Today
in History ~ April 4
Events
1460 - University of Basle in Swizerland forms
1541 - Ignatius of Loyola becomes 1st superior-general of Jesuits
1581 - Frances Drake completes circumnavigation of world, becomes knight
1655 - Battle at Postage Farina, Tunis: English fleet defeats Barbarian pirates
1660 - English king Charles II ends Decl of Breda (freedom of religion)
1686 - English king James II publishes Declaration of Indulgence
1687 - King James II orders his declaration of indulgence read in church
1788 - Last of the Federalist essays was published.
1812 - President James Madison enacted a ninety-day embargo on trade with England.
[H]
1818 - Congress decided the flag of the United States would consist of 13 red-and-white stripes and 20 stars, with a new star to be added for every new state of the Union.
1828 - Casparus van Wooden patents chocolate milk powder (Amsterdam)
1832 - Charles Darwin aboard HMS Beagle reaches Rio de Janeiro
1850 - City of Los Angeles incorporated
1859 - Giacomo Meyerbeer's Opera "Dinorah" is produced (Paris)
1862 - Battle of Yorktown (Civil War edition) begins
1862 - US begins Peninsular Campaign aimed at capturing Richmond
1865 - Lee's army arrives at Amelia Courthouse
1887 - Susanna Medora Salter was elected as the first woman mayor in the United States, serving for one year as head of the municipal government of Argonia, Kan.
1896 - The Yukon gold rush began with the announcement of a strike in the Northwest Territory of Canada.
1900 - Assassination attempt on Prince of Wales/King Edward VII
1902 - British financier Cecil Rhodes left $10 million in his will to provide scholarships for Americans at Oxford University.
1912 - Chinese republic proclaimed in Tibet
1914 - "Perils of Pauline" shown for 1st time in LA
1916 - US Senate agrees (82-6) to participate in WW I
1918 - Battle of Somme ends; the first major German offensive in over a year, ended on the Western Front.
1920 - Arabs attack Jews in Jerusalem
1929 - Sigmund Romberg's "New Moon" musical opens in London
1932 - George Bernard Shaw's "Too True to be Good," premieres in NYC
1932 - Vitamin C 1st isolated, CC King, Univ of Pittsburgh
1933 - US Dirigible Akron crashes off coast of NJ, 73 die
1940 - Richard Rodgers'/Lorenz Hart's "Higher & Higher," premieres in NYC
1941 - German troops conquer Banghazi
1944 - British troops capture Addis Ababa Ethiopia
1944 - De Gaulle forms new regime in exile, with communists
1945 - Hungary liberated from Nazi occupation (National Day)
1945 - US tanks/infantry conquer Bielefeld
1945 - During World War II, U.S. forces liberated the Nazi death camp Ohrdruf in Germany.
1947 - Largest group of sunspots on record
1948 - 84-year-old Connie Mack challenges 78-year-old Clark Griffith to a race from home to 1st base; it ends in a tie
1949 - North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) treaty signed
1949 - Representatives of 12 nations gathered in Washington, D.C., to sign the North Atlantic Treaty, creating the NATO alliance.
1956 - Enid Bagnold's "Chalk Garden," premieres in London
1957 - Heitor Villa-Lobos' 10th Symphony, premieres in Paris
1958 - 1st march against nuclear weapons (Aldermaston England)
1960 - 32nd Academy Awards - "Ben-Hur," Charlton Heston & Simone Signoret win
1969 - Denton Cooley implants 1st temporary artificial heart
1969 - CBS canceled The Smothers Brothers. The popular hour-long comedy series had often been at odds with network censors.
1971 - "Follies" opens at Winter Garden Theater NYC for 524 performances
1972 - 1st electric power plant fueled by garbage begins operating
1974 - Hank Aaron ties Babe Ruth's home-run record by hitting his 714th
1975 - More than 130 people, most of them children, were killed when a U.S. Air Force transport plane evacuating Vietnamese orphans crashed shortly after take-off from Saigon.
1981 - Henry Cisneros became the first Mexican-American elected mayor of a major U.S. city _ San Antonio, Texas.
1983 - The space shuttle "Challenger" roared into orbit on its maiden voyage.
1990 - Security law violator Ivan Boesky is released from federal custody
1992 - His campaign acknowledged that Bill Clinton had received an induction notice in April 1969 while attending college in Oxford, England; Clinton said the notice arrived after he was due to report, and that his local draft board had told him he could complete the school term.
1992 - Jury deliberations begin in Noriega case
1993 - Ceremonies were held in Atlanta, Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthplace, and in Memphis, the city where he died, to mark the 25th anniversary of the civil rights leader's assassination.
1993 - President Clinton and Russian President Boris Yeltsin ended their two-day summit in Vancouver, B.C., Canada, with a larger than expected U.S. aid pledge of $1.62 billion.
1994 - Netscape Communications founded as Mosaic Communications
1995 - A Colorado man was convicted of trying to assassinate President Clinton in Oct. 1994.
1996 - The former general manager of Daiwa Bank's New York branch pleaded guilty to aiding a $1.1 billion cover-up.
1996 - President Clinton signed legislation severing the link between crop prices and government subsidies.
1997 - Space shuttle Columbia blasted off from Cape Canaveral on what was supposed to have been a 16-day mission; however, a defective power generator forced the shuttle's return four days later.
1999 - Several NATO countries announced they would take in refugees being forced out of Kosovo by Serbian forces.
2000 - The NASDAQ plunged 574 points (more than 13 percent) but then rose 500 points in one of the wildest days ever on Wall Street.
2001 - Chinese President Jiang Zemin demanded the United States apologize for the collision between a U.S. Navy spy plane and a Chinese fighter jet; the Bush administration offered a chorus of regrets, but no apology.
2001 - Hideo Nomo became the fourth pitcher in major league history to throw a no-hitter in both leagues with Boston's 3-to-0 victory over Baltimore. (Nomo, who threw a no-hitter for Los Angeles in 1996, joined Cy Young, Jim Bunning and Nolan Ryan as the only pitchers with no-hitters in both leagues.)
2001 - Former Philippine President Joseph Estrada, ousted in January during a popular uprising, was indicted on charges he took millions of dollars in bribes and kickbacks.
Birthdays
Today
0188 - Caracalla, [Marcus Aureiius Antoniius], well-bathed Roman emperor (211-17)
1696 - Giovanni Battista Tiepoldo, painter
1716 - John Evangelist Schreiber, composer
1752 - Niccolo Antonio Zingarelli, composer (Andromeda)
1792 - Thaddeus Stevens, US Radical Republican congressional leader
1802 - Dorothea Dix, US, arouses interest in treatment of mental inmates
1821 - Linus Yale, US, portrait painter/inventor (Yale cylinder lock)
1823 - Karl Wilhelm Siemens, inventor (laid undersea cables)
1843 - William Jackson is born in Keeseville, New York. His powerful photographs of
Yellowstone helped make it the first national park.
[H]
1843 - Hans Richter, composer
1884 - Isoroku Yamamoto, admiral/supreme commander of Japanese fleet
1885 - Arthur Murray (Teichman) (dancer: Arthur Murray Dance Studios)
1896 - Robert Sherwood, dramatist (Abe Lincoln in Illinois, Idiot's Delight)
1896 - Tristan Tzara, [Samuel Rosenfeld] French poet (Approximate Man)
1906 - John Cameron Swayze (newsman: NBC-TV; panelist: Who Said That; commercial spokesman: Timex)
1906 - John Cameron Swayze, Wichita, Ks newscaster (Timex, Hindenberg)
1913 - Frances Langford (actress: Born to Dance, Yankee Doodle Dandy, Dixie jamboree, Born to Dance, Girl Rush)
1915 - Muddy Waters (McKinley Morganfield) (blues singer, guitarist: Close to You, Baby Please Don't Go, She's Nineteen Years Old, I Can't Be Satisfied, Honey Bee)
1915 - Muddy Waters, [McKinley Morganfield], guitarist (Hoochie Coochie Man)
1919 - Antony Tudor, England, choreographer (Metropolitan Opera 1957)
1922 - Elmer Bernstein (Academy Award-winning composer of film scores: Thoroughly Modern Millie [1967], Sudden Fear, The Man with the Golden Arm, Ten Commandments, Sweet Smell of Success, To Kill a Mocking Bird, Walk on the Wild Side, The Magnificent Seven)
1922 - Elmer Bernstein, NYC, movie music composer (Robot Monster)
1924 - Eva Marie Saint, Newark NJ, actress (Sandpiper, Loving, Exodus)
1924 - Gil Hodges (baseball: Brooklyn Dodgers: shares record for most home runs in one game [4] August 31, 1950)
1930 - John Landy (runner)
1932 - Anthony Perkins, NYC, actor (Psycho, Fear Strikes Out, Pretty Poison)
1938 - Michael Parks (actor: Stranger by Night, ffolkes, Death Wish 5, Chase, Arizona Heat, The Return of Josey Wales)
1938 - Norro Wilson (singer, composer, producer: Surround Me with Love, Men for Charly McClain; sang duets with Margo Smith)
1939 - Ernie Terrell (boxer)
1939 - Hugh Masekela (trumpeter: Grazing In The Grass)
1939 - JoAnne Carner (Gunerson) (golfer: U.S. Open Champion [1971, 1976],Du Maurier Classic Champion [1975, 1978])
1942 - Jim Fregosi (baseball)
1942 - Kitty Kelley (author: Nancy Reagan, Jackie O)
1942 - Kris Jensen (singer: Torture)
1943 - Mike Epstein (baseball)
1944 - Lawrence Hough (rower)
1947 - Ed White (football: Minnesota Vikings guard: Super Bowls IV, VIII, IX, XI)
1947 - Ray Fosse (baseball)
1950 - Christine Lahti (actress: Swing Shift, Crazy from the Heart, The Doctor, hideaway, The Harvey Korman Show)
1952 - Dave Hill (musician: guitar: group: Slade: Run Runaway, My Oh My, Skweeze Me, Pleeze Me, Merry Xmas Everybody)
1958 - Pierre-Paul Prud'hon, painter
Famous
deaths
1406 - Robert III, King of
Scotland (1390-1406), dies
1604 - Thomas Churchyard, poet/pamphleteer, dies
1617 - John Napier, Scottish mathematician/inventor (logarithms), dies
1664 - Adam Willaerts, Dutch seascape painter, dies
1774 - Oliver Goldsmith, Irish poet (She Stoops to Conquer), dies
1784 - Mary Mead, wife of English politician/journalist/Lord Mayor of London
John Wilkes
1806 - Friedrich Gottlob Fleischer, composer, dies at 84
1807 - Joseph Jerome Le Francais de Lalande, French astronomer, dies
1841 - William Henry Harrison, becomes 1st president to die in office, at 68. He
died only one month after assuming office of pneumonia.
1844 - Charles Bulfinch, 1st US professional architect (Mass State House), dies
at 80
1931 - Andre Michelin, CEO (Michelin Tires), dies
1931 - George Whitefield Chadwick, composer, dies at 76
1968 - Martin Luther King Jr, (Dream continues), assassinated in Memphis at 39 [H]
1972 - Adam Clayton Powell Jr, (Rep-D-NY), dies at 63
1979 - Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, ousted Pakistani president, hanged in Pakistan at 51
1991 - Sen. John Heinz (R-Pa.) and six other people, including two children, were killed when a helicopter collided with Heinz's plane over a schoolyard in Merion, Pa.
1992 - Small-town billionaire Sam Moore Walton, whose Wal-Mart retail store chain helped make him one of the world's richest men, died.
1993 - Alfred Mosher Butts, US architect/game maker (Scrabble), dies at 93
1996 - Frederick Denison Maurice Hocking, pathologist, dies at 97
1996 - Seamas NacNeill, piper, dies at 79
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