Today
in History ~ April 8
Kambutsue,
celebration of Buddha's birthday, in Japan
Events
1341 - Francesco Petrarch crowned in Rome Father of the Renaissance
1455 - Alfonso de Borgia elected as Pope Callistus III
1500 - Battle at Novara: King Louis XII beats duke Ludovico Sforza (Il Sforza del
Destino)
1730 - 1st Jewish congregation in US forms synagogue, "Shearith Israel, NYC"
1766 - 1st fire escape patented, wicker basket on a pulley & chain
1781 - Premiere of Mozart's violin sonata K379
1789 - House of Reprehensives 1st meeting
1801 - Soldiers riot in Bucharest, kill 128 Jews
1802 - French Protestant church becomes state-supported & -controlled
1832 - Charles Darwin begins trip through not-yet-swinging Rio de Janeiro
1838 - Steamship "Great Western" maiden voyage (Bristol England to NYC)
1862 - John D Lynde patents aerosol dispenser
1865 - General Robert E Lee hopelessly out-dazzled by the stolid but victorious tactics of Union Army, requests to meet with Gen Ulyasses Grant to discuss possible surrender.
1869 - American Museum of Natural History opens (NYC)
1876 - Amilcare Ponchielli's opera "La Gioconda," premieres in Milan
1879 - Milk was sold in glass bottles for 1st time
1893 - The Critic reports that ice cream soda is our national drink
1898 - Battle of Atbara River, Anglo-Egyptian forces crush 6,000 Sudanese
1904 - Entente Cordiale Signed by France and England [H]
1912 - Steamers collide in Nile, drowning 200
1913 - Opening of China's 1st parliament takes place in Peking (now Beijing)
1917 - Austria-Hungary, an ally of Germany, severed diplomatic relations with the United States.
1918 - One year after the American entrance into World War I, the US First Aero Squadron was assigned to the Western Front for the first time on observation duty
1933 - Manchester Guardian warns of unknown Nazi terror
1935 - Works Progress Administration approved by Congress. The Works Progress Administration (WPA), a center point of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's "New Deal" for America's vast numbers of unemployed citizens.
1939 - King Zog I of Albania, flees
1940 - Germany battle cruisers sink British aircraft carrier Glorious
1945 - Nazi occupiers executed, Nazi general Christiansen flees Netherlands
1946 - The League of Nations assembled in Geneva for the last time.
1949 - 3-year-old Kathy Fiscus of San Marino, Calif., fell into an abandoned well. Her body was found two days later.
1952 - President Truman ordered government seizure of the steel industry to avoid a general strike.
1953 - Jomo Kenyatta, one of modern Africa's earliest nationalist leaders, was convicted by Kenya's British rulers for leading the Mau Mau Rebellion against the white settlers of his country. Along with five other Mau Mau leaders, he was subsequently sentenced to seven years' hard labor.
1956 - 6 marine recruits drown during exercise at Paradise Is SC
1960 - The U.S. Senate passed the landmark Civil Rights Bill.
1963 - 35th Academy Awards - "Lawrence of Arabia," A Bancroft & G Peck win
1965 - Lawrence Bradford, 16, became the first black page appointed to the U.S. Senate.
1966 - AFL chooses 36 year old Al Davis as commissioner
1966 - Leonid Brezhnev elected secretary-general of communist party
1968 - 40th Academy Awards postponed to Apr 10th due to death of M L King
1968 - Baseball's Opening Day is postponed because of M L King assassination
1968 - Czechoslovakia Cernik government form
1970 - The Senate rejected President Nixon's nomination of G. Harold Carswell to the U.S. Supreme Court.
1971 - 1st legal off-track betting system begins (OTB-New York)
1974 - Hank Aaron of the Atlanta Braves hit his 715th career home run in a game against the Los Angeles Dodgers, breaking Babe Ruth's record.
1975 - 47th Academy Awards - "Godfather II," Ellen Burstyn & Art Carney win
1977 - Israel premier Rabin resigns
1979 - 204th & final episode of "All in the Family"
1984 - 4th Golden Raspberry Awards: Lonely Lady wins
1985 - India files suit against Union Carbide over Bhopal disaster
1986 - Clint Eastwood elected mayor of Carmel California
1991 - Jockey, Bill Shoemaker, paralyzed in a car accident
1991 - Michael Landon announces he has inoperable cancer of pancreas
1991 - European nations began allowing Polish citizens to enter without visas.
1992 - "5 Guys Named Moe" opens at Eugene O'Neill Theater NYC for 445 performances
1992 - After 151 years Britain's "Punch Magazine" final issue
1992 - Tennis great Arthur Ashe announced at a New York news conference that he had AIDS, saying he was forced to go public because a newspaper had inquired about his health. (Ashe died in February 1993 of AIDS-related pneumonia at age 49.)
1992 - Yasser Arafat, the founder and leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), survived a deadly plane crash in the Sahara Desert that killed the plane's three crew members.
1994 - Smoking banned in Pentagon & all US military bases
1995 - In his book "In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam," former secretary of defense Robert McNamera wrote that he and other American leaders had been "wrong, terribly wrong" about the war.
1997 - Microsoft Corp releases Internet Explorer 4.0
1997 - The space shuttle Columbia returned to Earth, ending a mission cut three-quarters short by a defective generator.
1997 - The Vatican chose Archbishop Francis George of Portland, Ore., to head the Archdiocese of Chicago, succeeding the late Cardinal Joseph
Bernardin.
2001 - U.S. officials said President Bush was sending a letter to the wife of a missing Chinese fighter pilot as a humanitarian gesture. (The pilot's plane had collided with a U.S. spy plane, forcing the spy plane to make an emergency landing in China.)
2001 - Tiger Woods won the Masters for his fourth straight major title in a span of 294 days.
Birthdays
Today
1460 - Ponce de Leon, Spain, searched for fountain of youth, found Florida
1533 - Claudio Merulo, organist/composer
1582 - Phienas Fletcher, poet
1605 - Louis de Vadder, Flemish painter
1692 - Giuseppe Tartini, Italy, violinist/composer (Trillo del Diavolo)
1741 - Jose B da Gama, Portuguese poet (O Uraguai)
1775 - Adam A earl von Neipperg, Austrian general/Napoleon's wife Marie lover
1842 - Elizabeth Bacon Custer is born in Michigan
[H]
1850 - William Henry Welch, US, pathologist (founded John Hopkins)
1869 - Harvey Cushing, US, neurosurgeon (blood pressure studies)
1875 - Albert I LCMM von Saksen-Coburg, king of Belgium (1909-34)
1878 - Rudolf Nelson, composer
1880 - Victor Schertzinger, composer/director (Uptown NY)
1881 - Fernand Lamy, composer
1889 -
Sir Adrian Boult, Chester England, conductor/composer (BBC Sym
Orch)
1893 - Mary Pickford (Smith) (Academy Award-winning actress: Coquette [1928-29], Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, Stella Maris, The Taming of the Shrew, Pollyanna, A Poor Little Rich Girl)
1898 - E Y "Yip" Harburg, [Isidore Hochberg], lyricist/librettist
1902 - Josef Krips, Vienna Austria, conductor (London Symph 1954-63)
1910 - Sonja Henie (ice skater: Norwegian Olympic Gold medalist [1928, 1932, 1936]; World Champion [1927 thru 1936])
1911 - Melvin Calvin, US chemist (photosynthesis, Nobel 1961)
1912 - Sonja Henie, Oslo Norway, ice skater/actress (Olympic-gold-1928,32,36)
1918 - Betty Ford (Bloomer) (First Lady: wife of 38th U.S. President Gerald R. Ford; founder of the Betty Ford Clinic for substance abuse rehabilitation)
1919 - [Douglas] Ian Smith, premier of Rhodesia (1964-..)
1920 - Carmen McRae (Clark), US jazz singer/pianist (Dream of Life)
1922 - Franco Corelli (tenor)
1923 - Edward Mulhare (actor: Megaforce, Our Man Flint, Von Ryan's Express)
1923 - Franco Corelli, Anconia Italy, tenor (Don Jos^Â-Carmen) Steps)
1926 - Shecky Greene (Fred Greenfield) (comedian)
1928 - John Gavin (Golenor) (actor: Psycho, Spartacus, A Time to Love & a Time to Die, Sophia Loren: Her Own Story)
1928 - Monty Sunshine (jazz musician: clarinet: Petite Fleur; played in film: Look Back in Anger)
1929 - Jacques Brel (singer, songwriter: Jackie, Mext, If You Go Away, I'm Not Afraid; appeared in his own French version of Man of La Mancha and in film:
Montdragon)
1929 - Walter Berry, Austria singer/ex husband of Christa Ludwig
1930 - John Reardon, NYC, baritone (Falke-Die Fledermaus)
1937 - Seymour Hersh, award winning investigative reporter (NY Times)
1940 - John Havlicek (Basketball Hall of Famer: Boston Celtics)
1941 - Peggy Lennon (singer: group: The Lennon Sisters: The Lawrence Welk Show)
1943 - J P Kavanaugh, racehorse trainer
1943 - John Hiller (baseball)
1943 - Michael Bennett, aids victim/choreographer (Chorus Line)
1944 - Anthony Farrar Hockley, military historian
1946 - Jim 'Catfish' Hunter (baseball: Oakland A's pitcher: Cy Young Award-winner [1974])
1951 - Mel Shacher (musician, bass: group: Grand Funk Railroad: Closer To Home, We're An American Band, The Loco-motion, Some Kind of Wonderful)
1963 - Julian Lennon (singer: Valotte, Too Late for Goodbyes; son of John and Cynthia Lennon)
Famous
deaths
0217 - Caracalla, [Marcus Antoniius], well-scrubbed Roman emperor (198-217), murdered in his baths at 29
1492 - Lorenzo I de' Medici ("il Magnifico"), ruler of Florence (1469-92), dies
1498 - Charles VIII, King of France (1483-98), beheaded at 27
1759 - Francois de La Croix, composer, dies at 76
1794 - Marie-Jean-Antoine-Nicholas-Caritat, mathematician dies
1844 - Ignaz Franz von Mosel, composer, dies at 72
1848 - Domenico Gaetano Maria Donizetti, Italian composer, dies at 50
1858 - Anton Diabelli, Austrian composer/publisher, dies at 76
1861 - Elisha G Otis, US elevator builder (Otis), dies at 50
1920 - Charles Tomlinson Griffes, US composer (White Peacock), dies at 35
1941 - Eug^Êene-Marcel Prevost, novelist, dies
1947 - Henry Ford, US industrialist (Ford cars), dies
1950 - Vaslav Fromich Nijinsky, Ukrainian ballet dancer, dies in London
1965 - Erik A Blomberg, Swedish art historian/poet/author, dies at 70
1973 - Pablo (Ruiz y) Picasso, Spanish/French painter (Guernica), died at his home near Mougins, France, at age 91.
1976 - Phil Ochs, rock producer (Joe Hill), suicide at 35
1981 - Omar Bradley, last US 5-star general, (Normandy) dies in NY at 88
1990 - Ryan White, hemophiliac, the teen-age AIDS patient whose battle for acceptance gained national attention, died in Indianapolis at age 18.
1993 - Marian Anderson, US contralto (My Lord, What a Morning), first black singer to appear at New York's Metropolitan Opera, died at age 91. [H]
1994 - Frank Wells, president (Disney), dies in helicopter crash
1994 - Kurt Cobain, singer and guitarist for the grunge band Nirvana, was found dead in Seattle from an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound; he was 27.
1997 - Singer-songwriter Laura Nyro died in Danbury, Conn., at age 49.
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