Today in
History ~ April 11
Barber
Shop Quartet Day
Events
1471 - King Edward IV of England captures London from Henry VI in the War of the Roses
1512 - Battle at Ravenna: France under Gaston de Foix beat Spanish Army
1567 - Dutch Prince William of Orange flees from Antwerp to Breda
1689 - William III & Mary II crowned as joint rulers of Britain
1713 - Peace of Utrecht; France cedes Maritime provinces to Britain
1801 - Johann von Schiller's "Die Jungfrau von Orleans (The Maid of Orleans)," premieres in Leipzig
1814 - Napoleon Bonaparte's first abdication as emperor of France and was banished to the island of Elba.
1830 - Robert Schumann attends piano concerto by Paganini
1856 - Battle of Rivas; Costa Rica beats Wm Walker's invading Nicaraguans
1862 - Rebels surrender Ft Pulaski, Georgia
1863 - Battle of Suffolk, VA (Norfleet House)
1865 - Battle of Mobile, AL - evacuated by Confederates
1865 - Lincoln urges a spirit of generous conciliation during reconstruction
1876 - Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks organized.
1876 - General Sir Charles ("Chinese") Gordon ends religious tolerance in Sudan
1881 - River ferry "Princess Victoria" sinks in Thames River, Ont, 180 die
1890 - Ellis Island designated as an immigration station
1891 - 8 year old Jewish tailor's daughter disappears in Greece, rumor spreads that she was a Christian girl ritually killed by Jews
1895 - Anaheim completes it's new electric light system.
1898 - President McKinley asked Congress for a declaration of war against Spain.
1899 - Treaty of Paris ratifies ends war; Spain cedes Puerto Rico to US
1900 - US Navy's 1st submarine made its debut
1905 - Construction of the Victoria Falls Bridge and the railway line were completed.
1906 - Einstein introduces his Theory of Relativity
1914 - George Bernard Shaw's "Pygmalion," premieres
1917 - Babe Ruth beats NY Yanks, pitching 3-hit 10-3 win for Red Sox
1921 - Iowa became the first state to impose a cigarette tax.
1924 - WLS-AM in Chicago IL begins radio transmissions
1933 - Hermann Goering becomes premier of Prussia
1936 - Rodgers' & Hammerstein's musical "On Your Toes," premieres in NYC
1941 - Germany blitzes Conventry, England
1941 - Jewish Weekly newspaper taken control by Nazis
1943 - Frank Piasecki, Vertol founder, flies his 1st (single-rotor) craft
1945 - SS burns & shoots 1,100 at Gardelegen
1947 - Jackie Robinson becomes 1st black in major league baseball.
1950 - Prince Rainier III becomes ruler of Monaco
1950 - US B-29 bomber shot down above Latvia
1951 - President Truman relieved Gen. Douglas MacArthur of his commands in the Far East.
1953 - The US Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW) was established.
1956 - French goverment sends 200,000 reservists to Algeria
1956 - Singer Nat Cole attacked on stage of Birmingham theater by whites
1957 - Pablo Neruda arrested in Buenos Aires ("Buenos Dias!")
1957 - Ryan X-13 Vertijet becomes 1st jet to take-off & land vertically
1959 - "Jamaica" closes at Imperial Theater NYC after 558 performances
1961 - Israel begins Adolf Eichmann Nazi war crimes trial
1963 - John XXIII encyclical On peace in truth, justice, charity & liberty
1967 - Harlem (NYC) voters defy Congress & reelect Adam Clayton Powell
Jr
1967 - Tom Stoppard's "Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead," premieres
1968 - One week after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., President Johnson signed into law the Civil Rights Act of 1968.
1970 - Beatles' "Let It Be," single goes #1 & stays #1 for 2 weeks
1970 - The Apollo-13 spacecraft was launched from Cape Canaveral, Fla., on the third U.S. moon-landing mission. The attempt was aborted when an oxygen tank exploded, but the astronauts safely returned to earth.
[H]
1977 - Ireland sets fishing zone at 50 mile
1979 - A combined force of Tanzanian and Ugandan soldiers overthrew Uganda's dictator Idi
Amin. (Amin is still alive!)
1980 - Equal Employment Opportunity Commission regulates sexual harassment
1981 - Race riot in London area of Brixton
1981 - President Reagan returned to the White House from the hospital, 12 days after
Hinkley shot in an assassination attempt.
1983 - 3rd Golden Raspberry Awards: Inchon! wins
1983 - 55th Academy Awards - "Gandhi," Ben Kingsley & Meryl Streep win
1983 - Harold Washington was elected the first black mayor of Chicago.
1984 - Chinese troops invade Vietnam
1984 - Gen Sec Konstantin U Chernenko named pres of Soviet Union
1986 - Dodge Morgan sails solo nonstop around world in 150 days
1986 - Halley's Comet makes closest approach to Earth this trip, 63 M km
1987 - South Africa, extending a nine-month-old state of emergency, barred all protests on behalf of political detainees.
1988 - Royal Concert building in Amsterdam reopens
1991 - The musical "Miss Saigon," denounced by detractors as racist and sexist, opened on Broadway.
1991 - The U.N. Security Council announced a formal end to the Persian Gulf War.
1991 - The space shuttle "Atlantis" landed safely after an extended, 93-orbit mission that included deployment of an observatory.
1991 - Italian Prime Minister-designate Giulio Andreotti formed a coalition cabinet to serve as Italy's 50th postwar government.
1992 - Euro-Disney opens near Paris (historians gag)
1992 - Irish Republican Army bombs London financial district, killing 3
1992 - The Russian Congress of People's Deputies rejected an appeal by Russian President Boris Yeltsin for another six months to carry out his reforms, ordering him to select a new Cabinet by July (however, a compromise was worked out a few days later.)
1993 - Nine inmates and one guard were killed when a riot erupted at the maximum security Southern Ohio Correctional Facility near Lucasville. The standoff lasted 11 days.
1994 - President Clinton and first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton paid $14,615 in federal and Arkansas back taxes and interest.
1996 - "King & I," revival at Neil Simon Theater in NYC for 781 performances
1996 - Israel retaliated for bomb attacks by shelling Hezbollah positions in Lebanon. A U.N. refugee camp was struck, killing more than 100 civilians.
1997 - International peacekeepers landed in Albania, torn by months of internal strife.
1997 - The Air Force announced that despite an intensive nine-day search, it couldn't find a bomb-laden A-10 warplane that had disappeared with its pilot during a training mission over Arizona. (The plane's wreckage was later found in a Colorado mountainside.)
1997 - In Italy, fire damaged the 500-year-old San Giovanni Cathedral, home of the Shroud of Turin, which some consider Christ's burial cloth.
2000 - Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak met with President Clinton at the White House in what a senior U.S. official described as a good, productive, serious discussion.
2000 - A British judge branded historian David Irving an anti-Semite racist and an apologist for Adolf Hitler, ruling that an American scholar was justified in calling him a Holocaust denier.
2001 - Ending a tense 11-day standoff, China agreed to free the 24 crew members of an American spy plane after President George W. Bush said he was "very sorry" for the death of a Chinese fighter pilot whose plane had collided with the American aircraft.
2001 - A stampede at a packed soccer stadium in Johannesburg, South Africa, killed 43 people.
Birthdays
Today
1370 - Frederick I the Warlike, elector of Saxony
1586 - Pietro Della Valle, composer
1602 - Johann Neukrantz, composer
1681 - Anne Danican Philidor, composer
1682 - Jean-Joseph Mouret, composer
1722 - Christopher Smart, English poet & journalist (Ceremony of Carols)
1772 - Manuel Jose Quintana, Spanish author/poet (El Duque de Viseo)
1794 - Edward Everett, Dorchester Mass, (Gov-Mass), statesman/orator (he spoke for three hours at Gettysburgh; Licoln took considerably less)
1859 - Basil Harwood, composer
1889 - Nick La Rocca, US coronetist/composer (Tiger Rag)
1893 - Dean G Acheson, statesman/US Secretary of State (1949-53)
1893 - Lou Holtz (comedian, actor)
1899 - Percy L Julian, chemist (drugs for treatment of arthritis)
1901 - Adriano Olivetti, Italian engineer/manufacturer (typewriter)
1907 - Paul Douglas (actor: The Mating Game, Panic in the Streets, Executive Suite, This Could be the Night, The Gamma People)
1908 - Karel Ancerl, Czech conductor (Prague/Toronto)
1908 - Leo Rosten, writer/humourist
1910 - Anna Magnani, Italian actress (Awakening, Roma)
1912 - John Levy (jazz musician: bass: played with George Shearing quintet)
1916 - Alberto E Ginastera, Buenos Aires Argentina, composer (Panambi)
1918 - Cameron Mitchell (actor: Carousel, Code of Honor, Hollywood Cop, Terror in Beverly Hills, Silent Scream, Buck and the Preacher, Crossing the Line, Cult People, The Bastard)
1921 - Dorothy Shay (Sims) (The Park Avenue Hillbilly: singer: Feudin' and Fightin'; actress: Comin' Round the Mountain)
1922 - Ralph Blaze (guitarist)
1926 - Gervase de Peyer, clarinettist
1928 - Ethel Kennedy (Skakel) (widow of slain U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy)
1931 - Johnny Sheffield (actor: Tarzan Finds a Son, Tarzan's Secret Treasure, Tarzan's New York Adventure)
1932 - Joel Grey (Katz) (Tony & Academy award-winning actor: Cabaret [1967 & 1972], singer, dancer: Yankee Doodle Dandy, Buffalo Bill & the Indians, Kafka; Jennifer Grey's father)
1934 - Richard A Garland, artist/photographer
1939 - Louise Lasser (actress: Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman, Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex [But Were Afraid to Ask], Frankenhooker, Rude Awakening, The Night We Never Met, Slither)
1944 - Joe Beauchamp (football)
1946 - Howard Fast (football)
1949 - Ronnie Carroll (football)
1951 - Sid Monge (baseball)
1951 - Steve George (football)
1952 - Tom Forrest (football)
Famous
deaths
1034 - Romanus III Argyrus, Byzantine emperor (1028-34), assasinated by wife
1240 - Llywelyn ab Iorwerth the Great, monarch of Wales (1194-1240), dies
1500 - Michael T Marullus, Greeks poet, drowns
1512 - Gaston de Foix, French pretender to Navarre throne, dies in battle
1648 - Matthaus Apelles von Lowenstern, composer, dies at 53
1839 - John Galt, Scottish writer (Last of the Lairds), dies at 59
1875 - Heinrich Schwabe, discoverer (11-year sunspot cycle), dies
1906 - James A Bailey, circus showman (Barnum & Bailey), dies at 58
1939 - SS Van Dine, [William Huntingdon Wright], detective writer, dies at 50
1970 - John H O'Hara, US journalist (Pal Joey, Rage to Live), dies at 65
1977 - Jacques Prevert, French poet (La puil et le beau), dies at 77
1987 - Erskine Caldwell, novelist (Tobacco Road), dies at 83
1987 - Primo Levi, Italy, chemist/writer (Survival in Auschwitz), suicide at 67
1996 - Daniel Wolf, journalist, dies at 80
1997 - Michael Dorris, writer, commits suicide at 52
If
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