road to Baghdad fought bloody street-to-street battles with militants loyal to Saddam Hussein. The US opened the assault on Karbala. US cluster bombs reportedly killed 11 civilians in Hilla.
2004Apr 1Pres. Bush signed the “Laci Peterson” bill giving new protections for the unborn that for the first time made it a separate federal crime to harm a fetus during an assault on the mother.
2005Apr 1President Clinton’s former national security adviser, Sandy Berger, pleaded guilty to sneaking classified documents out of the National Archives; he was later sentenced to two years’ probation.
2006Apr 1Former hostage Jill Carroll arrived in Germany, where she strongly disavowed statements she had made during captivity in Iraq and shortly after her release, saying she had been repeatedly threatened.
2007Apr 1Tommy Thompson, former Wisconsin governor (GOP), announced that he is running for president.
2008Apr 1A top US immigration official said Washington has started deportation proceedings against thousands of Vietnamese living illegally in the US under a pact between the two countries.
   
2009Apr 1Albania and Croatia became NATO’s newest members.
2010Apr 1US President Barack Obama called on Chinese President Hu Jintao to join forces on the Iranian nuclear standoff as he stepped up efforts to block Tehran’s atomic program.
2011Apr 1In Mississippi a school bus collided with a tractor trailer near Shaw. A girl (10) was killed and at least 10 people were injured.
2012Apr 1Occupy SF activists took over an unoccupied building at 888 Turk Street, owned by the Archdiocese of San Francisco, following a peaceful rally and march earlier in the day.
2013Apr 1In California a US federal judge granted Stockton’s request for bankruptcy, making it the largest city in US history to go bankrupt.
2014Apr 1California’s PG&E was indicted on 12 federal counts related to the 2010 gas pipeline explosion that leveled a San Bruno neighborhood and killed 8 people.
   
 Source: Timelines of History 

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