Sunday, April 14, 2024
Today: 1. 1865: President Abraham Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C. He died the next day. 2. 1912: The RMS Titanic struck an iceberg late in the evening and sank early the next morning, resulting in the deaths of over 1,500 people. 3. 1935: The “Black Sunday” dust […]
Saturday, April 13, 2024
Today: 1. 1742: Handel’s oratorio “Messiah” premiered in Dublin, Ireland. 2. 1919: The Jallianwala Bagh massacre occurred in Amritsar, India, where British troops fired on a crowd of unarmed Indian civilians, killing hundreds. 3. 1943: The Jefferson Memorial was dedicated in Washington, D.C., on the 200th anniversary of Thomas Jefferson’s birth. 4. 1964: Sidney Poitier […]
Friday, April 12, 2024
Today: 1. 1861: The American Civil War began when Confederate forces attacked Fort Sumter in South Carolina. 2. 1912: The RMS Titanic set sail from Southampton, England on its ill-fated maiden voyage. 3. 1945: President Franklin D. Roosevelt died suddenly of a cerebral hemorrhage in Warm Springs, Georgia, leading to Vice President Harry S. Truman […]
Thursday, April 11, 2024
Today: 1. 1814: Napoleon Bonaparte abdicates the throne of France, leading to his exile on the island of Elba. 2. 1865: President Abraham Lincoln delivers his last public speech, advocating for voting rights for African Americans. 3. 1900: The U.S. Navy’s first modern battleship, the USS Kentucky, is launched in Newport News, Virginia. 4. 1921: […]
Wednesday, April 10, 2024
Today: 1. 837: Halley’s Comet makes its closest approach to Earth at a distance equal to 0.0342 AU (5.1 million kilometers/3.2 million miles). 2. 1710: The Statute of Anne, the first fully-fledged copyright law, is enacted in Great Britain. 3. 1815: The Mount Tambora volcano in Indonesia begins one of the most powerful eruptions in […]
Tuesday, April 9, 2024
Today: 1. 1865: General Robert E. Lee surrenders to General Ulysses S. Grant, effectively ending the American Civil War, at the Appomattox Court House in Virginia. 2. 1939: Singer Marian Anderson performs a historic concert on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., after being denied permission to sing at Constitution Hall due […]
Monday, April 8, 2024
Today: 1. 563 BC: Gautama Buddha, the founder of Buddhism, is traditionally believed to have been born on this date in Lumbini, Nepal. 2. 217: Roman Emperor Caracalla is assassinated while relieving himself along the road to Carrhae. 3. 1820: The Venus de Milo statue is discovered on the Aegean island of Milos (Melos) by […]
Sunday, April 7, 2024
Today: 1. 1876: Alexander Graham Bell was granted a patent for his invention of the telephone. 2. 1936: Adolf Hitler violated the Treaty of Versailles by sending German troops into the Rhineland, a demilitarized zone along the French border. 3. 1965: Civil rights activists began a march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, advocating for African […]
Saturday, April 6, 2024
Today: 1. 1896: The first modern Olympic Games were inaugurated in Athens, Greece. 2. 1917: The United States formally declared war on Germany, entering World War I. 3. 1930: Mahatma Gandhi led the Salt March, a nonviolent protest against the British salt monopoly in colonial India. 4. 1968: American civil rights leader Martin Luther King […]
Friday, April 5, 2024
Today: 1. 1614: Pocahontas, daughter of the Algonquin chief Powhatan, married English colonist John Rolfe in Jamestown, Virginia, leading to a period of peace between the English settlers and Powhatan Confederacy. 2. 1722: Dutch navigator Jacob Roggeveen discovered Easter Island, also known as Rapa Nui, in the southeastern Pacific Ocean. 3. 1792: U.S. President George […]