This Day In History

[Mr. Scruffy]

April 11

1814 - Napoleon Bonaparte, emperor of France and one of the greatest military leaders in history, abdicates the throne, and, in the Treaty of Fontainebleau, is banished to the Mediterranean island of Elba.

1951 - President Harry S. Truman relieves General Douglas MacArthur of command of the U.S. forces in Korea. The firing of MacArthur set off a brief uproar among the American public, but Truman remained committed to keeping the conflict in Korea a “limited war.”

1979 - Ugandan dictator Idi Amin flees the Ugandan capital of Kampala as Tanzanian troops and forces of the Uganda National Liberation Front close in. Two days later, Kampala fell and a coalition government of former exiles took power.

 

[Mr. Scruffy]

April 12

1861 - The bloodiest four years in American history begin when Confederate shore batteries under General P.G.T. Beauregard open fire on Union-held Fort Sumter in South Carolina’s Charleston Bay. During the next 34 hours, 50 Confederate guns and mortars launched more than 4,000 rounds at the poorly supplied fort. On April 13, U.S. Major Robert Anderson surrendered the fort.

1945 - Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the longest serving president in American history, dies of a cerebral hemorrhage three months into his fourth term.

1961 - Aboard the spacecraft Vostok 1, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin becomes the first human being to travel into space. During the flight, the 27-year-old test pilot and industrial technician also became the first man to orbit the planet, a feat accomplished by his space capsule in 89 minutes.

 

[Mr. Scruffy]

April 15

1865 - President Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States, dies from an assassin’s bullet. Shot by John Wilkes Booth at Ford’s Theater in Washington the night before, Lincoln lived for nine hours before succumbing to the severe head wound he sustained.

1912 - At 2:20 a.m. the British ocean liner Titanic sinks into the North Atlantic Ocean about 400 miles south of Newfoundland, Canada. The massive ship, which carried 2,200 passengers and crew, had struck an iceberg two and half hours before.

1947 - Jackie Robinson, age 28, becomes the first African-American player in Major League Baseball when he steps onto Ebbets Field in Brooklyn to compete for the Brooklyn Dodgers.

 

[Mr. Scruffy]

April 17

1961 - The Bay of Pigs invasion begins when a CIA-financed and trained group of Cuban refugees lands in Cuba and attempts to topple the communist government of Fidel Castro. The attack was an utter failure.

1964 - The Ford Mustang is officially unveiled by Henry Ford II at the World’s Fair in Flushing Meadows, New York. That same day, the new car also debuted in Ford showrooms across America and almost 22,000 Mustangs were immediately snapped up by buyers.

 

[Mr. Scruffy]

April 22

1889 - At precisely high noon, thousands of would-be settlers make a mad dash into the newly opened Oklahoma Territory to claim cheap land. The nearly two million acres of land opened up to white settlement was located in Indian Territory, a large area that once encompassed much of modern-day Oklahoma.

1915 - German forces shock Allied soldiers along the western front by firing more than 150 tons of lethal chlorine gas against two French colonial divisions at Ypres, Belgium. This was the first major gas attack by the Germans, and it devastated the Allied line.

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.

 

[Mr. Scruffy]

April 25

1781 - 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.

1859 - At Port Said, Egypt, ground is broken for the Suez Canal, an artificial waterway intended to stretch 101 miles across the isthmus of Suez and connect the Mediterranean and the Red seas. Ferdinand de Lesseps, the French diplomat who organized the colossal undertaking, delivered the pickax blow that inaugurated construction.

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.

 

[Mr. Scruffy]

April 26

1865 - John Wilkes Booth is killed when Union soldiers track him down to a Virginia farm 12 days after he assassinated President Abraham Lincoln.

1937 - During the Spanish Civil War, the German military tests its powerful new air force–the Luftwaffe–on the Basque town of Guernica in northern Spain. The cutting-edge German aircraft began their unprovoked attack at 4:30 p.m., the busiest hour of the market day in Guernica. For three hours, the German planes poured down a continuous and unopposed rain of bombs and gunfire on the town and surrounding countryside. One-third of Guernica’s 5,000 inhabitants were killed or wounded, and fires engulfed the city and burned for days.

1986 - The world’s worst nuclear power plant accident occurs at the Chernobyl nuclear power station in the Soviet Union. Thirty-two people died and dozens more suffered radiation burns in the opening days of the crisis, but only after Swedish authorities reported the fallout did Soviet authorities reluctantly admit that an accident had occurred.

 

[Raissermesser]

April 26
1865 - John Wilkes Booth is killed when Union soldiers track him down to a Virginia farm 12 days after he assassinated President Abraham Lincoln.

Saw some very big news about this today. There could be credible doubt that Booth died on that farm in Virginia. Facial recognition software of photos of Booth taken before he killed Lincoln, of a John St. Helen in 1877, and a David E. George in 1902 have strong indications that all three were the same man.

Okay, so I reached for the salt shaker on this one, but have seen it from more than one source. It's not the same as DNA confirmation, but there's a problem with getting DNA from the man killed in Virginia's grave: no one's exactly sure of the spot where he's buried.

 

[Macfrommichigan]

Pretty sure Booth is dead, tho.

 

[Raissermesser]

Yep. Historically, it's an interesting question. If the man killed wasn't Booth, why was it maintained it was? This gets into endless conspiracy theories, and entire salt mines. Although, I'm good with they thought they had killed Booth - if it wasn't Booth in that barn.

 

[Macfrommichigan]

I'm not sure I believe one loner with a mail order rifle could have fired all those shot on Nov 22. Anything is possible, I guess. Maybe there is a tooth fairy. Maybe the Great Pumpkin is real.

 

[Raissermesser]

Shrug. The rifle Oswald used, a Carcano 91, supposedly has a rate of fire of 15 rounds per minute. That's one every four seconds. In comparison, a Springfield 1908 has a rate of fire of 20 rounds per minute, which is one every three seconds.

Out of curiosity, I just watched the Zapruder fillm, and from the moment JFK's head moves forward to the fatal shot is about 15 seconds. That's about three shots 5 seconds apart. So, yes, by rifle fire rate, that was possible.

 

[KeenDogg]

Shrug. The rifle Oswald used, a Carcano 91, supposedly has a rate of fire of 15 rounds per minute. That's one every four seconds. In comparison, a Springfield 1908 has a rate of fire of 20 rounds per minute, which is one every three seconds.

Out of curiosity, I just watched the Zapruder fillm, and from the moment JFK's head moves forward to the fatal shot is about 15 seconds. That's about three shots 5 seconds apart. So, yes, by rifle fire rate, that was possible.

There was a PBS doc awhile back explaining how it was possible. They made a compelling argument.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G930A using Tapatalk

 

[Mr. Scruffy]

April 30

1789 - In New York City, George Washington, the great military leader of the American Revolution, is inaugurated as the first president of the United States.

1803 - Representatives of the United States and Napoleonic France conclude negotiations for the Louisiana Purchase, a massive land sale that doubles the size of the young American republic.

1945 - Holed up in a bunker under his headquarters in Berlin, Adolf Hitler commits suicide by swallowing a cyanide capsule and shooting himself in the head. Soon after, Germany unconditionally surrendered to the Allied forces, ending Hitler’s dreams of a “1,000-year” Reich.

 

[Mr. Scruffy]

May 1

1898 - At Manila Bay in the Philippines, the U.S. Asiatic Squadron destroys the Spanish Pacific fleet in the first battle of the Spanish-American War. Nearly 400 Spanish sailors were killed and 10 Spanish warships wrecked or captured at the cost of only six Americans wounded.

1926 - Ford Motor Company becomes one of the first companies in America to adopt a five-day, 40-hour week for workers in its automotive factories. The policy would be extended to Ford’s office workers the following August.

1960 - An American U-2 spy plane is shot down while conducting espionage over the Soviet Union. The incident derailed an important summit meeting between President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev that was scheduled for later that month.

 

[Bakker1964]

I still have questions about the Gary Powers "shoot down". Too much of the aircraft survived for me to believe the AA rockets actually brought it down, rather than a mechanical failure of some sort.

 

[Raissermesser]

May 1

1898 - At Manila Bay in the Philippines, the U.S. Asiatic Squadron destroys the Spanish Pacific fleet in the first battle of the Spanish-American War. Nearly 400 Spanish sailors were killed and 10 Spanish warships wrecked or captured at the cost of only six Americans wounded.

Per a college history professor, when Dewey set sail for battle, some that saw the US fleet off thought they'd never see them again - they were going up against Spain, a world power. She also said that Dewey stopped the battle for breakfast, then had at it again. Turned out that was the story, but it was to withdraw for resupply.

By the end of the day, the Spanish fleet at Manila Bay was essentially no more. Nearly eighty Spanish sailors had died, with nearly three hundred wounded. Of the US, one sailor died of heat stroke, with nine wounded, and no ships sunk.

 

[Mr. Scruffy]

May 2

1933 - The modern legend of the Loch Ness Monster is born when a sighting makes local news. The newspaper Inverness Courier relates an account of a local couple who claim to have seen “an enormous animal rolling and plunging on the surface.”

1945 - Approximately 1 million German soldiers lay down their arms as the terms of the German unconditional surrender, signed at Caserta on April 29, come into effect. Early the same day, Russian Marshal Georgi K. Zhukov accepts the surrender of the German capital. The Red Army takes 134,000 German soldiers prisoner.

2011 - Osama bin Laden, the mastermind behind the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States, is killed by U.S. forces during a raid on his compound hideout in Pakistan.

 

[Mr. Scruffy]

May 7

1915 - The British ocean liner Lusitania is torpedoed without warning by a German submarine off the south coast of Ireland. Within 20 minutes, the vessel sank into the Celtic Sea. Of 1,959 passengers and crew, 1,198 people were drowned.

1954 - In northwest Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh’s Viet Minh forces decisively defeat the French at Dien Bien Phu, a French stronghold besieged by the Vietnamese communists for 57 days.

 

[Raissermesser]

May 7

1915 - The British ocean liner Lusitania is torpedoed without warning by a German submarine off the south coast of Ireland. Within 20 minutes, the vessel sank into the Celtic Sea. Of 1,959 passengers and crew, 1,198 people were drowned.

Umm ... controversial. Remembered and found this:

http://worldshipny.com/images/lusitania1.jpg

What was shocking was the advent of submarine warfare. It relied on stealth, and submarines didn't have room to take on survivors. Dimly recall a British submarine crew unofficially flying a pirate flag - such was the attitudes toward submarine warfare, circa WWI, and that crew embraced it.

It did bring us into WWI. That, and a certain message from Germany to Mexico.