April 7
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April 7
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April is:
Today is:
Born on this Day
1506: St. Francis Xavier
1770: English Lake Poet and philosopher William Wordsworth
was born. He said, "Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feeling: it takes
its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity."
1860: W.K. Kellogg, founded the cereal company.
1897: U.S. journalist and broadcaster Walter Winchell was
born in New York City. His newspaper columns and radio broadcasts containing news and
gossip in the 1930s, '40s, and '50s gave him much influence.
1908: Conductor Percy Faith
1915: Jazz Singer Billie Holiday (born Eleanora Fagan,
nicknamed "Lady Day") in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
1920: Sitar player Ravi Shankar
1928: Actor James Garner (Baumgardner)
1928: Movie director Alan J. Pakula
1931: Former Defense Department analyst Daniel Ellsberg,
who leaked the Pentagon Papers
1932: Country singer Cal Smith
1932: Satirist, Mark Russell
1933: Actor Wayne Rogers
1934: Actor Ian Richardson
1935: Media commentator Hodding Carter
1935: Country singer Bobby Bare
1938: Former California Governor Jerry Brown
1938: Jazz musician Freddie Hubbard
1939: Movie director Francis Ford Coppola
1939: Television personality Sir David Frost
1943: Drummer Spencer Dryden (Jefferson Airplane)
1946: Rock musician Bill Kreutzmann (The Grateful Dead)
1949: Singer John Oates
1951: Singer Janis Ian
1951: Country musician John Dittrich
1952: Rock musician Bruce Gary (The Knack)
1954: Actor Jackie Chan
1954: Football Hall-of-Famer Tony Dorsett
1964: Actor Russell Crowe
1964: Rhythm-and-blues singer Mark Kibble (Take 6)
1975: Rock singer Victoria Adams Beckham ("Posh Spice"
of the Spice Girls)
0030: By many scholars' reckoning, Jesus of Nazareth was
crucified by Roman troops in Jerusalem.
0451: Metz, France, plundered by Attila the Hun
1226: Death of St. Herman Joseph
1321: The Four Martyrs of Tana killed in Muslim India
1364: Deadline for David II, King of Scots, to persuade
Scotland to accept Edward III, King of England, as King of Scots
1381: Second treaty of Guerande between Yann IV of
Brittany and Charles VI of France
1498: Death of Charles VIII, King of France
1498: The Ordeal by Fire in Florence
1508: Death of St. Nilus of Sora
1521: Magellan lands at Cebu, Phillipines
1537: Furness Abbey surrenders to the King of England
1539: The Abbot of Glastonbury writes to Thomas Cromwell,
excusing himself from attending the House of Lords
1593: John Samuels, his wife, and daughter, burned as
witches
1614: Death of Domenikos Theotokopoulos, known as "El
Greco," painter
1628: Jonas Michaelius arrives in New Amsterdam as the
first Dutch Reformed Church minister in the colonies
1652: Foundation of the City of Capetown, South Africa
1724: Good Friday, Bach's "St. John Passion" was
first sung in Leipzig.
1787: 17-year-old Beethoven newly-arrived in Vienna played
piano for Mozart. "Keep your eyes on him," Mozart said. "Someday he'll give
the world something remarkable."
1842: Richard Wagner fled Paris. So ended a wholly
unsuccessful stay of nearly three years. Wagner left big debts behind him as usual.
1862: Union forces under the command of General Ulysses S.
Grant defeated the Confederates at Shiloh, Tennessee.
1888: P.F. Collier published a weekly periodical for the
first time. "Collier's" became the publication's name at a later date. The
magazine was popular for 69 years.
1927: An audience in New York saw an image of Commerce
Secretary Herbert Hoover in the first successful long-distance demonstration of
television.
1939: Italy invaded Albania, which offered only token
resistance. (Less than a week later, Italy annexed Albania.)
1940: Booker T. Washington became the first
African-American to be pictured on a U.S. postage stamp, a 10-cent stamp.
1945: During World War Two, American planes intercepted a
Japanese fleet that was headed for Okinawa on a suicide mission. The 72,000-ton battleship
Yamato, with its crew of 2,498, and four destroyers were sunk.
1947: Auto pioneer Henry Ford died in Dearborn, Michigan,
at age 83.
1948: The World Health Organization was founded.
1949: The Rodgers and Hammerstein musical "South
Pacific" opened on Broadway. The musical was based on the book tales of the South
Pacific by James Michener. It ran for 1,925 performances and starred Mary Martin and Ezio
Pinza.
1953: The UN General Assembly elected Dag Hammarskjold of
Sweden to be secretary-general. The vote was 57 to one.
1957: The last of New York's electric trolleys completed
its final run from Queens to Manhattan.
1963: Jack Nicklaus became the youngest golfer to win the
"Green Jacket" at the Master's Tournament." The "Golden Bear"
earned the win at one of golf's premier events at the age of 23.
1966: The United States recovered a hydrogen bomb it had
lost off the coast of Spain.
1969: The Supreme Court unanimously struck down laws
prohibiting private possession of obscene material.
1970: The Academy Award for best picture went to
"Midnight Cowboy." John Wayne was named best actor for "True Grit,"
and Maggie Smith won best actress for "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.""
1970: A U.S. court confirmed it had closed the
investigation of Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, over the car crash in which Mary Jo
Kopechne died at Cahappaquiddick in 1969.
1976: China's leadership deposed Deputy Prime Minister
Deng Xiaoping and appointed Hua Kuo-feng prime minister and first deputy chairman of the
Communist Party.
1977: The Toronto Blue Jays played their inaugural
regular-season game and the first American League game played outside the United States,
Toronto beat the Chicago White Sox 9-5 at Exhibition Stadium in Toronto.
1980: President Jimmy Carter broke off diplomatic
relations with Iran and ordered out all Iranian embassy staff because of the detention of
the U.S. embassy hostages in Tehran.
1983: Crewmen of the shuttle Challenger performed a
spacewalk, the first by U.S. astronauts in nine years.
1984: Former Sen. Frank Church of Idaho died in Bethesda,
Maryland, at age 59.
1984: The Census Bureau reported Los Angeles had overtaken
Chicago as the nation's "second city" in terms of population.
1985: Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev declared a
moratorium on deployment of intermediate-range nuclear missiles until November, a pledge
rejected by the Reagan administration as "not enough.""
1986: The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a criminal
defendant wrongly denied the right to cross-examine prosecution witnesses is not always
entitled to a new trial.
1987: Chicago Mayor Harold Washington handily won a second
term, quashing a challenge by archrival Edward Vrdolyak.
1988: Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev and Afghan leader
Najibullah met in the Soviet Central Asian city of Tashkent, after which they issued a
joint statement saying agreement was at hand on ending the civil war in Afghanistan and
withdrawing Soviet troops.
1989: One week after the Exxon Valdez oil spill disaster,
President Bush pledged federal assistance to help in the clean-up.
1989: A Soviet nuclear-powered submarine, the Komsomolets,
caught fire and sank in the Norwegian Sea, claiming 42 lives.
1990: Farm Aid IV was held in the Hoosier Dome. 45,000
people attended the 13-hour concert, which raised $1 million. Performers: Willie Nelson,
Neil Young, John Mellencamp and Elton John.
1990: Former national security adviser John M. Poindexter
was convicted of five counts at his Iran-Contra trial.
1990: The Scandinavian Star, a Bahamas-registered ferry
operated by Da No Line, was struck by an arson fire en route from Norway to Denmark; 158
people were killed.
1991: U.S. military planes began air-dropping supplies to
Kurdish refugees who were facing starvation and exposure in the snow-covered mountains of
northern Iraq. The U.S. warned Iraq not to interfere with the relief effort.
1992: Democrat Bill Clinton swept the New York, Kansas and
Wisconsin primaries.
1992: PLO chairman Yasser Arafat survived the
crash-landing of his plane in the Libyan desert; three crew members were killed.
1992: "The Sacramento Bee," "The New York
Times" and "Newsday" won two Pulitzer prizes each; playwright Robert
Schenkkan was honored for "The Kentucky Cycle," novelist Jane Smiley for "A
Thousand Acres."
1993: European warplanes began arriving in Italy in
preparation for enforcing a no-fly zone over Bosnia-Herzegovina.
1994: Civil war erupted in Rwanda, a day after a
mysterious plane crash claimed the lives of the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi. In the
months that followed, hundreds of thousands of minority Tutsi and Hutu intellectuals were
slaughtered.
1995: President Clinton threatened to veto a lengthy list
of bills passed by the Republican-controlled House if they were not modified in the
Senate.
1995: During a prime-time television address, House
Speaker Newt Gingrich declared the GOP's "Contract With America" was only a
beginning.
1996: Celebrating Easter Mass under a glorious spring sky,
Pope John Paul appealed for support for the "artisans" of peace in Bosnia,
Northern Ireland and the Holy Land.
1997: The Pulitzer Prize for fiction went to Steven
Millhauser for "Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer," but no award
was given for drama. "The Times-Picayune" of New Orleans won two journalism
Pulitzers, including the public service prize, for a series examining how overfishing and
pollution are devastating the oceans.
1998: Mary Bono, the widow of
entertainer-turned-politician Sonny Bono, won a special election to serve out the
remainder of her husband's congressional term.
1998: President Clinton held a town meeting in Kansas
City, Mo., on the future of Social Security.
1999: Yugoslav authorities sealed off Kosovo's main border
crossings, preventing ethnic Albanians from leaving as the wave of refugees approached the
half-million mark.
2000: Attorney General Janet Reno met in Washington with the father of Elian Gonzalez; Reno later told reporters that officials would arrange for Juan Miguel Gonzalez to reclaim his son, but she gave Elian's Miami relatives one more chance to drop their resistance and join in a peaceful transfer.
2001: Thousands of laid off workers
and citizens call for the resignation of Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit and
his government.
2001: Armed police break up protests in
several Turkish cities after the lira falls sharply and prices soar.
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