Today in
History ~ April 15
Income
Taxes are due today.
Events
1250 - Pope Innoncent III
refuses Jews of Cordova Spain permission to build a synagogue
1493 - Barcelona -- Columbus meets with King Ferdinand & Isabella
1594 - Fleming Pieter Stevens appointed royal painter of Rudolf II (Prague)
1632 - Swedish & Saxon army beat Earl Tilly
1689 - French king Louis XIV declares war on Spain
1715 - Uprising of Yamasse Indians in South Carolina
1729 - Johann S Bach's "Matthew Passion" premieres in Leipzig
1738 - Bottle opener invented
1784 - 1st balloon flight in Ireland
1800 - James Ross discovers North Magnetic pole
1817 - 1st 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.
1850 - City of San Francisco incorporated.
1861 - President Lincoln sent Congress a message declaring a state of
insurrection in the Southern states and calling for 75,000 volunteer soldiers.
1864 - General Steele's Union troops occupy Camden, Arkansas
1865 - Otto von Bismarck elevated to earl
1865 - Pres Lincoln dies morning after being shot by John Wilkes Booth at Ford's
Theater the night before.
1865 - Andrew Johnson is sworn in as the 17th President of the United States
1878 - Harley Procter gambles with Ivory Soap
1892 - General Electric Co., formed by the merger of the Edison Electric Light
Co. and other firms, was incorporated in New York State.
1895 - Josephine Blatt (US) makes hip-and-harness lift of 3564 lb (record)
1900 - International Exposition opens in Paris
1901 - 1st British motorized burial
1912 - Titanic sinks at 2:27 AM off Newfoundland as band plays "Nearer My
God to Thee" [H]
1915 - Manuel de Falla's ballet "El Amor Brujo," premieres in Madrid
1918 - Clemenceau publishes secret French/Austrian documents
1921 - Black Friday- Labour Party strike of mine workers fails
1922 - Banting, MacLeod & Best discover insulin
1923 - 1st sound on film public performance shown at Rialto Theater (NYC)
1923 - Insulin becomes generally available for diabetics
1927 - Babe Ruth hits 1st of 60 HRs of season (off A's Howard Ehmke)
1940 - British troops land at Narvik, Norway
1941 - 1st helicopter flight of 1 hr duration, Stratford, Ct
1942 - King George VI awards George Cross to people of Malta
1945 - British & Canadian troops liberate Nazi camp of Bergen-Belsen
1945 - President Roosevelt, who had died April 12, was buried at the Roosevelt
family home in Hyde Park, N.Y.
1945 - US troops occupy concentration camp Colditz
1947 - Jackie Robinson, baseball's first black major league player, made his
official debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers on opening day. (The Dodgers defeated
the Boston Braves, 5-3.)
1948 - 1st Jewish-Arab military battle, Arabs defeated
1952 - 1st B-52 prototype test flight
1952 - Franklin National Bank issues 1st bank credit card
1955 - The first franchised McDonald's was opened in Des Plaines, Ill., by Ray Kroc,
who'd gotten the idea from a
hamburger joint in San Bernardino, Calif., run by the McDonald brothers.
1957 - Saturday mail delivery restored after Congress gives PO $41 million
1958 - 10th Emmy Awards: Gunsmoke, Robert Young & Jane Wyatt
1959 - Cuban leader Fidel Castro arrived in Washington to begin a goodwill tour
of the United States.
1959 - US Sect of States John Foster Dulles resigns
1960 - Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), organizes at Shaw
University
1961 - "Music Man" closes at Majestic Theater NYC after 1375
performances
1964 - Chesapeake Bay Bridge opens (world's longest)
1969 - North Korea shoots at US airplane above Japan sea
1971 - 43rd Academy Awards - "Patton," George C Scott & Glenda
Jackson win
1981 - Janet Cooke says her Pulitzer award 8-year-old heroin addict story is a
lie, Wash Post relinquishes Pulitzer Prize on fabricated story
1983 - Tokyo Disneyland opens
1984 - Extremist Sikhs plunder 40 stations in Punjab India
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.
1985 - South Africa will repeal sex & marriage laws against whites and
non-whites
1987 - Alfred Uhry's "Driving Miss Daisy," premieres in NYC
1988 - Wendy Wasserstein's "Heidi Chronicles," premieres in NYC
1989 - 95 crushed to death at Hillsborough Stadium in Sheffield, England.
1991 - "Secret Garden" opens at St James Theater NYC for 706
performances
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.
1992 - Russia's deeply divided Congress of People's Deputies formally endorsed
President Boris Yeltsin's economic reforms.
1992 - Countries barred Libyan jets from their airspace and ordered diplomats to
go home because of Libya's refusal to turn over suspects in the bombing of Pan
Am Flight 103.
1992 - Hotel magnate billionaire Leona Helmsley began serving a prison sentence
for tax evasion (she was released from prison after 18 months).
1993 - Joey Buttafuoco, the alleged lover of teenage "Long Island Lolita"
Amy Fisher, was arraigned in Mineola, N.Y., on charges of statutory rape and
sodomy.
1996 - Tokyo and Washington agreed on a gradual return of U.S. military bases on
Okinawa to Japan.
1997 - The Justice Department inspector general reported that FBI crime lab
agents produced flawed scientific work or inaccurate testimony in major cases
such as the Oklahoma City bombing.
1997 - In Saudi Arabia, fire destroyed a tent city outside Mecca, killing at
least 343 Muslim pilgrims.
1997 - Jackie Robinson's number 42 was retired for all teams, 50 years after he
became the first black player in major league baseball.
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.
2001 - U.N. investigators arrested Bosnian Serb army officer Dragan Obrenovic in
connection with the Serbian Army's slaughter of as many as 7,000 Muslim men and
boys.
Birthdays
Today
1452 - Leonardo da Vinci
(artist: Mona Lisa, The Last Supper, The Virgin of the Rocks, The Virgin and
Child with Saint Anne) painter/sculptor/scientist/visionary
1469 - Nanak, 1st guru of Sikhs
1651 - Domenico Gabrielli, composer
1684 - Catherine I, empress of Russia (1725-27)
1688 - Johann Friedrich Fasch, composer
1707 - Leonhard Euler, mathematician
1741 - Charles Willson Peale, US, port painter/inventor (George Washington)
1812 - Pierre-Etienne-Theodore Rousseau, painter
1814 - John Lothrop Motley, US, historian/author (Rise of Dutch Rep)
1820 - Evander McNair, Brig General (Confederate Army), died in 1902
1837 - Horace Porter, Bvt Brig General (Union Army), died in 1921
1843 - Henry James (author: The Turn of the Screw, The Wings of the Dove, The
Portrait of a Lady, The Ambassadors, Bostonians)
1889 - Asa Philip Randolph, labor leader (Railroad Porter's Union)
1889 - Thomas Hart Benton, Missouri, painter
1894 - Bessie Smith (blues singer: sang with Louis Armstrong in 1925: early
version of St. Louis Blues, My Man's Blues, Dixie Flyer Blues, I Ain't Got
Nobody, A Good Man is Hard to Find, Poor Man's Blues)
1903 - Erich Arendt, writer
1903 - John Williams, England, actor (Niles-Family Affair, Dial M for Murder)
1917 - Hans Conried (actor: My Friend Irma, Bus Stop, Oh! God: Book 2, Tut &
Tuttle, The Monster that Challenged the World)
1920 - Jim Timmens (composer)
1920 - Richard von Weizsacker, baron/president (Germany, 1984-94)
1921 - Georgi Timofeyevich Beregovoi, USSR, cosmonaut (Soyuz 3)
1922 - Harold Washington, 1st black mayor of Chicago (D, 1983-87)
1924 - Neville Marriner, Lincoln England, conductor (St. Martin-in-the-Fields,
Minn Orch)
1927 - Abha Gandhi, servant to Gandhi
1930 - Herb Pomeroy (musician: trumpet: teacher at Berklee in Boston,
bandleader; directed radio Malaysia Orchestra )
1931 - Florian Zabach, Chicago Ill, violinist (Hot Canary, Club
1933 - Elizabeth Montgomery (actress: Samantha/Serena-Bewitched, Robert
Montgomery Presents)
1933 - Mel Kenyon (auto racer)
1933 - Roy Clark (musician, CMA Entertainer of the Year [1973]; country singer:
Yesterday, When I Was Young, Come and Live with Me, Somewhere Between Love and
Tomorrow, Thank God and Greyhound [You're Gone]; TV: Hee Haw)
1937 - Bob Luman (singer: Let's Think About Living, Every Day I Have to Cry
Some, The Pay Phone, Proud of You Baby)
1939 - Claudie Cardinale (actress: The Pink Panther, Once Upon a Time in the
West, Jesus of Nazareth, Henry the IV, A Man in Love)
1940 - Willie Davis (baseball: LA Dodgers)
1940 - Woody Fryman (baseball: Philadelphia Phillies)
1942 - Julie Sommars (actress: Sex and the Single Parent, Herbie Goes to Monte
Carlo)
1942 - Walt Hazzard (basketball: 1964 Olympic Gold Medalist: U.S. team; LA
Lakers, Seattle Supersonics, Atlanta Hawks, Buffalo Braves, Golden State
Warriors; UCLA coach)
1945 - Ted Sizemore (baseball: St. Louis Cardinals; National League Rookie of
the Year: LA Dodgers 2B [1969])
1948 - Victor Regaldo (golfer)
1950 - Dick Sharon (baseball)
1951 - Heloise Cruse Evans (newspaper columnist, writer: Hints from Heloise)
1957 - Evelyn Ashford (track athlete: 4 time Olympic gold medalist, a shared
record for most gold medals won by a woman: 100 meters [1984], 4 x 100m relay
[1984, 1988, 1992])
1959 - Emma Thompson, England, actress (Henry V, Howard's End, Oscar-1992)
Famous
deaths
1220 - Adolf I, archbishop of
Cologne, dies
1472 - Leon B Alberti, Italian humanist/architect (Philodoxis), dies at 68
1605 - Boris Godunov, tsar of Russia (1598-1605), dies
1764 - Jeanne-Antoinette-Poison LeNormant d'Etoiles, Marquis de Pomador, dies
1853 - Johann Leopold Fuchs, composer, dies at 67
1865 - Abraham Lincoln, at 7:22 am, shot by John Wilkes Booth the evening of
4/14/65
1866 - William Jackson, composer, dies at 51
1888 - Matthew Arnold, English poet, dies at 65
1925 - John Singer Sargent, US portrait painter, dies at 69
1927 - Francesco Gaeta, Italian poet (Di Giacomo), dies at 47
1975 - Richard Conte, actor (Four Just Men, Jean Arthur Show), dies at 65
1976 - Gerald L.K. Smith, antisemite/anticatholic (Natl Christian Crusade), dies
at 78
1980 - Jean-Paul Sartre, existentialist (Nobel 1964), dies in Paris at 74
1990 - Greta Garbo, actress (Anna Karenina, Camille), dies at 84
1993 - Leslie Charteris, British mystery writer (Saint), dies at 85
1995 - Cleo Brown, pianist, dies at 91
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. [H]
2001 - Punk rock icon Joey Ramone died in New York at age 49.
If
you have other Birthdays or events to add for this day please
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