April 8
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April 8
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April is:
Today is:
Born on this Day
1818: August Wilhelm von Hofmann, German chemist noted for his work on
formaldehyde and coal-tar products.
1889: Sir Adrian Boult, English conductor. In 1918 Gustav Holst asked
him to conduct the first performance of "The Planets."
1893: Actress Mary Pickford, born Canada as Gladys Smith. She was
an astute businesswoman, and formed the United Artists company 1919 with Charlie Chaplin,
D.W. Griffith and Douglas Fairbanks.
1918: Former first lady Betty (Elizabeth) Ford
1926: Comedian Shecky Greene
1938: Actress Connie Stevens ("Back to the Beach")
1940: Basketball Hall of Famer John Havlicek
1944: Actor John Schneider ("Dukes of Hazzard")
1946: Baseball Hall of Fame pitcher Jim ("Catfish") Hunter
1946: Actor Stuart Pankin ("Not Necessarily the News")
1963: Singer and songwriter Julian Lennon
1963: Rock singer-musician Donita Sparks (L7)
1965: Rapper Biz Markie
1966: Actress Robin Wright Penn
1968: Actress Patricia Arquette
1970: Rock singer Craig Honeycutt (Everything)
1971: Rock musician Darren Jessee (Ben Folds Five)
1984: Actor Taran Noah Smith ("Home Improvement")
0217: Caracalla (Marcus Aurelius Antonius), Roman emperor
noted for his brutality, was assassinated as he launched a second campaign against the
Parthians.
1513: Florida was discovered and claimed for Spain by Juan
Ponce de Leon.
1838: Isambard Kingdom Brunel's 236-foot steamship Great
Western sailed from Bristol, England, on her maiden voyage. It was the first to cross the
Atlantic regularly.
1904: The Anglo-French agreement known as the
"Entente Cordiale" was signed. It settled all global differences between
Britaand France, including disputes over Newfoundland, West Africa, Egypt and Morocco.
1913: The opening of China's first parliament took place
Peking.
1939: One day after invading Albania, Italian troops took
the capital, Tirana, and King Zog fled to Greece.
1953: Kenya, Jomo Kenyatta was convicted of involvement
with the Mau Mau insurrection and was sentenced with five others to seven years' hard
labor.
1973: Pablo Picasso, Spanish painter, sculptor and pioneer
of Cubism, died. Refusing to return to Spaduring the Franco regime, he spent most of his
life France. His most noted works were "Demoiselles d'Avignon" and
"Guernica."
1974: Henry "Hank" Aaron hit the 715th home run
of his career, breaking Babe Ruth's record. The home run was hit Atlanta against the Los
Angeles Dodgers.
1977: Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabib admitted he had
violated the country's currency laws; he later resigned.
1986: Actor Clint Eastwood was elected mayor of Carmel,
California.
1986: Jennifer Guinness of the well-known brewing family
was kidnapped Ireland for a 2 million pound ransom.
1989: The Soviet Union acknowledged that one of its
nuclear submarines had caught fire and sunk off Norway the day before. (The next day, the
Soviet government said 42 lives had been lost.)
1990: Ryan White, the teen-age AIDS patient whose battle
for acceptance gained national attention, died in Indianapolis at age 18.
1990: The cult series "Twin Peaks" premiered on
ABC TV.
1991: Secretary of State James A. Baker the Third toured refugee camps near the Iraqi border, praising relief efforts but saying "hope must be given to these people for a return to home."
1991: Jockey Willie Shoemaker was left paralyzed in an automobile accident.
1992: PLO leader Yasser Arafat survived a plane crash the
Sahara desert; the plane's three crew members were killed.
1994: Japanese Prime Minister Morihiro Hosokawa resigned
over a loan scandal.
1994: Kurt Cobain, singer and guitarist for the grunge
band Nirvana, was found dead in Seattle from an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound;
he was 27.
1994: South Africa's four key political leaders met at a
bush camp lion country for a peace summit aimed at stopping violence threatening free and
fair elections.
1995: Former secretary of defense Robert S. McNamara, in
an interview with AP Network News and "Newsweek" magazine to promote his
memoirs, called America's Vietnam War policy "terribly wrong."
1996: Yugoslavia and its former republic of Macedonia
signed a treaty to normalize relations.
1996: Stock prices plunged on Wall Street amid concerns over stronger-than-expected employment data. The Dow Jones industrial average fell 88.51 to end at 5594.37.
1998: The nation's major cigarette makers withdrew support
for a historic tobacco settlement, saying Congress had twisted their offer to help cut
teen smoking into a harsh attack on their industry and sharp tax increases for American
smokers.
1998: Thirty-six people were killed by tornadoes which
struck Alabama, Mississippi and Georgia.
1999: At a White House news conference, President Clinton
said NATO could still win in Kosovo by air power alone, and he expressed hope for an early
release of three American POW's; also at the session with reporters was visiting Chinese
Premier Zhu Rongji, who promised to cooperate in investigations of alleged nuclear-weapons
spying and illegal campaign contributions by Beijing.
2000: The Central Intelligence Agency confirmed that personnel action had been taken following the mistaken bombing of the Chinese embassy during the NATO war against Yugoslavia; one employee was reportedly fired.
2000: Actress Claire Trevor died in Newport Beach, California.
2001: The Dalai Lama wraps up a 10-day
visit to Taiwan during which he stresses that Taiwan's future should be
decided by the Taiwanese people. But he avoids directly addressing Taiwanese
and Tibetan independence.
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