This Day in History

[GordMay]

March 31

1521: Portuguese navigator, Ferdinand Magellan, takes possession of Homohon, Archipelago of St Lazarus, Philippines.

1657: English Parliament makes the ‘Humble Petition' to Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell, offering him the crown. He declines.

1770: Immanuel Kant is appointed Professor of Logic and Metaphysics, at the University of Königsberg.

1814: Forces allied against Napoleon capture Paris.

1831: Cities of Quebec & Montreal incorporated.

1850: John Caldwell Calhoun dies. American politician. 7th U.S. Vice-President (1824-32). After a disagreement with President Andrew Jackson, he became the first U.S. Vice-President to resign. He then went on to fill a vacancy in the U.S. Senate.

1880: The first electric street lights, ever installed by a municipality, are turned on, in Wabash, Indiana.

1889: Eiffel Tower officially opens on the Left Bank, in Paris. Built for the Exposition Universelle, at 300m high, it retains the record for the tallest man made structure for 41 years.

1903: Richard Pearse flies a monoplane several hundred yards, in New Zealand.

1917: The Danish West Indies are officially ceded to the US, for $25 million, and renamed the Virgin Islands.

1928: Canadian Hall of Fame hockey player, Gordie Howe ["Mr. Hockey”] born.

1948: US Congress passes Marshall Aid Act, to rehabilitate war-torn Europe.

1949: Newfoundland joins Confederation, becomes Canada's 10th province.

1954: The siege of Dien Bien Phu, the last French outpost in Vietnam, begins after the Viet Minh realize it cannot be taken by direct assault.

1966: USSR launches “Luna 10", 1st lunar orbiter.

1968: US President, Lyndon B. Johnson, announces, in an address to the nation, that “... I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your president ..."
➥ https://www.npr.org/2018/03/25/59680...t-50-years-ago

1972: Final day of the rum ration, in the Royal Canadian Navy.
“Black Tot Day” (July 31, 1970) is the name given to the last day on which the British Royal Navy issued sailors with a daily rum ration, known as the daily tot.
The Royal Australian Navy stopped the practice earlier in 1921 with the Canadian and New Zealander Royal Navies following in 1972 and 1990, respectively.

1979: The last British soldier leaves the Maltese Islands. Malta declares its Freedom Day (Jum il-Helsien).

1982: “Arkas” tanker spills 1.47 million gallons of oil. Liberian tank vessel “Arkas” was upbound in the Mississippi River, carrying a cargo of crude oil, and passing the upbound M/V “Creole Genii”, which was pushing three barges carrying No 6 oil, when the vessels collided, near 35 Mile Point at mile 130, above Head of Passes. The collision ruptured the Arkas's hull, and escaping crude oil was ignited. Because the Arkas's crew feared an explosion, they anchored the vessel along the east river bank, and then abandoned it. Damage was estimated to be $50,000 to the Creole Genii tow, $15 million to the Arkas, and more than $71,000 to the environment. No one was seriously injured.

1994: The Journal ‘Nature’ reports the finding, in Ethiopia, of the first complete Australopithecus afarensis skull.

1996: Radio Canada International's final shortwave broadcast.

2007: In Sydney, Australia, 2.2 million people take part in the first Earth Hour.

2013: Two people die from bird flu (type H7N9) in China.

[GordMay]

April 1

1515: Portuguese fleet, under Afonso de Albuquerque, captures the Persian fortress of Ormuz, renaming it the Fort of Our Lady of the Conception.

1578: English physician, William Harvey, who discovered the true nature of the circulation of the blood, was born in Folkestone, Kent.

1748: Ruins of Pompeii rediscovered, by Spaniard, Rocque Joaquin de Alcubierre.

1778: New Orleans businessman, Oliver Pollock, creates the "$" symbol.

1826: Samuel Morey is issued the first U.S. patent for an internal-combustion engine, which he calls a “Gas or Vapour Engine". It was a two-cylinder, two-cycle device, fueled by turpentine vapours.

1873: British White Star steamship, “Atlantic”, strike an underwater rock, and sinks off Nova Scotia, 547 die [of the 952 on board].

1905: "SOS" first adopted as a morse distress signal (· · · – – – · · ·) by German government.

1909: A ban on the importation [USA], and smoking of opium goes into effect. This was "The Opium Exclusion Act of 1909". It did not ban the use of opium, only the smoking and importation of it. Chinese immigrants were the primary smokers of opium, while opium was a common medicine used by Americans at the time. The previous legal trade of opium was soon taken over by criminal enterprises.

1917: USN Boatswain's Mate 1st Class, John E. Eopolucci, is first US serviceman killed, in WW I, when the steamship SS “Aztec”, an American civilian cargo ship, is torpedoed and sunk by a German submarine, off the coast of France.

1918: The United Kingdom’s “Royal Air Force” is created, from the Royal Naval Air Service, and the Royal Flying Corps.

1924: Hitler sentenced to 5 years labor, for "Beer Hall Putsch", but General Ludendorff acquitted. He only served nine months, and used his time in prison to write the first volume of ‘Mein Kampf’.
1924: The Royal Canadian Air Force is formed.

1945: Battle of Okinawa: US ground forces invade Okinawa, during World War II, in the largest amphibious assault of the Pacific theatre.

1973: John Lennon and Yoko Ono form a new country, with no laws or boundaries, called 'Nutopia'. Its national anthem is silence.

1976: Steve Wozniak, Steve Jobs, and Ronald Wayne found Apple Computer, in the garage of Jobs' parents house, in Cupertino, California.

1979: Iran proclaimed an Islamic Republic, following fall of Shah.

1982: US formally transfers Canal Zone to Panama.

1984: American entertainer, Marvin Gaye, was shot and killed, by his father, in Los Angeles.

1992: Battleship USS “Missouri”, on which the Japanese surrender took place, decommissioned.

2001: The Netherlands becomes the first country in the world to make same-sex marriage legal.

2002: The Netherlands legalizes euthanasia, becoming the first nation in the world to do so.

2004: Google introduces ‘Gmail’: the launch is met with skepticism, on account of the launch date. Five years later, the number of people using the e-mail service surpassed one billion.

2015: 56 people are killed, after the Russian trawler, “Dalniy Vostok”, sinks off the coast of the Kamchatka Peninsula.

[GordMay]

April 2

1453: Turkish forces, under Sultan Mehmed II, begin the siege of Constantinople (İstanbul), which falls May 29.

1513: Explorer Juan Ponce de León claims Florida, for Spain, as the first known European to reach Florida.

1725: Giacomo Casanova born.

1796: Haitian revolt leader, Toussaint L'Ouverture, takes command of French forces, at Santo Domingo.

1801: The British navy, led by Horatio Nelson, defeats the Danish, at the Battle of Copenhagen. It was the second of Horatio Nelson's great battles, and like the Battle of the Nile, also against an enemy at anchor.

1872: Samuel Morse died.

1912: Titanic undergoes sea trials, under its own power.
1912: Sun Yet Sen forms Guomindang Party, in China.

1917: US President Woodrow Wilson presents a declaration of war against Germany to Congress.

1921: Albert Einstein lectures, in New York City, on his new "Theory of Relativity".

1930: Ras Tafari Makonnen becomes Emperor Haile Selassie of Abyssinia (Ethiopia).

1932: Charles Lindbergh pays over $50,000 ransom for his kidnapped son.

1935: Scottish physicist, Robert Watson-Watt, receives British patents for RADAR.

1942: USS Hornet, with Jimmy Doolittle’s B-25, departs from San Francisco.

1979: The world’s first anthrax epidemic begins in Ekaterinburg, Russia. By the time it was finished, 62 people were dead. The town did contain a biological weapons plant, and in 1992 the cause was confirmed as starting at that plant.

1980: Microsoft Corporation announces the ‘Z80 SoftCard’, their first and (for many years) only hardware product, a microprocessor on a printed circuit board, that plugged into the Apple II personal computer. At one time, SoftCard brought in about half of Microsoft's total revenue (retailed for $349). It was discontinued in 1986.

1982: Argentina invades the British-occupied Falkland (Malvinas) Islands.

1987: IBM introduces PS/2 & OS/2.

2019: NASA states it wants to send astronauts to Mars by 2033, and land on the Moon again in 2024.

2020: Number of COVID-19 cases worldwide passes 1 million, with 1,002,159 cases, and 51,485 deaths reported, according to Johns Hopkins University.

[GordMay]

April 3

1043: Edward the Confessor, usually considered to be the last king of the House of Wessex, was crowned King of England.

1776: Congress authorizes privateers to attack British vessels.

1882: Bank robber/murderer, Jesse James, is shot in back, by fellow gang member Bob Ford, who betrayed James for [$10,000 ?] reward money.

1885: Gottlieb Daimler patents his four-stroke, single-cylinder engine design. In 1886, Carl Benz invents the three-wheeled Patent Motor Car, and independently, Gottlieb Daimler patents the four-wheeled Motor Carriage.

1862: Slavery is abolished in Washington, D.C.

1936: Bruno Hauptmann, convicted of kidnapping Charles Lindbergh’s son, executed.

1940: Soviet troops massacre about 22,000 Polish nationals. The Katyn massacre is considered the worst massacre of prisoners of war in history. The order to execute all captive members of the Polish Officer Corps was signed by Joseph Stalin.

1942: The Japanese begin their all-out assault, on the U.S. and Filipino troops at Bataan.

1981: The Osborne 1, the first successful portable computer, was unveiled at the West Coast Computer Faire, in San Francisco.

2016: Private papers [The “Panama Papers”], from a Panamanian law firm were made public, and revealed how wealthy clients concealed their wealth, and avoided paying taxes.

[GordMay]

April 4

0527: In Constantinople, Justin, seriously ill, crowns his nephew Justinian as his co-emperor.

1581: Francis Drake completes circumnavigation of the world. Queen Elizabeth I knights Drake, aboard “Golden Hind”, at Deptford.

1814: Napoleon abdicates, for the first time, in favour of his son.

1818: The United States flag is declared to have 13 red and white stripes and 20 stars.

1832: Charles Darwin, aboard the HMS “Beagle”, reaches Rio de Janeiro.

1906: Mount Vesuvius erupts, killing more than 100 people, and ejecting the most lava ever recorded from a Vesuvian eruption. Vesuvius has erupted about three dozen times, since 79 A.D., most recently from 1913-1944. The 1913-1944 eruption is thought to be the end of an eruptive cycle that began in 1631. It has not erupted since then, but Vesuvius is an active volcano, it will erupt again.

1915: American blues musician, ‘Muddy Waters’ [McKinley Morganfield] born.

1917: The U.S. Senate votes 90-6 to enter World War I on Allied side.

1929: Karl Benz dies.

1933: US Dirigible “Akron” crashes off coast of NJ, 73 die.

1947: Largest group of sunspots on record.
➥ 1947PASP...59..109H Page 109


1949: The North Atlantic Treaty Organization [NATO] treaty is signed.

1958: 1st march against nuclear weapons. 10,000 protesters arrive in Trafalgar Square, London, as part of the CND [Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament]. The protesters, including mothers pushing children in prams and singing peace songs, over the next four days, march over 52 miles, in rain and snow, from London to the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment, at Aldermaston. The march was held again in 1959, 1961 and 1962 when over 150,000 took part.

1964: The Beatles hold an unprecedented record of twelve positions, on Billboard Hot 100 singles chart, including: "Can't Buy Me Love", "Twist and Shout", "She Loves You", "I Want to Hold Your Hand", "Please Please Me", "I Saw Her Standing There", "You Can't Do That", "All My Loving", "Roll Over Beethoven", "From Me To You", "Do You Want To Know A Secret", & "Thank You Girl".

1968: Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. is assassinated by James Earl Ray, at the Lorraine Hotel, in Memphis, Tennessee. Riots break out, in over 100 cities in the United States. Ray received a 99-year prison sentence. He died in jail in 1998.

1969: Haskell Karp receives the 1st temporary artificial heart, implanted by surgeon Denton Cooley, at Texas Heart Institute, in Houston. The machine kept Karp alive for 65 hours. He died before a human heart could become available.

1973: The twin towers of New York’s ‘World Trade Center’, rising 1,350 feet above Manhattan, officially became the world's tallest buildings.

1975: Microsoft is founded, as a partnership between Bill Gates and Paul Allen, to develop and sell BASIC interpreters for the Altair 8800. When Gates and Allen sold their interpreter to MITS, who distributed it, Microsoft, then known as Micro-Soft, was born.

1979: Zulfikar Ali Bhutto is executed [hanging]. The former [4th] President of Pakistan had been deposed by a coup d'etat.

1994: Netscape Communications founded, as Mosaic Communications.

1999: Jack Ma founds Chinese internet company, Alibaba.

2017: Alibaba becomes the world's largest retailer, according to US Securities and Exchange Commission.

[GordMay]

April 5

0456: Saint Patrick returns to Ireland as a missionary bishop.

1588: English philosopher and political theorist, Thomas Hobbes, best known for his publications on individual security and the social contract, was born.

1614: Powhatan Indian, Pocahontas [Matoaka], marries English colonist, John Rolfe.

1621: The “Mayflower” departed for England, after having deposited 102 Pilgrims, at what became the American colony of Plymouth (Massachusetts).

1722: Dutch navigator, Jacob Roggeveen, discovers Easter Island / Rapa Nui, in the southeastern Pacific.

1762: British take Grenada, West Indies, from French.

1792: George Washington casts the first presidential veto, rejecting legislation concerned with congressional redistricting.

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

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

1932: Dominion of Newfoundland: 10,000 rioters seize the Colonial Building, leading to the end of self-government.

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

1951: Americans Julius and Ethel Rosenberg are sentenced to death, for espionage.

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.

1971: Fran Phipps is 1st woman to reach North Pole.

1971: Mount Etna erupts in Sicily.

1994: American grunge rocker, Kurt Cobain, leader of the band Nirvana, committed suicide.

2063: Earth's 1st contact with the extra-terrestrial Vulcan species, in the ‘Star Trek’ universe.

[GordMay]

April 6

46 BC: Julius Caesar defeats Caecilius Metellus Scipio and Marcus Porcius Cato (Cato the Younger), in the battle of Thapsus.

0402: Battle at Pollentia: Roman army, under Stilicho, beats Visigoten.

1199: Mortally wounded in battle, Richard I [‘the Lionheart’], died, at Châlus, in the duchy of Aquitaine.

1652: Cape Colony, the 1st European settlement in South Africa, established by Dutch East India Company, under Jan van Riebeeck.

1722: Peter the Great, Tsar of Russia, ends tax on men with beards.

1889: George Eastman begins selling his Kodak flexible rolled film, for the first time.

1896: The Modern Olympics begin, in Athens, 1,500 years after being banned by Roman Emperor Theodosius I. Eight nations participate.

1909: Americans Robert Peary and Matthew Henson, claim to become the first men to reach the North Pole, establishing 'Camp Jesup’, allegedly, within five miles of the pole.

1916: German parliament approves unrestricted submarine warfare.

1917: The United States declares war on Germany, and enters World War I on Allied side, three years after the conflict began.

1919: Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi orders a General Strike, in India.

1930: Hostess ‘Twinkies', invented, by bakery executive, James Dewar.

1938: 'Teflon' [tetrafluoroethylene resin] invented by Roy J. Plunkett, of DuPont.

1965: Intelsat 1 [‘Early Bird’], 1st commercial geosynchronous communications satellite, launched.

1980: ‘Post It’ Notes introduced, by 3M.

1992: Russian-born American author and biochemist, Isaac Asimov, died at age 72.
1992: Microsoft announced Windows 3.1, upgrading Windows 3.0.

1993: An explosion rocked a Russian nuclear weapons complex, in the Siberian town of Tomsk-7.

1994: Plane carrying Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana, and Burundian President Cyprien Ntaryamira, is shot down by surface-to-air missiles, abruptly ending peace negotiations, and sparking the Rwandan Genocide [between April and June, the Rwandan military, and Hutu civilians massacred nearly 1 Million Tutsis and moderate Hutus, in one of the worst cases of ‘ethnic cleansing’ ever seen]. Those responsible have never been identified.

2020: ‘Nadia’, a tiger at the Bronx Zoo (New York City), tests positive for COVID-19, 1st known case of human-to-cat transmission.
2020: Cyclone ‘Harold’ makes landfall in Vanuatu, leaving thousands of houses destroyed, and 2 dead.

[GordMay]

April 7

0030: Scholars' estimate for Jesus' crucifixion, by Roman troops in Jerusalem [or April 3].

0529: First draft of ‘Corpus Juris Civilis’ (fundamental work in jurisprudence), issued by Eastern Roman Emperor, Justinian I.

1521: Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan's fleet reaches Cebu.

1776: Captain John Barry, and the USS “Lexington” captures the HMS “Edwards”.

1789: The First U.S. Congress begins regular sessions, at Federal Hall in New York City.

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

1805: Lewis and Clark Expedition leaves Fort Maden, beginning their journey to the Pacific Ocean.

1827: English chemist John Walker invents wooden matches.

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 only federal politician.


1943: LSD was first produced, at Sandoz Laboratorie, in Basil, Switzerland, by Albert Hoffman.

1947: Henry Ford died, at age 83.

1964: IBM announces the release of its "System 360", mainframe computer architecture, launching its most successful computer system, of all time.

1966: US recovers a lost hydrogen bomb, from the Mediterranean sea floor.

1969: The Internet's symbolic birth date: publication of ‘RFC 1'. The Advanced Research Projects Agency [ARPA] awarded a contract to build a precursor of today's world wide web, to BBN Technologies.

1989: NY Supreme Court takes 'America's Cup' away from SD Yacht Club, for using a catamaran against NZ. Appeals court eventually overrules.
➥ https://nzhistory.govt.nz/culture/americas-cup


1990: An arson attack on the passenger ferry, "Scandinavian Star", kills 159. Insurance fraud is considered the most likely motive for the attack. According to a 2013 report, 9 crew members started the fire, and sabotaged the fire crew's attempts to extinguish the blaze.

[GordMay]

April 8

0217: Roman Emperor, Caracalla, is assassinated (and succeeded), by his Praetorian Guard prefect, Marcus Opellius Macrinus.

1783: Catherine II, of Russia, annexes the Crimea

1796: Carl Friedrich Gauss, German mathematician, proves the quadratic reciprocity law [the ability to determine the solvability of any quadratic equation in modular arithmetic].

1820: The famous ancient Greek statue, ‘Venus de Milo’, by the sculptor Alexandros of Antioch [2nd century BC], is discovered on the Aegean island of Milos.

1838: The “Great Western”, the earliest regular transatlantic steamer, embarked on its maiden voyage, from Bristol, England, to New York City.

1865: General Robert E. Lee's retreat is cut off, near Appomattox Court House.

1914: US & Colombia sign a treaty concerning Panama Canal Zone.

1938: Kofi Annan, Ghanaian statesman, and secretary-general of the United Nations, born.

1946: League of Nations assembles for the last time.

1947: Largest recorded sunspot ever observed, at 40 times the diameter of Earth.
➥ https://spaceweather.com/sunspots/history.html

1959: ‘COBOL’, one of the first modern programming languages is created. The Common Business-Oriented Language was primarily designed by a woman, Grace Hopper. Also known as Amazing Grace, she is regarded as one of the pioneers in the field.

1961: British liner "Dara", explodes in Persian Gulf, kills 236.

1973: Pablo Picasso, perhaps the most influential artist of the 20th century, died in Mougins, France.

1985: Amdahl releases ‘UTS/V’, 1st mainframe Unix.
1985: India files suit against Union Carbide, over Bhopal disaster.

1991: ‘Java’ Development Begins in Earnest. Sun's Java team moves from Sun Microsystems, to work in secret on its ‘Oak’ development project (later re-named Java).

1997: Microsoft releases ‘Internet Explorer 4' Beta.

2013: Margaret Thatcher, English politician, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, died.

[GordMay]

April 9

0715: Constantine dies in Rome, ending his reign as Catholic Pope.

1682: René-Robert Cavelier, sieur (lord) de La Salle, claimed the Mississippi River basin for France, naming it Louisiana.

1731: British Captain Robert Jenkins loses an ear to a band of Spanish brigands, starting a war between Britain and Spain: The War of Jenkins' Ear.

1770: Captain James Cook discovers Botany Bay on the Australian continent.

1865: General Robert E. Lee surrenders his 26,765 rebel forces [Army of Northern Virginia of the Confederate States of America] to Union Lieutenant-General Ulysses S. Grant, at Appomattox Courthouse, Va., effectively ending the American Civil War.

1869: Hudson Bay Company cedes its territory to Canada.

1917: The Battle of Arras begins, as Canadian troops begin a massive assault on Vimy Ridge.

1940: Germany invades Norway and Denmark; and Denmark surrenders, after a six-hour battle.

1943: ENIAC Contract Signed. The contract is signed between the University of Pennsylvania’s Moore School of Electrical Engineering, and the US Army, to build the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC), a machine capable of the then-remarkable speed of 5,000 additions per second. ENIAC was shrouded in wartime secrecy, since its main purpose was to compute "firing tables" for artillery shells. Before ENIAC, this was done by women (called "computers") working in large groups and using mechanical desktop calculators.

1967: 1st Boeing 737 (a 100 series) makes its maiden flight.

1969: 1st flight of Concorde 002 (Filton-Bristol).

1992: US Federal court finds Panamanian dictator, Manuel Noriega, guilty of 8 out of 10 drug and racketeering charges.

2003: Baghdad fell to U.S.-led forces, several weeks after the start of the Iraq War, a conflict begun to oust Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, because of his supposed possession of weapons of mass destruction.

[GordMay]

Addendum to April 9:

2021: Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, husband of Queen Elizabeth II, dies aged 99.

[GordMay]

April 10


0787: The church of St. Corneille, at Compiegne, installed an organ, at the request of Frankish King Pepin, in what is modern-day France. This is the first recorded mention of this musical instrument.

1790: The U.S. patent system is established.

1815: Mount Tambora, on the island of Sumbawa, Dutch East Indies [Indonesia], experiences a cataclysmic eruption, one of the most powerful in history, killing around 71,000 people, causing global volcanic winter.

1849: Safety pin patented by Walter Hunt; sold rights for $400.

1869: U.S. Congress increases number of Supreme Court judges, from 7 to 9.

1902: South African Boers accept British terms of surrender.

1912: The RMS “Titanic” begins her maiden voyage, from Southampton, to New York City, which will end in disaster 5 days out.

1938: Germany annexes Austria.

1961: The trial of Nazi leader, Adolf Eichmann, began in Jerusalem; eight months later it ended, with the only death sentence ever imposed, by an Israeli court.

1963: USS “Thresher”, a nuclear powered submarine, sinks 220 miles east of Boston, killing 129 men, including 17 civilians.

1968: Ferry “Wahine” sinks after running aground, in Wellington harbour, New Zealand, on route from Lyttelton; 51 killed.

1972: The development, production, and stockpiling of biological weapons were outlawed, by the ‘Biological Weapons Convention’, signed by more than 150 countries.

1984: Damaged “Solar Max” satellite snared, by “Challenger” shuttle.

1989: Intel corp announces shipment of ‘80-486' chip.

1991: Boat rams a tanker in Livorno Italy fog, killing about 138.

1991: Rare tropical storm develops in the Southern Hemisphere, near Angola; first to be documented by satellites.

1996: Fastest wind speed ever recorded (not a tornado) 408 km/h (220 kn; 253 mph; 113 m/s), during tropical cyclone “Olivia”, on Barrow Island, Australia.

2010: Polish Air Force ‘Tu-154M’ crashes near Smolensk, Russia, killing all 96 people on board, including President Lech Kaczyński, his wife, army chief, central bank governor, MPs, leading historians, and many top Polish government officials.

2012: Apple Inc claims a value of $600 billion, making it the largest company, by market capitalization, in the world.

2019: First-ever photo of a black hole announced, taken by ‘The Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration’, in 2017 in galaxy “M87", 6.5 billion times the mass of earth, 55 million light-years away.

[GordMay]

April 11

1471: ‘Wars of the Roses’: King Edward IV of England seizes London from Henry VI.

1713: Great Britain, Spain, the Netherlands, Prussia, Savoy, Portugal & France agree the ‘Treaty of Utrecht’, ending the ‘War of Spanish Succession’. France cedes Maritime provinces, in North America, to Britain.

1881: River ferry "Princess Victoria" sinks in Thames River, Ontario {Canada], 180 die.

1898: President McKinley asks for Spanish–American War declaration. “Remember the Maine! To Hell with Spain!”

1976: The ‘Apple' [retroactively designated 'I’] computer, designed and hand-built by Steve Wozniak, is released.
'Woz' describes it's creation ➥ https://youtu.be/Q3cpgwcQCYc

1986: Dodge Morgan sails “American Promise” into St. George's, Bermuda, completing solo nonstop around the world in 150 days, 1 hour, and 6 minutes, shattering the previous record, of 292 days, set by a British sailor, Chay Blyth, in 1971. Morgan first set sail on Oct. 14, 1985, from Portland, Me.; but he had to put in at Bermuda, when the sloop’s electronic steering system failed. It took several weeks of repairs, before he could restart his intended nonstop adventure. Morgan was the fourth person, and the first American, to sail solo around the globe with no stops.

2013: Two women are beheaded, for sorcery, in Bougainville, Papua New Guinea.

2019: ‘WikiLeaks’ founder, Julian Assange, is forcibly removed from the Ecuadorian embassy, in London, by police, and arrested on failure to appear in court on US extradition charges.

2020: Brazil is the 1st country, in the southern hemisphere, to report more than 1,000 deaths from COVID-19, with 1,056 deaths and 19,638 cases.

[GordMay]

On Saturday, April 11, 1970, Apollo 13 launched, from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla. It was NASA's seventh manned-mission, and the third launch set to land on the moon. James A. Lovell, John L. Swigert and Fred W. Haise were the three astronauts aboard the spacecraft.
Two days into its mission, an oxygen tank exploded, in the service module (SM).
There was a damaged wire inside the SM, so when the oxygen tank went through a routine stir, the part blew up. Both of the tanks of oxygen, within the SM, vented their contents into space. Without the oxygen, the tanks and the SM were rendered useless, and the module had to be shut down.
As soon as this explosion occurred, the mission changed from a lunar landing, to getting the astronauts home alive. The crew transferred to the lunar module (LM) and used it as a lifeboat.
The LM was designed to carry two people on the moon, for two days. However, Mission Control in Houston devised a plan so it could support all the astronauts for four days.
During those four days, the three men had limited power, which created a cold and wet environment. There was also very little drinkable water. Mission control designed other adaptations to ensure that the LM could safely carry the astronauts back to Earth.
The cause of the explosion is associated with the Teflon that was placed inside the oxygen tank. This was updated for Apollo 14.
On Friday, April 17, 1970, tens of millions of people tuned in to watch the LM as it splashed down in the south Pacific Ocean.

[GordMay]

April 12

1204: The Fourth Crusade occupies and plunders Constantinople.

1606: England adopts the Union Flag, replaced in 1801, by current Union Flag, the Union Jack.

1770: British parliament repeals the Townshend Revenue Acts, which had fueled opposition to British rule, in colonial America.

1782: The British navy wins a major naval engagement, against the colonists & allies, in the American Revolution, at the Battle of Saints, off Dominica. A British fleet, under Admiral George Rodney, defeats the French fleet, under Comte de Grasse, preventing a planned French and Spanish invasion of Jamaica.

1861: Fort Sumter is shelled by the Confederacy, starting America's Civil War.

1869: North Carolina legislature passes anti-Ku Klux Klan Law.

1911: Pierre Prier completes the first non-stop London-Paris flight, in three hours and 56 minutes.

1937: Sir Frank Whittle ground-tests the first jet engine designed to power an aircraft, at Rugby, England.

1945: U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt dies, at Warm Spring, Georgia. Harry S. Truman becomes 33rd U.S. President.

1954: Bill Haley and the Comets record "Rock Around Clock".
1954: Joe Turner releases "Shake, Rattle & Roll".

1955: Dr. Jonas Salk's discovery of a polio vaccine is announced, “safe & effective”.

1961: Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Alexeyevich Gagarin becomes first man in space, orbits the Earth, in “Vostok 1". The first human spaceflight took 108 minutes, from launch to landing.

1966: Major Storm at sea takes 8 lives, when the cruise ship “Michelangelo” was battered by 45 ft waves, during a severe north Atlantic storm.

1980: Terry Fox begins his "Marathon of Hope", at St. John's, Newfoundland.
1980: US Olympic Committee endorses a boycott of the Moscow Olympic games.

1981: The ‘HP-41' calculator is used on board NASA's first space shuttle flight [“Challenger”). The HP-41 allowed astronauts to calculate the exact angle at which they needed to re-enter the Earth's atmosphere.
1981: American Joe Louis, world heavyweight boxing champion from 1937 to 1949, died in Las Vegas, Nevada. The ‘Brown Bomber’ died of a heart attack, just hours after he had watched Larry Holmes defend his World Heavyweight Title.

1987: Texaco files for bankruptcy.

1988: Harvard University patents a genetically engineered mouse (1st for animal life).

1989: American boxer, Sugar Ray Robinson, a six-time world champion, died in California.

1994: Immigration Lawyers Laurence A. Canter & Martha S. Siegel, post the first commercial mass Usenet spam (“Green Card”). This came shortly after the National Science Foundation lifted its unofficial ban on commercial speech on the Internet.

2009: U.S. Navy Seals, aboard USS “Bainbridge” (DDG-96), rescue captain Richard Phillips, killing three pirates, and capturing a fourth.

2014: The new drug, ‘ABT-450', with a 90-95% success rate for treating Hepatitis C, is announced.