Today in History

Bard

Yesterday in 1939: Gone With The Wind was released.

...

Today in 1215: The English barons forced King John to sign the Magna Carta

Today in 1790: Benjamin Franklin died.

Today in 1941: Yugoslavia surrendered to the Nazis.

Today in 1970: Apollo 13 returned to Earth.

And today in 1989, "She Drives Me Crazy" by the Fine Young Cannibals and Madonna's "Like A Prayer" were riding high in the charts.

(Feel free to add to this thread day by day)

Mark

April 18th in History

1775: Paul Revere made his famous ride from Lexington to Concord, Massachusetts, warning the American people that the British “redcoats” had landed and will soon arrive

1906: An earthquake, followed by fire, destroys most of San Francisco, killing 3000 people

1949: Republic of Ireland created

1978: US Senate approves transfer of Panama Canal to Panama

1983: Eighty-three people are killed at the US Embassy in Beirut.

1989: Zimbabwe gains independence

Mark

April 19th in History

1587: English captain Francis Drake sinks the Spanish fleet in Cadiz harbour

1775: Minutemen Capt John Parker orders not to fire unless fired upon. A shot is fired and the American revolution begins at the Lexington Common. That was the "shot heard round the world"

1933: FDR announces that the US will leave the gold standard

1943 - The Warsaw Ghetto Revolt

1971: The Soviet Union launch the first manned spacelab, Salyut 1

1971: Sierra Leone becomes a republic

1972: Bangladesh joins the British Commonwealth

1975: India launches 1st satellite with help of USSR

1993: Massacre of Branch Davidian religious minority at Waco, Texas

1995: Oklahoma City - Murrah Federal Building bombed

And a quick birthday:
1903: Eliot Ness, American agent who put Al Capone behind bars

Mark

April 20th in History

1441: During the Council of Florence, Pope Eugenius IV issues the bull "Etsi non dubitemus," which asserts the superiority of the pope over the Councils

1775: British begin siege of Boston As a result, New York adopts new constitution as an independent state

1782: Netherlands recognizes US
1902: Marie Curie isolate radioactive element radium

1929: The first Italian parliament made up completely from Mussolinis Fascists opens

1945: Soviet troops enter Berlin

1961: Revolt in the South African country of Angola

1999: Columbine Massacre

Birthday-
121: Marcus Aurelius, Roman emperor

1889: Adolf Hitler, Dictator of Germany

Bard

more April 20th

On April 20, 1902, Marie and Pierre Curie successfully isolate radioactive radium salts from the mineral pitchblende in their laboratory in Paris.

April 20th 1689 - The Siege of Derry begins

April 20th 1871 Third Force Act (AKA Ku Klux Act) passed by Congress, authorising President Ulysses S. Grant to declare martial law, impose heavy penalties against terrorist organizations, and use military force to suppress the Ku Klux Klan (KKK).

April 20th 1925, Talented jazz musician Tito Puente was born

April 20th, 1989 - In the charts: "Prince & NPG - Kiss", "The Bangles - Manic Monday" and "Robert Palmer - Addicted to Love"

Mark

April 21st in History

1789: John Adams sworn in as first US Vice President, 9 days before Washington is sworn in as president

1898: Spanish-American War begins

1961: French army revolts in Algeria

1970: A bomb explodes aboard a Philippines airliners. All 36 aboard are killed

1972: Apollo 17, the last Apollo mission lands on the Moon.

1989: 100,000 chinese students gather for quiet protest in Tiananmen Square

Birthdays

1816: Charlotte Bronte, British writer

1926: Elizabeth II, British Queen

mike65

Not to mention Iggy Pop, Anthony Quinn,
Charles Grodin and Tony (Taxi) Danza!

Mike.

PHB

April 22nd

1500 : The area that became Brazil is discovered by Portuguese explorers

1509 : Henry VIII became King of England

1954 : Senate Army-McCarthy televised hearings began Red scare starts

1955 : Congress orders all US coins bear motto "In God We Trust"

It also appears that April 22nd is Earth Day!!!

April 22nd birthdays

1451 : Isabella I of Castile, Queen of Spain and patron of Christopher Columbus

1870 : Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov (aka Lenin), Russian leader

1904 : Robert Oppenheimer, Inventor of atomic bomb

Bard

Earth Day 2003

74 years ago today , the waste disposal unit was devised. Fascinating, eh?

Bard

3 years ago today, Charles M. Schultz, creater of the Peanuts comic strip, died at the age of 77.

If William Shakespeare were still alive, today would be his 439'th birthday. He probably wouldn't enjoy that much, in fairness. The "Big 'O'", Roy Orbison would be 67 today if he were alive.

Almost 1,000 years ago today (989 to be precise), Brian Boru, the high king of Ireland, was murdered by a group of retreating Norse Vikings. They were retreating because Boru's Irish forces had defeated them in battle.

Shirley Temple is 75 years old today. Hard to imagine, that, really...

On this day in 1983, Michael Jackson was in the charts with both "Beat It" and "Billie Jean" - and Dexy's Midnight Runners were riding high with their hit "Come on Eileen".

Mark

More April 23rd in History!

1348: English order of knighthood founded

1661: King Charles II crowned the King of Great Britain and Ireland

1945: Himmler begins secret negotiations for a separate peace in the West with Count Bernadotte, head of the Swedish Red Cross

1965: The USSR launch its first communications satellite

1967: Russian Vladimir Komarov becomes the first man to make two spaceflights (er...woo?)

1983: Cliff Thorburn of Canada made the first maximum 147 break in the history of the World Professional Snooker Championships (I loves me snooker I does)

1984: The United States announce the discovery of the AIDS virus

And April 23rd is also apparently:

St. George's Day, Patron Saint of England.

Bard

April 24th

According to my desktop calendar here, it was 35 years ago today that Dr. Martin Luther King Jnr. was assassinated. Mind you, most web sites I look up say he was killed on April 4th... so I'm not entirely sure...

50 years ago today, Winston Churchill was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II of England.

Today in 1916 was Easter Monday - the day the Easter Rising began in Dublin with the IRB orchestrating an armed uprising against British rule. Assisted by militant Irish socialists under James Connolly, Pearse and others, Republicans rioted and attacked British provincial government headquarters across Dublin and seized the GPO.

On April 24, 1980, an ill-fated military operation to rescue the 52 American hostages held in Tehran ends with eight U.S. servicemen dead and no hostages rescued.

... and today in 1984... Apple introduced their "portable computer", the Apple ][c at a media extravaganza in San Francisco, featuring banners announcing "Apple ][ Forever." (Awww... how cute! )

Mark

April 24th in History

1348:Order of the Garter established.

1792: "La Marseillaise", which later becomes the French national anthem, composed by Claude-Joseph Rouget de Lisle

1800: Library of Congress established with $5,000 allocation

1941: German forces in Greece break through British positions at Thermopylae. The British expeditionary force begins the evacuation of its troops to Egypt and Crete.

1961: JFK accepts "sole responsibility" following Bay of Pigs

1961: General de Gaulle of France order a blockade of Algeria

1969: US B-52's drop 3,000 ton bombs at Cambodian boundary

1970: China becomes the 5th nation to launch a satellite into orbit

1985: Israel begins the third stage of its troop removal from Lebanon

1989: Tens of thousands of students strike in Beijing China

Bard

Today (April 25th), 56 years ago, India achieved independence from British colonial rule. G'WAN THE INDIA!!!

Mark

April 25th in Historeh

1792: Guillotine used for the first time in France on a highwayman

1859: Work begins on the Suez Canal, Egypt (Its completed in 1869)

April 25th, 1945: Units of the US Ninth Army (Simpson) and the Soviet 1st Ukrainian Front (Konev) meet on the Elbe at Torgau, 100 miles SW of Berlin. In Berlin, the battle continues with unabated ferocity, both sides suffering heavy casualties in bitter house-to-house fighting. The relief attack by III Panzerkorps (Steiner) from the area of Eberswalde 50 miles NE of Berlin fails for lack of forces. The isolated fortress of Breslau is still holding out. In Italy, US and British forces cross the Po river and capture Parma and Mantua. German U-boats sink 5 Allied supply ships in the English Channel. Beginning of the San Francisco Conference convened to discuss the founding of the United Nations.

1961: Robert Noyce patents integrated circuit (Ahem...yes....the intengrated one)

1982: In accordance with Camp David, Israel completes Sinai withdrawl

2003: I walloped the bin off my shin and sweet divine mother of Mary it hurts.

Birthdays

1599: Oliver Cromwell, English civil war leader and Lord Protector

1840: Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Russian composer

1874: Guglielmo Marconi, Inventor of radio

1940: Al Pacino, American actor

Mark

April 26th in History
1514: Copernicus makes his observations of Saturn

1937: German-made planes destroy Basque town of Guernica in Spain. The massacre is later painted by Picasso

1945: The British Second Army (Dempsey) enters Bremen. In the East, the Soviet 3rd Belorussian Front (Vassilevsky) captures the port of Pillau 20 miles W of Königsberg, while the 2nd Belorussian Front (Rokossovsky) occupies Stettin at the mouth of the Oder. The remnants of 9.Armee (Busse) are cut off and surrounded in the Halbe pocket 30 miles SW of Frankfurt.

1961: French paratroopers' revolt suppressed in Algeria

1964: Tanganyika & Zanzibar unite to form Tanzania

1982: Argentina surrenders to Britain on South Georgia near Falkland Island

1984: US President Ronald Reagan visits China

1986: An accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant leads to widespread nuclear contamination

1994: 1st multi-racial election in South Africa begins

1996: Completion of Mir.

April 26th birthdays

1894: Rudolf Hess, German Nazi leader

1452: Leonardo Da Vinci

Bard

omg, two days missing (!) :eek:

A quick round-up of events:

April 27th

1521: Portugese explorer Magellan killed by poisoned arrow while trying to convert inhabitants of Mactan island in the Phillippines to Christianity.

1865: Tragedy on the Mississippi: Days after the end of the Civil War, the worst maritime disaster in American history occurs when the steamboat Sultana, carrying 2,100 passengers, explodes and sinks in the Mississippi River, killing all but 400 of those aboard.

Birthdays:
Samuel Morse - inventor (1791)
US President Ulysses S. Grant (1822)
Walter Lantz - creator of Woody Woodpecker (1900)
Sheena Easton - singer (1959)

April 28th

1789: Mutiny on the Bounty!!! Three weeks into a journey from Tahiti to the West Indies, the HMS Bounty is seized in a mutiny led by Fletcher Christian, the master's mate. Captain William Bligh and 18 of his loyal supporters were set adrift in a small, open boat, and the Bounty set course for Tubuai south of Tahiti.

1969: Following the defeat of his proposals for constitutional reform in a national referendum, Charles de Gaulle resigns as president of France.

Birthdays:
US President James Monroe (1758)
Jay Leno - comedian / chat show host (1950)


... and on these days in 1982, Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder were topping the UK charts with 'Ebony and Ivory'

Mark

Oh deary meh! Best get her up to date

April 29th in History
1429: The seige of Orleans is lifted by Joan of Arc

1852: First edition of Peter Roget's Thesaurus published

1913: The modern form of the zip fastener is patented

1945: The German armed foces in Italy surrender to the allies

1945: April 29th, 1945: The British Second Army crosses the Elbe at Lauenburg, 20 miles E of Hamburg, and advances toward Schwerin and Wismar in Mecklenburg. The French First Army (de Tassigny) captures Friedrichshafen on Lake Constance. In the battle of Berlin, the Red Army has now captured most of the city except for the area around the Brandenburg Gate, the Reichskanzlei and the Reichstag which is still fiercely defended by isolated units of the Waffen-SS.

1975: US Forces pull out of Vietnam

Birthdays
1769: Birth of the Duke of Wellington

1901: Emperor Hirohito of Japan

1937: Saddam Hussein, Iraqi leader

1957: Daniel Day Lewis, British actor

1957: Michelle Pfeiffer, American film actress

Bard

Also for April 29th:

1897: Gueglielmo Marconi built the world's first permanent radio station. [ read more ]

Mark

April 30th in History

1789: George Washington becomes the first US President

1798: US department of Navy established

1803: Louisiana sold to the United States by France (Napoleon needed the cash to fund his almost constant state of war)

1900: Hawaii ceded itself to the USA

1941: After the surrender of the Greek Army (Mussolini insists on a separate surrender to the Italian forces), the German occupation of Greece is now complete, the Wehrmacht having taken 223,000 Greek and 22,000 British prisoners. In Cyrenaica, the Afrikakorps' second attempt to capture Tobruk fails.

1942: Hitler and Mussolini meet at Berchtesgaden to discuss future Axis strategy in North Africa and the Mediterranean, the main objectives being the reduction of Malta and the seizure of the Suez Canal.

1970: American troops enter Cambodia, Asia

1975: The Vietnam war ends, with the South surrendering to the North




Birthdays

1777: Karl Friedrich Gauss, German mathematician

1909: Queen Juliana Of Holland

Bard

Jules Leotard (heh!) invented the flying trapeze today in 1859.




(That is all!)

Mark

May 1st in History .

1903: 100,000 workers rally in Manila, Philippines against U.S. rule

1906: Troops in Paris make many arrests during a May Day protest

1925: The island of Cyprus becomes a British colony

1931: The Empire State Building, in New York, is completed

1941: The Luftwaffe begins a series of 8 consecutive night raids against Liverpool.

1942: In the East, the siege of the Crimean fortress of Sevastopol by 11.Armee (von Manstein) continues with a ceaseless bombardment by batteries of heavy guns (up to 800mm: Big Dora) and hundreds of bombers (up to 1,000 sorties a day) of Luftflotte 7 (von Richthofen). Heavy fighting also continues on the front around besieged Leningrad whose inhabitants are suffering from bombing, disease and starvation.

1960: Gary Powers, in a U2 spy plane, shot down and captured by the USSR

1968: Legoland, in Denmark, opens

1986: One million South Africans strike against apartheid in COSATU strike

Birthday

1769: Arthur Wellesley, The Duke of Wellington (Famous Nemesis of Napoleon)

Bard

Also on May 1st:

1872 - The Jesse James Gang robbed it's first passenger train. (Awww, bless )

May 2nd:

324 years ago today, the pressure cooker was invented by Denis Papin.

Mark

May 2nd in history

1583: Leonardo da Vinci Day is first celebrated.

1896: U.S. troops intervene in Nicaragua

1670: The Hudson Bay Company was chartered by England's King Charles II.

1945: General Chuikov, defender of Stalingrad, meets with General Weidling and accepts the unconditional surrender of the surviving defenders of Berlin. Some units refuse to quit and try to break out to the West, but are annihilated in the attempt. Stalin announces the fall of Berlin in his Order of the Day No. 359.

1986: Radiation released from the Chernobyl accident reach France, Britain

1989: 60 Chinese students rode bicycles into Beijing to present demands for democratic reforms to Chinese leaders

Birthdays

1729: Catherine The Great

1904: Bing Crosby, American actor and singer

Oh and btw Bard: I WAS ROBBED DAMMIT AND YOU KNOW IT! THAT QUIZ IS MINE!

Mark

GASP! 3 days missed! Drink, feck, and indeed some quantities of buttock.

May 3rd in History

1841: New Zealand becomes a British colony

1906: The Sinai peninsula becomes Egyptian territory

1949: A ten nations conference in London forms the Council of Europe

1980: 60,000 march on Pentagon to end military involvement in El Salvador

Birthdays

1520: Birth of Leonardo da Vinci.

May 4th in History

1904: Work begins on the Panama Canal, Central America

1979: Margaret Thatcher elected Britain's first female Prime Minister.

1990: Latvia declares its independence from the Soviet Union

May 5th in History

1751: The Portuguese government takes steps to curb the Inquisitions powers

1788: Vancouver Island claimed by Spain.

1802: Madame Tussaud Arrived in London.

1942: Battle of Coral Sea

1961: Alan Shepard becomes the first American into space

1980: Bobby Sands, IRA member, dies in prison from hunger strike

1988: A live broadcast from the top of Mt Everest is made for the first time, by Japanese TV

Birthdays
1818: Karl Marx born

Bard

Ah good old Mark keeping this up to date

This weekend just gone, 9 years ago, "Friends" was first shown on American TV.

May 5th, 92 years ago, Hiram Binham discovered the lost Inca city of Macchu-Pichu.

Today in History:

1937 - The airship Hindenburg, the largest dirigible ever built and the pride of Nazi Germany, bursts into flames upon touching its mooring mast in Lakehurst, New Jersey, killing 36 passengers and crewmembers.

1954 - Roger Bannister becomes the first athlete to run a mile in under 4 minutes, a feat that had been tried so many times by so many athletes for so long that people made it out to be a physical impossibility.

1989 - The Louvre Museum in Paris opened it's Pyramid entrance.

1992 - Marlene Dietrich dies

1994 - English Channel tunnel opens

Birthdays:

1856 - Sigmund Freud (psychiatrist), Robert E. Peary (explorer, discoverer of the North Pole, Greenland and the Melville meteorite)

1915 - Orson Welles (actor/author)

1945 - Bob Seger (musician/singer)

Mark

The thought of your toight bodeh kept meh going Bardeh

More May 6th in History

1910: George V becomes the King of England

1945: The US Third Army (Patton) occupies Pilsen in Bohemia and halts all further advances. After an 82-day siege, the remaining defenders of Breslau finally surrender to Soviet forces.

1980: 170,000 workes in Togliatti auto plant, Soviet Union, stay home to support bus driver walkout.

1987: Black South African workers go on strike over whites only election.

Bard

Originally posted by Mark
The thought of your toight bodeh kept meh going Bardeh

:eek: :eek: :eek: :eek:


Stop that right now, you!!!


Anyway...

May 7th:

1865: Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States of America assassinated.

1915: British ocean liner Lucitania sunk without warning off the coast of Cork, Ireland, by a torpedo strike from a German submarine.

1954: In northwest Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh's Viet Minh forces decisively defeat the French at Dien Bien Phu, a French stronghold besieged by the Vietnamese communists for 57 days.

Birthdays:

1812: Robert Browning (Poet)
1833: Johannes Brahms (Composer)
1840: P.I. Tchaikovsky (Composer)
1901: Gary Cooper (Actor)

Mark

*sighs overdramatically*

FINE Bardeh but I demand a penguin in return (nudgewinknudgepokepokenudge)

Even MORE May 7th in Historeh

1911: Large demonstrations held in New York, demanding women's right to vote

1937 - Camillo Berneri, Italian anarchist, murdered by Soviet Communists for reporting the truth about the Spanish Civil War

1943: Tunis, in North Africa, captured by WW2 Allied forces

1945: This day marks the end of hostilities between the Wehrmacht and the Allied armies in Europe. At 2:41 a.m. CET, Generaloberst Jodl signs the instrument of unconditional surrender of all German forces in a schoolroom at Rheims, France, to be effective at noon the following day. Off the Firth of Forth, U-2336 sinks the last Allied ships of the war, the coastal vessels Sneland and Avondale Park, while an RAF Catalina sinks U-320, the last German submarine destroyed in WWII, near Bergen off the coast of Norway.

1960: Leonid Brezhnev becomes the President of the USSR

1973: US President Nixon denies all knowledge of the Watergate affair

1994: The Channel Tunnel opened by the British Queen and French President Mitterand

Birthdeh
1919: Marie Peron, Argentinian on who 'Evita' was based

Bard

Here you go... Three uncooked penguins.



May 8th:

1541: Spanish conquistador Hernando de Soto and "his 400 ragged troops" reached and crossed the Mississippi river.

1831: The Foreign Legion was formed (in France).

1973: The American Indian Movement surrender to federal authorities, ending their 71-day siege of Wounded Knee, site of the infamous massacre of 300 Sioux by the U.S. 7th Cavalry in 1890.

1984: Soviets boycott Olympic games in Los Angeles, but China participates for the first time since 1952.


Birthdays:

1884: Harry S. Truman (U.S. President)
1932: Charles "Sonny" Liston (World Heavyweight Boxing Champion)
1940: Peter Benchley (Author, "Jaws")
1944: Gary Glitter (Paul Gadd) (singer/child porn afficionado)

Mark

Originally posted by Bard
Here you go... Three uncooked penguins.


)

You have no idea how incredibly happy that made meh . MUCH THANKEHS!

Far sexier than Bards May 8th in History

1660: Monarchy restored under Charles II

1902: The volcano Mount Pelee, in the Caribbean, erupts, killing 30,000 people

1911: Iceland gives the vote to women

1933: Gandhi, in India, begins a hunger strike in protest against the British

1945: VE-DAY (Victory-in-Europe Day). - In deference to the Soviet victors, the surrender ceremony at Rheims of the previous day is repeated before Marshall Zhukov and other Soviet generals at Karlshorst, a suburb of Berlin. The last convoys of German refugees from the East arrive in western Baltic ports, ending the largest rescue operation by sea in history. Since January 25, a total of 420,000 civilians and wounded soldiers have been evacuated - besides the U-boat campaign, it is the Kriegsmarine's most memorable feat of WWII. The remnants of AOK Ostpreussen have held their positions in the Vistula delta and the Frische Nehrung to the last. In recognition of their valor, their commander, General der Panzertruppen von Saucken, is awarded the Diamonds to the Knight's Cross by Grossadmiral Dönitz.

1950: American General MacArthur becomes comander of the UN forces in Korea

1980: World Health Organization announced smallpox had been eradicated

1988: François Mitterrand elected President of France

1996: South Africa's Const Assembly adopts permanent post-apartheid constitution


Peng-ah-gwin!