Today in History

[lliam]

Today in History
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1617 - Pocahontas died in England at about age 22. Three years earlier, she had converted to Christianity, taken the name Rebecca and married Englishman John Rolfe.

1790 - Thomas Jefferson of Virginia became the first U.S. secretary of state. He later was the third president of the United States.

1984 - The U.S. aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk collided with a nuclear-powered Soviet submarine in the Sea of Japan.

1962 - Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev pledged that Russia would cooperate with the United States in peaceful exploration of space. The joint American-Soviet Soyuz space mission was conducted in July 1975.

1945 - 7,000 Allied planes dropped more than 12,000 tons of explosives on Germany during a single World War II daytime bombing raid.

<small>[ 04-13-2005, 03:51 PM: Message edited by: lliam ]</small>

[lliam]

1964 - Sidney Poitier became the first African-American to win an Oscar for best actor, honored for his work in Lillies of the Field.

1990 - Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev gave Lithuania a two-day ultimatum, threatening to cut off some supplies to the Baltic republic if it did not rescind laws passed since a March 11 declaration of independence.

1994 - Five Israelis were killed and another 30 wounded in a suicide bombing in a bus station in Hadera.

1972 - The first major league baseball strike ended, eight days after it began.

1965 - Lawrence Bradford Jr., a 16-year-old from New York City, started work as the first black page ever to serve in either chamber of Congress.

1997 Tiger Woods, 21, won the Masters Tournament. He was the youngest Masters champion and the first African-American to win any of the four major professional golf tournaments for men.

1997 Indian Prime Minister H.D. Deve Gowda resigned.

2003 President George W. Bush said Syria had chemical weapons and was accepting Iraqi leaders into the country. Syria denied having weapons of mass des truction and announced later it was closing its borders to fleeing Iraqis.

2004 Iraqi kidnappers released three Russian and five Ukrainian engineers hours after they were taken hostage. Earlier, it was announced that several foreigners were kidnapped in Iraq in the past week including one American, three Japanese, seven Chinese, two Israeli Arabs and one Canadian.

2004 Vice President Dick Cheney said in Beijing that the United States does not support independence for Taiwan.

[lliam]

April 14th
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1828 Noah Webster published his American Dictionary of the English Language. It was the first dictionary of American English to be published.

1861 The flag of the Confederacy was raised over Fort Sumter, S.C., as Union troops there surrendered in the early days of the Civil War.

1983 President Reagan denied he was trying to overthrow the leftist Nicaraguan government

1986 U.S. warplanes struck Libya in the biggest U.S. air strike since the Vietnam War. Libya claimed 40 people were killed.

1991 U.S. troops began withdrawing from southern Iraq into buffer zones.

1991 In a short-lived art theft, 20 major paintings by Van Gogh were stolen from an Amsterdam museum by two gunmen. The paintings were found abandoned 35 minutes later.

1992 A federal appeals court in New York ruled that hotel magnate Leona Helmsley, 71, must go to prison for tax evasion.

1993 12 top former Communist officials went on trial charged with treason in the August 1991 coup attempt that hastened the fall of the Soviet Union. Two days later, the trial was adjourned indefinitely because of the illness of one defendant.

1993 Violence raged throughout South Africa as hundreds of thousands of blacks protested the slaying of popular Communist Party chief Chris Hani.

1994 Executives representing seven major tobacco companies told a House subcommittee that they did not believe cigarettes were addictive.

1997 James McDougal, once a partner with then-Gov. Bill Clinton in the Whitewater Development Corp., was sentenced to three years in prison after being convicted of seeking to enrich himself with fradulent loans.

1997 Comedian Ellen DeGeneres revealed she was a lesbian in an interview with Time magazine. Her ABC-TV sitcom did not long survive her revelation.

1998 Eight members of the Republic of Texas separatist group were convicted on fraud charges in a federal court in Dallas.

2000 The Dow Jones industrial index fell 7.3 percent for the week in its worst performance since 1989.

2002 Secretary of State Colin Powell met with Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat in an effort to ease tensions with Israel and stop the wave of suicide bombings but was told there would be no cease fire until the Israelis ended their military operation and pulled back.

2003 As looting became widespread in Iraq, U.S. Marines and Iraqi policemen began joint security patrols in Baghdad

2004 President George W. Bush said he will meet the June 30 deadline to transfer sovereignty to Iraq but warned the going may become more difficult.

2004 Los Angeles police said they were investigating an accusation by a man who says Michael Jackson sexually abused him nearly 20 years ago.

[lliam]

April 15th
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1817 The first U.S. public school for the deaf, Connecticut Asylum for the Education and Instruction of Deaf and Dumb Persons (now the American School for the Deaf), was founded at Hartford, Conn.

1861 President Lincoln sent Congress a message recognizing a state of war with the Southern states and calling for 75,000 volunteer soldiers.

1912 The luxury liner Titanic sank in the northern Atlantic Ocean off Newfoundland after striking an iceberg the night before. Some 1,500 lives were lost.

1985 U.S. officials in Seattle indicted 23 members of a neo-Nazi group for robbery and murder. 10 gang members later were convicted and sentenced to 40 to 100 years in prison.

1991 The European Community lifted its remaining economic sanctions against South Africa -- allowing the import of gold coins, iron and steel -- despite pleas by the African National Congress to continue the sanctions.

1996 Tokyo and Washington agreed on a gradual return of U.S. military bases on Okinawa to Japan.

1998 Pol Pot, the Khmer Rouge leader who presided over a reign of terror in Cambodia in the late 1970s, died at a jungle outpost near the Cambodian-Thailand border.

1999 Astronomers announced they had discovered evidence of a solar system in the constellation Andromeda. It was the only known solar system other than our own.

2003 The Bush administration warned Iran not to interfere with efforts to form a government in Iraq.

2003 More than 100 Iraqis protested in Baghdad against what they called the U.S. military occupation, shouting Death to America ... Death to Bush.

2004 The Pentagon announced it was extending the tours of duty of some 21,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, going back on a promise made last year to keep deployments to 12 months.

2004 Iraqi insurgents released three Japanese hostages in apparent response to pleas by Sunni Muslim clerics. The abductors had vowed to kill the hostages if the Japanese forces did not withdraw from Iraq. Several foreign hostages, including Americans and Italians, were still being held.

[piqaboo]

Hi Lliam. thanks.
Im enjoying these (and sad to say, learning from them).

[lliam]

Originally posted by piqaboo:
Hi Lliam. thanks.
Im enjoying these (and sad to say, learning from them).

Hi Piq, I don't understand, why so sad sweetheart?

[piqaboo]

A fair amount of the info is either current events of the recent past, or history I should have learned.

But Im not sad. Its a sad state of affairs!

[lliam]

Originally posted by piqaboo:
A fair amount of the info is either current events of the recent past, or history I should have learned.

But Im not sad. Its a sad state of affairs!

I see what you mean Piq.

[piqaboo]

1828 Noah Webster published his American Dictionary of the English Language. It was the first dictionary of American English to be published

Noah essentially invented prescriptive American English. He had very strong political views and felt that the Americans should divorce themselves as much as possible from England culturally as well as politically. He single-handedly inverted the terminal -re to -er (theatre, theater), and removed the -u- from many words (colour, color).
In an effort to simplify spelling, he also created some spellings since adopted in britain (musick, music) (I wonder why he didnt go for musik).

His was the first dictionary to include words used in the US that were not in use elsewhere in the Empire (ex: skunk, squash). It was very influential in standardizing American across the width and breadth of territories, colonies etc.

Noah Webster Link

<small>[ 04-15-2005, 04:08 PM: Message edited by: piqaboo ]</small>

[shostakovich]

April 15: Shos pays his IRS taxes, keeps government afloat 2 nanoseconds.
Patriotic Shos

[OperaTenor]

Hi Shos!

You're missing out on all of the fun over in the Barracks!

[bacchus]

413 A.D. Emperor Chou Lin of China establishes this day as the final day that all tithes and tributes must be received in his capital city. 1500 years later, the US govt. learns from history.

[lliam]

April 16th
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1862 Congress abolished slavery in the District of Columbia.

1972 Apollo 16 blasted off on an 11-day moon mission with three American astronauts aboard.

1975 The government of Cambodia asked the communist insurgents for a cease-fire and offered to turn power over to them.

1991 The first Jewish settlement under the Israeli government opened in the occupied territories, defying a U.S. request to stop such settlement activity in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

1992 The House Ethics Committee released the names of more than 300 check-bouncers, ending an inquiry into the House bank scandal that rocked Congress and raised havoc in election campaigns.

1992 The FDA ruled silicone breast implants may be returned to market, but only with severe restrictions limiting them to women who have urgent need.

1998 Tornadoes killed 10 people in Arkansas, Kentucky and Tennessee.
1999 Hockey legend Wayne Gretzky announced his retirement from the NHL after 21 years.

2002 The premier and members of his Dutch government resigned after a report faulted them, along with the United Nations, for a 1995 massacre of 7,500 Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica, Bosnia.

2004 The United States evacuated its diplomats and their families from Saudi Arabia because of reported terrorist threats.

[lliam]

April 17th
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1421 The sea broke the dikes at Dort, Holland, drowning an estimated 100,000 people.

1521 Martin Luther was excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church after refusing to admit to charges of heresy.

1524 Italian navigator Giovanni Verrazano discovered New York Harbor.
1790 American statesman, printer, scientist and writer Benjamin Franklin died in Philadelphia at age 84.

1964 Jerrie Mock of Columbus, Ohio, became the first woman to complete a solo flight around the world.

1970 With the world anxiously watching via television, Apollo 13, a U.S. lunar spacecraft that suffered a severe malfunction on its journey to the moon, safely returned to Earth.

1991 The Dow Jones industrial average closed above 3,000 for the first time, at 3,004.46. Experts hailed it as forecasting an end to the recession.

1997 House Speaker Newt Gingrich announced that former Sen. Bob Dole, R-Kansas, would lend him the money to pay his fines after the Georgia Republican admitted to using tax-exempt donations for political activities.
2000 With an eye toward China, the Clinton administration decided not to sell Taiwan all the weapons it had requested.

2001 Mississippi voters, by a 2-1 margin, decided to keep their state flag, which includes the Confederate battle cross in the upper left-hand corner.

2003 Billionaire philanthropist John Paul Getty Jr. died at a London hospital. Getty, who was being treated for a chest infection, was 70.

2004 The General Accounting Office, looking into the oil-for-food program, administered by the U.N. for Iraq, estimated the Saddam Hussein regime collected more than $11 billion in kickbacks and illegal sales.

2004 The Israeli army confirmed it had killed the new Hamas leader, Abdel Aziz Rantissi, who had headed the militant group less than a month after his predecessor also was assassinated.

[lliam]

April 18th
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1775 American patriot Paul Revere began his famed ride through the Massachusetts countryside, crying out The British are coming! to rally the Minutemen.

1906 An earthquake struck San Francisco, collapsing buildings and igniting fires that destroyed much of what remained of the city. By the time it was over three days later, almost 500 people were dead and more than a quarter of a million were homeless.

1923 Yankee Stadium opened in New York.

1942 U.S. planes bombed the Japanese mainland for the first time during World War II.
1949 The Republic of Ireland formally declared itself independent from Britain.
1980 Rhodesia became the independent African nation of Zimbabwe.

1983 The U.S. embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, was severely damaged by a car-bomb explosion that killed 63 people, including the suicide bomber and 17 Americans. The terrorist attack was carried out in protest of the U.S. military presence in Lebanon.

1987 Democrat Annette Strauss was elected the first woman mayor of Dallas.

1992 An 11-year-old Florida boy sued to divorce his natural parents and remain with his foster parents. The boy eventually won his suit.

1993 The U.N. Security Council voted to toughen sanctions against Serbia because of its support for Bosnian Serbs trying to carve an ethnically pure state out of Bosnia-Herzegovina.

1996 Gunmen killed 18 people and wounded 15 more in an attack on tourists at the Egyptian pyramids.

2002 Former Sen. Bob Kerrey, D.-Neb., revealed that at least 13 civilians were killed by his U.S. Navy unit in a Vietnamese village in 1969.

2002 Actor Robert Blake was arrested in the slaying of his wife in Los Angeles. After a 2005 trial, he was acquitted.

2003 Abu Dhabi TV aired videotape showing a man who appeared to be Saddam Hussein greeting a crowd of supporters as coalition forces entered Baghdad.

2003 The FDA issued new guidelines in which people potentially infected with severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, to be deferred in donating blood.

[shostakovich]

From OT: "Hi Shos!

You're missing out on all of the fun over in the Barracks!"

-----------------------------------------------------

Hi OT. I've been scanning the Barracks. Given the choice of jumping in or having half a life, I opted to be chicken. I admire the stamina of youth. Unfortunately, I'm short on both. Hang in there. I send along my applause.
Old Shos

[lliam]

April 19th
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1775 The American Revolutionary War began at the Battle of Lexington, Mass. Eight Minutemen were killed and 10 wounded in an exchange of musket fire with British Redcoats.

1861 One week after the Civil War began, the first Americans died, the result of a clash between a secessionist mob in Baltimore and Massachusetts troops bound for Washington. Four soldiers and 12 rioters were killed.

1943 Jewish residents of the Warsaw Ghetto revolted when the Germans tried to resume deportations to the Treblinka concentration camp. When the uprising ended on May 16, 300 Germans and 7,000 Jews had died and the ghetto lay in ruins.

1971 The Soviet Union launched its first Salyut space station.

1972 The U.S. Apollo 16 spacecraft began orbiting the moon two days before astronauts landed on its surface.

1989 An explosion in a gun turret aboard the battleship USS Iowa killed 47 sailors.

1990 The U.S.-backed Contra rebels and the outgoing Nicaraguan government agreed to an immediate cease-fire and a formula to disarm and demobilize the Contras by June 10.

1993 The 51-day Branch Davidian standoff near Waco, Texas, ended tragically when a fire destroyed the fortified compound after authorities tear-gassed the place. Cult leader David Koresh and 85 followers, including 17 children, were killed.

1993 The governor of South Dakota and seven other people were killed in a plane crash in Iowa.

1994 A federal jury awarded police beating victim Rodney King $3.8 million dollars in compensatory damages from the city of Los Angeles.

1995 168 people were killed and more than 400 injured when a bomb exploded outside a federal office building in Oklahoma City.

1997 The rising Red River drove tens of thousands of people from their homes in North Dakota and Minnesota.

2000 A federal appeals court ruled that 6-year-old Cuban refugee Elian Gonzalez may stay in the United States until the court heard the full appeal from his relatives, who sought to retain custody of the boy. Eventually, he returned to Cuba.

2003 Scott Peterson, a Modesto, Calif., fertilizer salesman, was arrested in the suspected murders of his pregnant wife Laci and unborn child.

2004 President George W. Bush named U.N. Ambassador John Negroponte to be ambassador to Iraq.

2004 President Bush was reported to have committed $660 million to train international peacekeeping forces outside United Nations control, with an eye primarily on African countries.

[lliam]

April 20
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1526 A Mogul army led by Babur defeated an Afghan army at the Battle of Panipat, taking the cities of Delhi and Agra.

1534 French explorer Jacques Cartier arrived on the coast of Labrador, North America.

1657 English admiral Robert Blake defeated the Spanish fleet in Santa Cruz Bay, off the Canary Islands.

1770 English navigator James Cook reached New South Wales, Australia.

1949 The Badminton Horse Trials were held for the first time, at Badminton, Gloucestershire.

1969 Pierre Trudeau became prime minister of Canada.

1969 British troops guarded public utilities in Northern Ireland after post offices were bombed.

1989 The first multi-party elections in Czechoslovakia since 1946 were held.

1996 At least 17 people died when a hotel collapsed in New Delhi, India.

1997 Inder Kumar Gujral, the new United Front coalition leader, became India's new prime minister.

[lliam]

April 20
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Births
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1889 Adolf Hitler, German fascist dictator

1893 Joan Miró, Spanish painter

1893 Harold Lloyd, US silent-film comedian

1902 Donald Wolfit, English actor

1939 Ray Brooks, English actor

1941 Ryan O'Neal, US film actor


Deaths
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1750 Jean Louis Petit, French surgeon

1768 Canaletto, Italian landscape painter


1769 Pontiac, American Indian leader

1912 Bram Stoker, Irish author of Dracula

1947 Christian X, King of Denmark

1993 Mario Cantinflas, Mexican comedian

1995 Milovan Djilas, Yugoslav dissident and political writer

[lliam]

April 21
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753 BC Traditionally, the date on which the city of Rome was founded.

1509 Henry VIII became King of England.

1836 Texan independence was ensured by the defeat of Mexico at the battle of San Jacinto.

1907 In Ireland, political clubs merged to form the Sinn Féin League.

1960 The new city of Brasilia was declared the capital of Brazil, replacing Rio de Janeiro.

1964 BBC 2 began broadcasting.

1967 King Constantine II of Greece was removed in an army coup, and martial law was imposed.

1983 One-pound coins replaced notes in England and Wales.

1989 Over 100,000 Chinese students gathered in Tiananmen Square, ignoring government warnings of severe punishment.

1996 The Chechen rebel leader Dzhokhar Dudayev died in a rocket attack in Chechnya, although Russian president Boris Yeltsin had announced a cease-fire three weeks earlier.

1997 Sudan's Islamic government and four southern rebel groups signed a treaty to end the 14-year-old civil war.

<small>[ 04-21-2005, 06:59 AM: Message edited by: lliam ]</small>