History Thread...

[CMRivdogs]

April 12

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/april-12
 

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Four of the bloodiest years in American history begin when Confederate shore batteries under General Pierre G.T. Beauregard open fire on Union-held Fort Sumter in South Carolina’s Charleston Harbor on April 12, 1861. During the next 34 hours, 50 Confederate guns and mortars launched more than 4,000 rounds at the poorly supplied fort. On April 13, U.S. Major Robert Anderson surrendered the fort. Two days later, U.S. President Abraham Lincoln issued a proclamation calling for 75,000 volunteer soldiers to quell the Southern “insurrection.”

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On April 12, 1770, a parliamentary bill to repeal the hated Townshend Acts received assent from the British crown. Initially passed on June 29, 1767, the Townshend Acts constituted an attempt by the British government to consolidate fiscal and political power over the American colonies by placing import taxes on many of the British products bought by Americans, including lead, paper, paint, glass and tea.

The measure bore the name of its sponsor, Charles Townshend, the chancellor of the Exchequer, who was notoriously conservative in his understanding of colonial rights. Townshend’s annual Revenue Act levied a controversial package of taxes on the colonists, including duties on lead, painters’ colors, paper and tea.

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On April 12, 1945, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt passes away partway through his fourth term in office, leaving Vice President Harry S. Truman in charge of a country still fighting the Second World War and in possession of a weapon of unprecedented and terrifying power.

On a clear spring day at his Warm Springs, Georgia, retreat, Roosevelt sat in the living room with Lucy Mercer (with whom he had resumed an extramarital affair), two cousins and his dog Fala, while the artist Elizabeth Shoumatoff painted his portrait. According to presidential biographer Doris Kearns Goodwin, it was about 1 p.m. that the president suddenly complained of a terrific pain in the back of his head and collapsed, unconscious.

 

[CMRivdogs]

April 13

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/april-13

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An armed group of white supremacists attacks a courthouse guarded by a mostly-Black militia in the town of Colfax, Louisiana on April 13, 1873. A bloodbath ensues, as the militia surrenders and the white supremacists carry out a day-long campaign of terror that came to be known as the Colfax Massacre.

In the years following the U.S. Civil War, a number of freedmen and white candidates sympathetic to the cause of racial equality were elected to office across the South. This progress stirred up deep resentments among other white Southerners, bitter over the loss of the Civil War and eager to once again enshrine white supremacy into law. During this period, known as Reconstruction, federal troops were stationed throughout the South to pacify the region and protect elections. The Enforcement Acts of 1870 and 1871 prohibited people from congregating with the purpose of disrupting an election and gave the federal government the authority to use its troops in defense of African Americans and their recently granted constitutional rights.

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After a 33-hour bombardment by Confederate cannons, Union forces surrender Fort Sumter in South Carolina’s Charleston Harbor. The first engagement of the war ended in Rebel victory.

The surrender concluded a standoff that began with South Carolina’s secession from the Union on December 20, 1860. When President Abraham Lincoln sent word to Charleston in early April that he planned to send food to the beleaguered garrison, the Confederates took action. They opened fire on Sumter in the predawn of April 12. Over the next day, nearly 4,000 rounds were hurled toward the black silhouette of Fort Sumter.

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Future President Thomas Jefferson, drafter of the Declaration of Independence and the nation’s preeminent political theorist, is born on April 13, 1743.

Historian and biographer Joseph Ellis has called Jefferson, who had a monumental role in shaping American politics, the American sphinx for his enigmatic character. Since his terms in office, presidents and politicians from both ends of the political spectrum have borrowed from Jefferson’s political philosophy in an attempt to link their own leadership with this most influential and admired founding father.

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On April 13, 1978, opening day at Yankee Stadium, the New York Yankees give away thousands of Reggie! bars to fans, who naturally toss them onto the field after star outfielder Reggie Jackson homers in his first at-bat. The grounds crew cleans up the goodies, delaying the game for five minutes.

When he played for the Oakland A's, Jackson—who signed with the Yankees as a free agent in 1976—predicted that somebody would name a candy bar after him. And so the Curtiss Candy Co., also known for developing the Baby Ruth bar, created the Reggie! bar, which featured chocolate, peanuts and a caramel center.

After he hit the three-run homer, Jackson—who was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1993—expected the shower of thousands of candy bars. "I didn't want to get hit in the head," he told reporters, "but I knew it was a gesture of appreciation."

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1976

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The US reintroduces the discontinued and never-popular $2 bill to mark the nation’s bicentennial. The bill carries a portrait of Thomas Jefferson, born on April 13, 1743.

 

 

[CMRivdogs]

April 14

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/april-14

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President Abraham Lincoln is shot in the head at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C. on April 14, 1865. The assassin, actor John Wilkes Booth, shouted, “Sic semper tyrannis! (Ever thus to tyrants!) The South is avenged,” as he jumped onto the stage and fled on horseback. Lincoln died the next morning.

Booth, who remained in the North during the war despite his Confederate sympathies, initially plotted to capture President Lincoln and take him to Richmond, the Confederate capital. However, on March 20, 1865, the day of the planned kidnapping, the president failed to appear at the spot where Booth and his six fellow conspirators lay in wait. Two weeks later, Richmond fell to Union forces. In April, with Confederate armies near collapse across the South, Booth hatched a desperate plan to save the Confederacy.

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The Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage, the first American society dedicated to the cause of abolition, is founded in Philadelphia on April 14, 1775. The society changes its name to the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery and the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage in 1784.

Leading Quaker educator and abolitionist Anthony Benezet called the society together two years after he persuaded the Quakers to create the Negro School at Philadelphia. Benezet was born in France to a Huguenot (French Protestant) family that had fled to London in order to avoid persecution at the hands of French Catholics. The family eventually migrated to Philadelphia when Benezet was 17. There, he joined the Society of Friends (Quakers) and began a career as an educator. In 1750, Benezet began teaching slave children in his home after regular school hours, and in 1754, established the first girls’ school in America. With the help of fellow Quaker John Woolman, Benezet persuaded the Philadelphia Quaker Yearly Meeting to take an official stance against slavery in 1758.

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On April 14, 1910, President William Howard Taft becomes the first president to throw out the ceremonial first pitch at a Major League Baseball game. The historic toss on opening day is to star Walter Johnson, the Washington Senators' starting pitcher against the Philadelphia Athletics at National Park in the nation's capital.

Senators owner Clark Griffith had wanted a U.S. president to throw out the first pitch for years. "In President William Howard Taft," wrote Baseball Almanac in 2003, "[Griffith] found a genuine sports fan and willing, if unaware, participant in an ingenious public relations move. By convincing Taft to throw out the ceremonial first pitch of the season, Griffith hoped to permanently fix the presidential seal of approval on baseball as the national pastime once and for all."

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On April 14, 1996, third-round leader Greg Norman loses a six-shot lead in the final round of the Masters golf tournament and finishes second—one of the worst collapses in sports history. Nick Faldo wins the green jacket, finishing five strokes ahead of Norman. "I played like a bunch of [expletive]," the Australian tells reporters afterward. "I just didn't get the job done."

In shooting a 78 in the final round, Norman had four bogeys and five double-bogeys. The tournament marked the seventh time in eight major championships that he failed to hold a final-round lead.

 

[CMRivdogs]

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“The first & essential step to be taken towards re-establishing Government, would be to arrest and imprison the principal actors & abettors in the Provincial Congress (whose proceedings appear in every light to be acts of treason & rebellion).”

 

[CMRivdogs]

April 15

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/april-15

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On April 15, 1947, Jackie Robinson, age 28, becomes the first African American player in Major League Baseball's modern era when he steps onto Ebbets Field in Brooklyn to compete for the Brooklyn Dodgers. Robinson broke the color barrier in a sport that had been segregated for more than 50 years. Exactly 50 years later, on April 15, 1997, Robinson’s groundbreaking career was honored and his uniform number, 42, was retired from Major League Baseball by Commissioner Bud Selig in a ceremony attended by over 50,000 fans at New York City’s Shea Stadium. Robinson’s was the first-ever number retired by all teams in the league.

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At 2:20 a.m. on April 15, 1912, the British ocean liner Titanic sinks into the North Atlantic Oceanabout 400 miles south of Newfoundland, Canada. The massive ship, which carried 2,200 passengers and crew, had struck an iceberg two and half hours before.

On April 10, the RMS Titanic, one of the largest and most luxurious ocean liners ever built, departed Southampton, England, on its maiden voyage across the Atlantic Ocean. The Titanic was designed by the Irish shipbuilder William Pirrie and built in Belfast, and was thought to be the world’s fastest ship. It spanned 883 feet from stern to bow, and its hull was divided into 16 compartments that were presumed to be watertight. Because four of these compartments could be flooded without causing a critical loss of buoyancy, the Titanic was considered unsinkable. While leaving port, the ship came within a couple of feet of the steamer New York but passed safely by, causing a general sigh of relief from the passengers massed on the Titanic‘s decks. On its first journey across the highly competitive Atlantic ferry route, the ship carried some 2,200 passengers and crew.

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On April 15, 2013, two bombs go off near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, killing three spectators and wounding more than 260 other people in attendance. Four days later, after an intense manhunt that shut down the Boston area, police captured one of the bombing suspects, 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev; his older brother and fellow suspect, 26-year-old Tamerlan Tsarnaev, died following a shootout with law enforcement earlier that same day.

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1955...Entrepreneur Ray Kroc opens his first McDonald’s franchise location in Des Plaines, Illinois. The chain’s burgers cost 15 cents, a price that will remain unchanged for the next 12 years, when they rise to 18 cents.

 

[CMRivdogs]

April 16...

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/april-16

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On April 16, 2007, 32 people died after being gunned down on the campus of Virginia Tech by Seung-Hui Cho, a student at the college who later died by suicide.

The Virginia Tech shooting began around 7:15 a.m., when Cho, a 23-year-old senior and English major at Blacksburg-based Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, shot a female freshman and a male resident assistant in a campus dormitory before fleeing the building.

Police were soon on the scene; unaware of the gunman’s identity, they initially pursued the female victim’s boyfriend as a suspect in what they believed to be an isolated domestic-violence incident.

However, at around 9:40 a.m., Cho, armed with a 9-millimeter handgun, a 22-caliber handgun and hundreds of rounds of ammunition, entered a classroom building, chained and locked several main doors and went from room to room shooting people. Approximately 10 minutes after the rampage began, he died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

The attack left 32 people dead and more than a dozen wounded. In all, 27 students and five faculty members died in the massacre.
 

Including one of our own

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1972 

From Cape Canaveral, Florida, Apollo 16, the fifth of six U.S. lunar landing missions, is successfully launched on its 238,000-mile journey to the moon. On April 20, astronauts John W. Young and Charles M. Duke descended to the lunar surface from the Command Module_,_ which remained in orbit around the moon with a third astronaut, Thomas K. Mattingly, remaining on board.

Young and Duke remained on the moon for nearly three days, and spent more than 20 hours exploring the surface of Earth’s only natural satellite. The two astronauts used the Lunar Rover vehicle to collect more than 200 pounds of rock before returning to the Command Module on April 23. Four days later, the three astronauts returned to Earth, safely splashing down in the Pacific Ocean.

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On April 16, 1929, the Cleveland Indians open the season with numbers on the back of each player’s jersey, the first Major League Baseball team to do so. The numbers make it easier for scorekeepers, broadcasters and fans to identify players. Cleveland wins the game against the Detroit Tigers in 11 innings, 5-4.

The New York Yankees, who had won the World Series in 1927 and 1928, were supposed to debut jersey numbers the same day, but their opener was rained out. Thus fans waited another day to see two of baseball’s greatest players—Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig—sport jersey numbers 3 and 4, which would become famous. Those numbers corresponded with the sluggers' spots in the batting order.

In 1923, the St. Louis Cardinals also tried sleeve numbers but found the practice had a negative impact on team morale. "Because of the continuing embarrassment to the players, the numbers were removed," manager Branch Rickey said.

By the 1937 season, every MLB team had numbers on the backs of jerseys. In 1960, the White Sox were the first team to put names on the back of their jerseys. The Yankees remain the only team without names on the back of jerseys.

 

Edited Wednesday at 01:41 PM by CMRivdogs

[oblong]

12 hours ago, CMRivdogs said:

April 16...

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/april-16

 

The crew of Apollo 16 took this photo of earth about an hour after their trans lunar injection burn.  Lakes Michigan and Superior are visible in the middle around 3/4 the way up.  
 

[CMRivdogs]

April 17

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/april-17
 

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With the world anxiously watching, Apollo 13, a U.S. lunar spacecraft that suffered a severe malfunction on its journey to the moon, safely returns to Earth on April 17, 1970.

On April 11, the third manned lunar landing mission was launched from Florida, carrying astronauts James A. Lovell, John L. Swigert and Fred W. Haise. The mission was headed for a landing on the Fra Mauro highlands of the moon. However, two days into the mission, disaster struck 200,000 miles from Earth when oxygen tank No. 2 blew up in the spacecraft. Swigert reported to mission control on Earth, “Houston, we’ve had a problem here,” and it was discovered that the normal supply of oxygen, electricity, light and water had been disrupted.

The astronauts and mission control were faced with enormous logistical problems in stabilizing the spacecraft and its oxygen supply, as well as running on batteries due to the loss of the fuel cells to allow successful reentry into Earth’s atmosphere. Navigation was another problem, and Apollo 13‘s course was repeatedly corrected with dramatic and untested maneuvers. On April 17, tragedy turned to triumph as the Apollo 13 astronauts touched down safely in the Pacific Ocean.

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    1961....The Bay of Pigs invasion begins when a CIA-financed and -trained group of Cuban refugees lands in Cuba and attempts to topple the communist government of Fidel Castro. The attack was an utter failure.

Fidel Castro had been a concern to U.S. policymakers since he seized power in Cuba with a revolution in January 1959. Castro’s attacks on U.S. companies and interests in Cuba, his inflammatory anti-American rhetoric, and Cuba’s movement toward a closer relationship with the Soviet Union led U.S. officials to conclude that the Cuban leader was a threat to U.S. interests in the Western Hemisphere. In March 1960, President Dwight D. Eisenhower ordered the CIA to train and arm a force of Cuban exiles for an armed attack on Cuba. John F. Kennedy inherited this program when he became president in 1961.

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The Ford Mustang is officially unveiled by Henry Ford II at the World’s Fair in Flushing Meadows, New York, on April 17, 1964. That same day, the new car also debuted in Ford showrooms across America and almost 22,000 Mustangs were immediately snapped up by buyers. Named for a World War II fighter plane, the Mustang was one of the first vehicles that came to be known as a “pony car.” Ford sold more than 400,000 Mustangs within its first year of production, far exceeding sales expectations.

 

[oblong]

Henry Ford II taking credit for Lee Iacocca's work.  Lee was told not to do it but he set up a secret team that worked off hours out of a since demoished hotel in Dearborn.

Regarding Apollo 13

Grumman, who made the Lunar Module, sent North American Aviation an invoice for towing the Command and Service Module.

 

[CMRivdogs]

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They agree that “if the British went out by Water, we would shew two Lanthorns in the North Church Steeple; & if by Land, one, as a Signal; for we were aprehensive it would be dificult to Cross the Charles River, or git over Boston neck.”

 

[CMRivdogs]

April 18

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On April 18, 1906, at 5:13 a.m., an earthquake estimated at close to 8.0 on the Richter scale strikes San Francisco, California, killing an estimated 3,000 people as it topples numerous buildings. The quake was caused by a slip of the San Andreas Fault over a segment about 275 miles long, and shock waves could be felt from southern Oregon down to Los Angeles.

San Francisco’s brick buildings and wooden Victorian structures were especially devastated. Fires immediately broke out and–because broken water mains prevented firefighters from stopping them–firestorms soon developed citywide. At 7 a.m., U.S. Army troops from Fort Mason reported to the Hall of Justice, and San Francisco Mayor E.E. Schmitz called for the enforcement of a dusk-to-dawn curfew and authorized soldiers to shoot to kill anyone found looting. Meanwhile, in the face of significant aftershocks, firefighters and U.S. troops fought desperately to control the ongoing fire, often dynamiting whole city blocks to create firewalls. On April 20, several thousands of refugees trapped by the massive fire were evacuated from the foot of Van Ness Avenue. The army would eventually house 20,000 refugees in more than 20 military-style tent camps across the city.

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On April 18, 1775, British troops march out of Boston on a mission to confiscate the American arsenal at Concord and to capture Patriot leaders Samuel Adams and John Hancock, known to be hiding at Lexington. As the British departed, Boston Patriots Paul Revere and William Dawes set out on horseback from the city to warn Adams and Hancock and rouse the Minutemen.

By 1775, tensions between the American colonies and the British government had approached the breaking point, especially in Massachusetts, where Patriot leaders formed a shadow revolutionary government and trained militias to prepare for armed conflict with the British troops occupying Boston. In the spring of 1775, General Thomas Gage, the British governor of Massachusetts, received instructions from Great Britain to seize all stores of weapons and gunpowder accessible to the American insurgents. On April 18, he ordered British troops to march against Concord and Lexington.

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1923

Yankee Stadium opens in the Bronx, New York. The press nicknames it the “House that Ruth Built” for slugger Babe Ruth, and he marks the occasion with a three-run homer.