April 28
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April 28
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April is:
Today is:
Born on this Day
1442: Edward IV, King of England
1758: The fifth president of the United States, James Monroe, was born
in Westmoreland County, Virginia.
19??: Dalton Roraback (Grammatrain)
19??: Isaac Mutebi (Limit X)
1921: Syndicated columnist Rowland Evans
1926: Novelist Harper Lee ("To Kill a Mockingbird")
1930: Former Secretary of State James Baker III
1933: Actress Carolyn Jones
1937: Iraqi President Saddam Hussein
1937: Actor Jack Nicholson
1938: Actress Madge Sinclair
1941: Actress-singer Ann-Margret (Olsson)
1945: Rock musician John Wolters (Dr. Hook)
1948: Actress Marcia Strassman
1949: Actor Bruno Kirby
1950: "Tonight Show" host Jay Leno
1953: Actress Mary McDonnell
1953: Rock singer-musician Kim Gordon (Sonic Youth)
1966: Rapper Too Short
1966: Pro golfer John Daly
1971: Actress Simbi Khali ("3rd Rock from the Sun")
1971: Actor Chris Young
1973: Rapper Big Gipp (Goodie Mob)
1976: Actress Melissa Joan Hart ("Sabrina the Teenage Witch")
1978: Actor Nate Richert ("Sabrina the Teenage Witch")
1180: Marriage of Philip II, King of France, to Isabella
of Hainaut
1197: Death of Rhys ap Gruffydd, King of South Wales
1220: Construction of Salisbury Cathedral begins
1282: The Sicilian uprising reaches Messina
1373: Yann IV of Brittany flees to England
1376: The "Good Parliament" convenes
1462: Pope Pius II issues a Bull protecting the ruins of
Rome
1521: Cortes lays siege to Tenochtitlan
1559: Elizabeth's "Act of Uniformity" is passed
by Parliament
1635: Virginia Gov. John Harvey, accused of treason, is
removed from office
1788: Maryland ratified the Constitution, becoming the
seventh state of the Union.
1789: There was a mutiny on the "Bounty" as the
crew of the British ship set Captain William Bligh and 18 sailors adrift in a launch in
the South Pacific.
1817: Britain and the United States signed the Rush-Bagot
Treaty, in which they agreed not to have guns or ships of war on the frontier waters of
the Great Lakes.
1865: Giuseppi Verdi wrote a letter protesting critical
reviews of his opera "Macbeth."
1865: Meyerbeer's "L'Africaine" premiered in
Paris. It was about the explorer Vasco da Gama.
1880: Max Kalbeck, in the German Times of Vienna declared
that Wagner was "the Antichrist incarnate in art."
1896: The Adressograph was patented by J.S. Duncan of
Sioux City, Iowa.
1919: The first free-fall parachute jump was made by
Leslie Ervin, who broke his ankle on landing. Until then, it was believed people falling
"free" would become unconscious, unable to pull the ripcord.
1924: The Times of London compared Ravel's music to a
pgymy's work: "clever but very small."
1932: A vaccine against yellow fever was announced.
1937: The first animated-cartoon electric sign was
displayed on a building on Broadway in New York City. The sign was the creation of Douglas
Leight. The sign consisted of several thousand light bulbs.
1940: Glenn Miller and his Orchestra recorded
"Pennsylvania 6-5000" for RCA Victor.
1942: Pollster George Gallup said most Americans preferred
to call the ongoing global conflict "World War II" or "The Second World
War" (other suggestions had included "Survival War" or "War of World
Freedom.)
1944: Exercise "Tiger" ended with 750 U.S.
soldiers dead in a D-Day rehearsal after their convoy ships were attacked by German
torpedo boats off Slapton Sands, on the southwest coast of England.
1945: Italian dictator Benito Mussolini and his mistress,
Clara Petacci, were executed by Italian partisans as they attempted to flee the country.
1947: A six-man expedition sailed from Peru aboard a balsa
wood raft named the "Kon-Tiki" on a 101-day journey that took them across the
Pacific Ocean to Polynesia.
1952: War with Japan officially ended as a treaty that had
been signed by the United States and 47 other nations took effect.
1952: Dwight D. Eisenhower was relieved, at his own
request, of the post of Supreme Allied Commander Europe and replaced by General Matthew
Ridgway.
1958: Vice President Nixon and his wife, Pat, began a
goodwill tour of Latin America.
1959: Arthur Godfrey was seen for the last the last time
in the final broadcast of "Arthur Godfrey and His Friends" on CBS-TV. The show
had been part of the CBS lineup for 10 years.
1967: Heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali refused to
be inducted into the Army, the same day General William C. Westmoreland told Congress the
US "would prevail in Vietnam."
1968: The musical "Hair" opened on Broadway at
the Biltmore Theater for over 1,700 performances.
1969: French President Charles de Gaulle resigned his
office after voters rejected major government reforms in a referendum.
1975: The last American civilians were evacuated from
South Vietnam as North Vietnamese forces tightened their noose around Saigon.
1977: Andreas Baader and other members of the
Baader-Meinhoff group were jailed for life after a trial lasting nearly two years in
Stuttgart, Germany.
1980: President Carter accepted the resignation of
Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, who had opposed the failed rescue mission aimed at freeing
American hostages in Iran.
1983: President Reagan named former Sen. Richard Stone
special envoy to Central America, despite the Florida Democrat's recent stint as a
lobbyist for Guatemala.
1984: President Reagan, on a state visit to China, gave an
interview to Chinese television, which again censored his criticism of the Soviet Union as
well as his praise for freedom of thought and speech.
1985: Several thousand people attended a ceremony marking
the 40th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi concentration camp Dachau, near Munich.
1985: New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner fired
Yogi Berra as manager and reinstated Billy Martin -- again. It was the 13th managerial
change in 11 years for the Yankees.
1986: The Soviet Union announced the Chernobyl nuclear
reactor fire had killed two people, with 197 hospitalized. Nine months later, it reported
31 had died and 231 suffered radiation sickness.
1987: Contra rebels in Nicaragua killed Benjamin Ernest
Linder, an American engineer working on a hydroelectric project for the Sandinista
government.
1987: For the first time, a compact disc of an album was
released before its vinyl counterpart. "The Art of Excellence" by Tony Bennett,
his first recorded work in a decade, went on sale.
1988: The winless Baltimore Orioles set an American League
record by losing their 21st straight game, 4-2, to the Minnesota Twins.
1988: A flight attendant was killed and 61 persons injured
when part of the roof of an Aloha Airlines Boeing 737 peeled back during a flight from
Hilo (HEE'-loh) to Honolulu.
1989: President Bush announced the United States and Japan
had concluded a deal on joint development of a new Japanese jet fighter, the FSX, despite
concerns that U.S. technology secrets would be given away.
1989: Roy Medvedev, the Soviet historian persecuted for
exposing Joseph Stalin's crimes in his study "Let History Judge," was
re-admitted to the Communist Party after 20 years.
1989: Iran protested against the exhibition and sale of
the novel "The Satanic Verses" by Salman Rushdie at the Geneva international
book fair.
1990: Anti-abortion demonstrators marched in Washington,
D.C.; authorities put the number of protesters at 200,000, but organizers claimed a
turnout of about 700,000.
1990: The musical "A Chorus Line," the
longest-running show in Broadway history at that time, closed after 6,137 Broadway
performances, a Pulitzer Prize and nine Tony awards. It had opened on Broadway in July
1975.
1991: The space shuttle Discovery blasted off with seven
astronauts aboard on a "Star Wars" research mission.
1992: President Bush and Bill Clinton won the Pennsylvania
presidential primary.
1992: The Agriculture Department unveiled its
pyramid-shaped recommended-diet chart that had cost nearly $1 million to develop.
1992: The body of Grand Duke Vladimir Kirillovich Romanov,
heir to the vacant Russian throne, was returned to St. Petersburg to be buried in the city
of his Tsar ancestors. He died in Miami on April 21.
1992: The Afghan government formally ceded power to
triumphant Islamic guerrillas in Kabul three days after Mujahideen forced entered the
capital, ending 14 years of armed resistance and civil war.
1993: The first "Take Our Daughters to Work
Day," promoted by the New York-based Ms. Foundation, was held in an attempt to boost
the self-esteem of girls by having them visit a parent's place of work.
1994: Former CIA official Aldrich Ames, who had betrayed
U.S. secrets to the Soviet Union and then Russia, pleaded guilty in Alexandria, Virginia,
to espionage and tax evasion charges, and was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
1995: In Taegu, South Korea, a gas line exploded in the
middle of an intersection crowded with morning traffic, killing 101 people and injuring
about 125 others.
1996: President Clinton gave four and a-half hours of
videotaped testimony as a defense witness in the criminal trial of his former Whitewater
business partners.
1996: A man armed with a semiautomatic rifle opened fire
on tourists on the Australian island of Tasmania, killing 35 people; he was captured by
police after a 12-hour standoff at a guest cottage.
1997: President Clinton and three of his predecessors --
George Bush, Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford -- began drafting a national army of community
service volunteers during the Presidents' Summit for America's Future in Philadelphia.
1998: In a breakthrough for the government's tobacco
investigation cigarette maker Liggett and Myers agreed to tell prosecutors whether the
industry had hidden evidence of health damage from smoking.
1998: The Senate opened a new round of hearings on alleged
abuse and mismanagement at the Internal Revenue Service.
1999: In a sharp repudiation of President Clinton's
policies, the House rejected, on a tie vote of 213-213, a measure expressing support for
NATO's five-week-old air campaign against Yugoslavia; the House also voted 249-180 to
limit the president's authority to use ground forces in Yugoslavia.
1999: Actor Rory Calhoun died in Burbank, Calif., at age
76.
2000: Five people, apparently targeted because of their race or ethnicity, were killed in a shooting rampage in suburban Pittsburgh; a suspect, Richard Scott Baumhammers, was arrested.
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