This day in History

[Babba_not_Gump]

April 3.
1860. Start of the Pony Express, delivers mail by horse and rider relay teams between St Joseph, Missouri and Sacramento, California.

1882. American outlaw Jesse James is shot in the back of the head and killed by fellow gang member Robert Ford at home in St. Joseph, Missouri.

1930. Stanley Cup Final, Montreal Forum, Montreal, Quebec: Montreal Canadiens beat Boston Bruins, 4-3 for a 2-0 series sweep and their 3rd Championship.

1941. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill warns Soviet leader Joseph Stalin that a German invasion is imminent.

1953. American magazine "TV Guide" publishes 1st issue; cover features photo of Lucille Ball's new born baby boy, Desiderio Alberto Arnaz IV (later professionally known as Desi Arnaz, Jr.).

1960. Elvis Presley records ‘It's Now Or Never’, ‘Fever’ and ‘Are You Lonesome Tonight’ at RCA studios in Nashville, Tennessee.

1967. 113 East Europeans attending World Amateur hockey championships in Vienna, ask for political asylum.

1968. Science fiction film "Planet of the Apes", starring Charlton Heston and Roddy McDowell, opens nationally in the United States.

1973. 1st mobile phone call is made in downtown Manhattan, NYC by Motorola employee Martin Cooper to the Bell Labs headquarters in New Jersey.

2006 Steve Yzerman scores his final NHL goal (#692) against the Calgary Flames.

2016 Panama Papers published - 11.5 million confidential documents from offshore law firm Mossack Fonseca expose widespread illegal activities including fraud, kleptocracy, tax evasion and the violation of international sanctions by the world's elite in the world's largest ever data leak.

2020. US aircraft carrier captain Brett Crozier cheered off his ship after being fired for a letter demanding more help for his sailors infected with COVID-19.

[Babba_not_Gump]

April 4.
1828. Casparus van Wooden patents chocolate milk powder in Amsterdam.

1850. City of Los Angeles incorporated.

1896. Announcement of the discovery of gold in the Yukon.

1911. Hugh Chalmers, automaker, suggests idea of baseball MVP.

1921 Stanley Cup Final, Denman Arena, Vancouver, BC: Ottawa Senators (NHL) beat Vancouver Millionaires (PCHA), 2-1 for a 3-2 series victory.

1945. The Holocaust: US forces liberate the Ohrdruf concentration camp in Germany, the first such camp to be liberated by the US Army.

1949. North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) treaty signed in Washington, D.C.

1964. Beatles' "Can't Buy Me Love" single goes #1 & stays #1 for 5 weeks.

1968. US civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. is assassinated by James Earl Ray at the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis, Tennessee.

1973. World Trade Center, then the world's tallest building, opens in New York (110 stories).

1975. 138 killed as a USAF plane evacuating Vietnamese orphans crashes on approach during an emergency landing at Tân Sơn Nhứt Air Base in South Vietnam.

1979. Roberto Luongo, Canadian ice hockey goaltender, born in Montreal, Quebec.

1986. Wayne Gretzky sets NHL record with 213th point of season.

2013. Poecilotheria rajaei, a giant tarantula with a 20cm leg span, is discovered in Sri Lanka.

2014. President of the World Bank, Jim Yong Kim, claims that climate change will lead to battles over water and food within the next five to ten years.

2022. Elon Musk buys 9.2% of Twitter stock, making him the company's largest shareholder.

[Babba_not_Gump]

April 5.
1614. Pocahontas, the native American princess regarded by many as the mother of modern America, was married on this day, aged about nineteen.

1722. Dutch navigator Jacob Roggeveen is the first European to discover Easter Island in the southeastern Pacific.

1815. Mount Tambora in the Dutch East Indies, has its first violent eruption after several centuries of dormancy.

1887. Anne Sullivan teaches "water" to blind and deaf six-year-old Helen Keller by holding one of her hands under a dripping water pump and spelling out “w-a-t-e-r” in Keller’s palm. She goes on to learn how to read, write, speak and graduate from college.

1906. Mount Vesuvius erupts and devastates towns in the Naples province, killing more than 100 people.

1919. Polish Army executes 35 young Jews.

1923. Firestone Tire and Rubber Company starts producing inflatable tires.

1934. Baseball superstar Babe Ruth agrees to do three 15-minute broadcasts a week over NBC for a fee of $39,000 for 13 weeks; $4,000 more than his NY Yankees playing contract.

1943. Chinese steward Poon Lim is found off the coast of Brazil by a Brazilian fisherman family after being adrift for 133 days, after British ship SS Benlomond was torpedoed by a German U-boat.

1945. World War II: Dutch city of Almelo is freed by the Second Canadian Corps.

1951. Julius & Ethel Rosenberg, atomic spies, sentenced to death.

1958. Ripple Rock, an underwater threat to navigation in the Seymour Narrows in Canada is destroyed in one of the largest ever non-nuclear controlled explosions.

1965. Lava Lamp Day celebrated.

1973. NFL adopts jersey numbering system (ie QBs, 1-19).

1986. Record for a throw-and-return boomerang toss is set (121m).

1990. Paul Newman wins a court victory over Julius Gold, to keep giving all profits from Newman foods to charity.

2022. Shanghai lockdown extended to cover the whole city as COVID-19 cases increase, as China remains one of the last to employ a "zero-Covid" system.

2063. Earth's 1st contact with the extraterrestrial Vulcan species in the Star Trek universe.

[Catsumi]

1887. Anne Sullivan teaches "water" to blind and deaf six-year-old Helen Keller by holding one of her hands under a dripping water pump and spelling out “w-a-t-e-r” in Keller’s palm. She goes on to learn how to read, write, speak and graduate from college

Anne Sullivan was a game changer for the deaf and the blind. The world owes her gratitude and I do hope there’s a statue erected somewhere in her honour (could it escape the notice of the imbeciles?)

[The Green Barbarian]

1945. World War II: Dutch city of Almelo is freed by the Second Canadian Corps.

I was watching an interview with Norm MacDonald (RIP) on Youtube the other day and he was talking about how his dad was in the Canadian Army in WW2 and helped liberate the Netherlands, and how even after his father passed away Norm was still being invited (and going) to Holland as the Dutch were wanting to show their appreciation, even to the children of the soldiers from Canada who helped liberate them from the Germans.

Screenshot 2024-04-05 181040.png

Percy Lloyd MacDonald - not much doubt that he was Norm's dad, is there?

(I have no idea if Norm's dad helped free the city of Almelo, but he might have been there)....

[Babba_not_Gump]

April 6.
2018. A semi-truck sped through a stop sign in rural Saskatchewan and hit a bus carrying the Humboldt Broncos Junior Hockey Team, killing 16 people and seriously injuring 13.

0801-broncos-crash-site-ldr0121.jpg

[Babba_not_Gump]

April 7.
30. Scholars' estimate for Jesus' crucifixion by Roman troops in Jerusalem.

1795. France adopts the metre as the basic measure of length.

1827. English chemist John Walker sells the world's first friction matches, per 100 matches in a tin case with a piece of sandpaper.

1853.  Queen Victoria asks John Snow to administer chloroform during the delivery of her eighth child, Leopold, leads to wider acceptance of obstetrical anesthesia.

1868. Thomas D'Arcy McGee, one of the Canadian Fathers of Confederation is assassinated by the Irish, in one of the few Canadian political assassinations, and the only federal politician.

1933. "National Beer Day" Cullen-Harrison Act comes into effect legalising sale of low alcohol beer.

1933. 1st of 2 NAZI anti-Jewish laws, bars Jews from legal & public service.

1943. NFL adopts free substitution rule; helmets made mandatory and 10-game schedule for all teams approved.

1945. Battle of Okinawa: US planes intercept Japanese fleet heading for Okinawa on a suicide mission, super battleship Yamato and four destroyers are sunk.

1948. World Health Organization is formed by the United Nations.

1959. Oklahoma ends prohibition, after 51 years.

1969. Supreme Court strikes down laws prohibiting private possession of obscene material.

1969. The Internet's symbolic birth date: publication of RFC 1 "Request for Comments”.

1979. NHL New York Islanders Mike Bossy scores 4 goals on his first 4 shots in 9-2 win over visiting Philadelphia Flyers.

1994. Beginning of the Rwandan Genocide.

2016. Longest-ever captured python found on Penang Island in Malaysia (26ft).

2019. Rwanda marks 25 years and the beginning of 100 days of mourning since the genocide that killed 800,000 people.

2020. China ends its lockdown of Wuhan, the city at the center of the COVID-19 pandemic after 76 days as the country reports no new deaths for the 1st time.

[Babba_not_Gump]

April 9.
2017. The battle of Vimy Ridge. Canada's greatest moment in military history. Too many young men died.

[The Green Barbarian]

April 9.
2017. The battle of Vimy Ridge. Canada's greatest moment in military history. Too many young men died.

April 14th, 1865 - Abraham Lincoln is assassinated. The play he was watching? Our American Cousin.

[Babba_not_Gump]

April 20.
295. 8th recorded perihelion passage of Halley's Comet.

1534. French explorer Jacques Cartier sets sail with two ships from Saint-Malo for Newfoundland, tasked by Francis I to look for gold and riches.

1611. First known performance of Shakespeare's tragedy Macbeth at the Globe Theatre, London.

1862. First pasteurization test is completed by Frenchmen Louis Pasteur and Claude Bernard.

1902. Marie and Pierre Curie isolate the radioactive compound radium chloride.

1910. Halley's Comet passes 29th recorded perihelion at 87.9 million km.

1918. Manfred von Richthofen, aka The Red Baron, shoots down his 79th and 80th victims marking his final victories before his death the following day.

1926. 1st check sent by radio facsimile transmission across Atlantic.

1936. Jews repel an Arab attack in Petach Tikvah Palestine.

1944. NFL legalizes coaching from bench.

1962. NASA civilian pilot Neil Armstrong takes X-15 to 63,250 m.

1968. British rock band billed as "Roundabout" debuts in Kastrup, Denmark; after a brief tour of Scandinavia, they change their name to "Deep Purple".

1973. Canadian ANIK A2 becomes 1st commercial satellite in orbit.

1999. Columbine High School massacre: two students kill 13 people and injure 24 others before committing suicide at Columbine High School, Colorado.

2020. The last three cruise ships still afloat amid COVID pandemic, finally dock at the ports of Marseille, France; Barcelona, Spain; and Los Angeles California.

2021. Record number of new COVID-19 cases reported (5.24 million) in one week around the world according to WHO, with a third in India.

[The Green Barbarian]

April 20.


1902. Marie and Pierre Curie isolate the radioactive compound radium chloride.

After the successful experiment was completed, both of them were positively glowing.

1936. Jews repel an Arab attack in Petach Tikvah Palestine.

The next day Al Jazeera put out a news report blaming the Jews for shooting back.

[Babba_not_Gump]

April 22.
1500.  Pedro Álvares Cabral is the first European to discover Brazil, landing near Monte Pascoal, claims it for Portugal.

1509. Henry VIII, 2nd Tudor king of England ascends to the throne at age 17, after the death of his father, Henry VII.

1692. Edward Bishop is jailed for proposing flogging as a cure for witchcraft in Salem, Massachusetts.

1823. British inventor Robert John Tyers patents an in-line roller skate he calls the "Volito", with a single row of 5 wooden wheels, a wooden sole, and a curved iron bar at the front as a rudimentary brake.

1884. Thomas Stevens leaves San Francisco on the first bicycle trip around the world, takes him 2 years and 9 months.

1897. NYC Jewish newspaper "Forward" begins publishing (still active). https://forward.com/

1914. Babe Ruth's 1st professional game (as a pitcher) is a 6-hit 6-0 win.

1915. First military use of poison gas occurs when Germany uses chlorine gas against the Allies at Ypres in World War I.

1945. Battle of Berlin: Upon being informed that a planned counter-attack never happened, Adolf Hitler flies into a rage, denounces the German Army and concedes World War II is lost.

1945. Sachsenhausen concentration camp in Oranienburg, Germany is liberated by the Polish Army.

1954. NBA adopts 24-second shot clock & 6 team-foul rule.

1966. The Troggs second single "Wild Thing" released; tops the charts in July.

1976.  Barbara Walters becomes the first female US nightly network news anchor (ABC News).

1979. The Rolling Stones play two benefit concerts for the Canadian National Institute for the Blind, in Oshawa, Ontario; performance part of guitarist Keith Richards’ heroin conviction sentence.

1993. Holocaust Memorial Museum dedicated in Washington, D.C.

2006. Four Canadian soldiers are killed 75 kilometers north of Kandahar, Afghanistan by a roadside bomb planted by Taliban militants, the worst single day combat loss for the Canadian army since the Korean War.

2016. Paris Agreement on climate change signed in New York binding 195 nations to an increase in the global average temperature to less than 2°C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the increase to 1.5°C.

2020. Sudan bans female genital mutilation and makes it a criminal offense.

2023. Foreign countries begin evacuating their citizens out of Khartoum, Sudan's capital, as fighting continues to escalate, with WHO and UN saying over 400 people killed and 200,000 fled the country.

[Babba_not_Gump]

April 23.
1516. Duke Wilhelm IV of Bavaria endorses "The German Beer Purity Law" (Reinheitsgebot) and adds to it standards for the sale of beer in Bavaria, ensuring beer is only brewed from three ingredients – water, malt and hops.

1662. Connecticut chartered as an English colony.

1851. Canada issues its 1st postage stamp - a Three-Pence Beaver.

1867.  Queen Victoria and Napoleon III turn down plans for a channel tunnel.

1891. Jews are expelled from Moscow, Russia.

1897. Lester B. Pearson Canadian diplomat (Nobel Peace Prize, 1957) and politician (Prime Minister, 1963-68), and WWI aviator commonly known as "Mike", born.

1900. 1st know occurrence of word "hillbillie" (NY Journal).

1921. Charles Paddock runs world record 100m (10.4 secs).

1945. Concentration camp Flossenburg liberated.

1954. Hammerin' Hank Aaron hits 1st of his 755 homers.

1965. "I Can't Help Myself (Sugar Pie Honey Bunch)" single released by the Four Tops (Billboard Song of the Year 1965).

1969. Sirhan Sirhan sentenced to death for killing US Senator Robert F. Kennedy (later commuted to a life sentence.

1984. AIDS-virus identified as HTLV-III (acquired immune deficiency syndrome).

1985. New Coke debuts; Coca-Cola announced it is changing its secret flavor formula.

1989. Wine merchant William Sokolin breaks a bottle of 1787 Château Margaux, possibly belonging to Thomas Jefferson, worth $500,000 at the Four Seasons restaurant in New York.

2001. Fatboy Slim releases single "Weapon of Choice", music video directed by Spike Jonze starring Christopher Walken dancing.

2005. YouTube's co-founder Jawed Karim uploads the first video to YouTube, "Me at the zoo" showing him in front of two elephants at the San Diego Zoo. Has over 311 million views.

2020. US President Donald Trump suggests COVID-19 might be treated by injecting disinfectant or UV lights into a human body at a White House press briefing.

[Babba_not_Gump]

April 25.
1507. German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller is the first to use the name America on his world map "Universalis Cosmographia".

1684. Patent granted for a thimble.

1719. Daniel Defoe publishes "Robinson Crusoe", regarded as the 1st English novel.

1792. Guillotine first used in France, executes highwayman Nicolas Pelletier.

1850. Paul Julius Reuter sets up carrier-pigeon service, using 40 pigeons to carry stock market prices between Aachen and Brussels.

1858. Fraser River Gold Rush begins in British Columbia as miners arrive from California.

1881. 250,000 Germans petition to bar foreign Jews from entering Germany.

1901. New York becomes 1st state requiring automobile license plates ($1 fee).

1920. San Remo conference establishes three League of Nations mandates: a French mandate for Syria, and British mandates for Mesopotamia and Palestine with effect to the terms of the Balfour Declaration.

1928. Buddy, a German Shepherd, becomes 1st guide dog for a US citizen Morris Frank.

1945. Soviet forces complete their encirclement of Berlin, cutting off all access points west of the German capital.

1952. American Bowling Congress approves use of an automatic pinsetter.

1954. Bell labs announces the first solar battery made from silicon. It has about 6% efficiency.

1960. 1st submerged circumnavigation of Earth completed by USS submarine Triton in 60 days, 21 hours.

1967. Abortion is legalized in Colorado.

1970. Holland-Dozier-Holland's Invictus Records releases Freda Payne's signature single "Band of Gold".

1985. For 2nd time, Wayne Gretzky, scores 7 points in a Cup game (3 goals, 4 assists).

1985. West German Parliament rules it is illegal to deny the Holocaust.

2015. 7.8-magnitude earthquake near Kathmandu in Nepal, killing 8000, leaving over 100,000 homeless, destroying many historic sites.

2022. Twitter announces a deal to sell itself to Elon Musk for $44 billion.

[Babba_not_Gump]

April 26.
1392. Korean Confucian scholar and statesman Jeong Mong-ju is assassinated on the Sonjuk Bridge in Gaeseong (now North Korea). A brown spot on the bridge is still said to be his blood.

1654. Jews are expelled from Brazil.

1859. US Congressman Daniel E. Sickles is acquitted in the murder Philip Barton Key, on grounds of "temporary insanity" - 1st time this defense used successfully in the US.

1906. Motion pictures begin regular showings at the Orpheum Theater in Honolulu, Hawaii.

1920. Ice hockey makes its Olympic debut at the Antwerp Games with center Frank Fredrickson scoring 7 goals in Canada's 12-1 drubbing of Sweden in the gold medal match.

1931. Lou Gehrig hits a HR but is called out for passing a runner, mistake costs him AL home run crown; he & Babe Ruth tie for season.

1945. World War II: Battle of Bautzen - last successful German tank-offensive of the war and last noteworthy victory of the Wehrmacht.

1954. Mass trials of Jonas Salk's anti-polio vaccine begin; the first shot is delivered in Fairfax County, Virginia; more than 443,000 children receive shots over three months.

1954. USSR Supreme Soviet transfer the Crimean oblast from Russian SFSR to Ukrainian SSR.

1966. International Olympic Committee votes to award German city of Munich the right to host the 1972 Summer Olympic Games.

1982. Argentina surrenders to Great Britain on South Georgia Island, near the Falkland Islands.

1986. World's worst nuclear disaster: The fourth reactor at Chernobyl nuclear power station in the Soviet Union explodes, 31 die and radioactive contamination reaches much of Western Europe.

2005. Under international pressure, Syria withdraws the last of its 14,000 troop military garrison in Lebanon, ending its 29-year military domination of the country.

2017. "The Handmaid's Tale" debuts on Hulu starring Elisabeth Moss, Joseph Fiennes and Yvonne Strahovski.

2018. Comedian Bill Cosby is found guilty of sexual assault in Pennsylvania.

2022. US infectious diseases expert Dr. Anthony Fauci says that the country is out of the "Pandemic Phase" - for the moment.