April 29
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April 29
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April is:
Today is:
Born on this Day
1769: The first Duke of Wellington, victor of the Battle of Waterloo,
was born in Dublin as Arthur Wellesley.
1818: Alexander II, Tsar of Russia, born; he emancipated the serfs in
1861 but severe repression of political opposition led to his assassination in 1881.
1830: Adolph Sutro, SF mayor, built Cliff House, railways, tunnels.
1863: Publisher William Randolph Hearst. The American newspaper
publisher who built up the nation's largest newspaper chain and whose methods profoundly
influenced American journalism. He developed a sensational style of journalism featuring
banner headlines and lavish illustrations.
1879: The British conductor Thomas Beecham was born, the heir to the
Beecham's liver pill fortune. Beecham was so rich he more or less bought an orchestra to
learn to conduct. His fame is partly the result of the accident of his living in one of
the recording capitals of the world. He founded the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in 1947
and did much to promote the works of Delius, Sibelius and Richard Strauss.
1895: Malcolm Sargent, the British conductor, who had the misfortune to
spend most of his career in Beecham's shadow, was born. He was in charge of the Liverpool
Philharmonic Orchestra (1942-1948) and of the BBC Symphony Orchestra (1950-1957).
1899: Band leader and composer Duke Ellington (Edward Kennedy Ellington)
born in Washington, DC. He was one of the most influential forces in jazz history,
producing about 2,000 works.
1901: Japanese emperor Hirohito 1901: In 1946, with Japan under American
occupation, Hirohito renounced his divinity and most of his powers.
1907: Movie director Fred Zinnemann, director of such films as
"High Noon" and "From Here to Eternity."
1909: Actor Tom Ewell
1916: Singer Don Mills (The Mills Brothers)
1919: Actress Celeste Holm
1925: Musician Danny Davis (The Nashville Brass)
1928: Rhythm-and-blues singer Carl Gardner (The Coasters)
1931: Singer-musician Lonnie Donegan
1933: Poet Rod McKuen
1933: Actor Keith Baxter
1934: Bluesman Otis Rush
1936: Symphony conductor Zubin Mehta
1936: Actor Lane Smith.
1943: Country singer Duane Allen (The Oak Ridge Boys)
1947: Singer Tommy James
1947: Middle distance runner Jim Ryun
1954: Comedian Jerry Seinfeld
1955: Actress Kate Mulgrew
1957: Actress Michelle Pfeiffer
1957: Actor Daniel Day-Lewis
1958: Actress Eve Plumb ("The Brady Bunch")
1960: Rock musician Phil King (Lush)
1963: Country singer Stephanie Bentley
1968: Singer Carnie Wilson (Wilson Phillips)
1970: Actress Uma Thurman
1970: Tennis player Andre Agassi
1970: Rapper Master P
1971: Mark Nash (PFR)
1972: Country singer James Bonamy
1973: Rock musician Mike Hogan (The Cranberries)
1984: Actor Zane Carney ("Dave's World")
0998: Otto II, Holy Roman Emperor, takes the
Palace of St. Angelo, Italy
1109: Death of St. Hugh of Cluny
1111: Death of St. Robert of Molesme
1187: King Guy of Jerusalem sends an embassy
to Count Raymond
1289: Tripoli taken by Quala'un, Sultan of
Egypt
1380: Death of St. Catherine of Siena
1429: Joan of Arc entered the besieged city of
Orleans to lead a victory over the English.
1535: John Houghton, Prior, executed for
refusing to recognize Henry VIII
1553: Flemish woman introduces practice of
starching linen into England
1624: Cardinal Richelieu appointed Chief
Minister of the Royal Council of France
1628: Sweden and Denmark signed a defense
treaty against the Duke of Wallenstein, bringing Sweden into the Thirty Year
War.
1706: Electors of Bavaria and Cologne were
outlawed by the Holy Roman Empire.
1781: The French fleet under Admiral Suffren
prevented Britain from seizing the Cape of Good Hope.
1813: A patent for rubber was awarded to J.F.
Hummel of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
1826: A liberal constitution was promulgated
in Portugal for a hereditary monarchy.
1848: Pope Pius IX dissociated himself from
the Italian national movement.
1859: Austrian forces crossed the Sardinian
front.
1861: Maryland's House of Delegates voted
against seceding from the Union.
1861: Maryland's House of Delegates voted
against seceding from the Union.
1862: New Orleans fell to Union forces during
the Civil War.
1864: Theta Xi, a professional fraternity, was
founded in Troy, New York.
1885: Women were admitted for the first time
to examinations at England's Oxford University.
1894: Several hundred unemployed men known as
"Coxey's Army" swarmed into Washington to ask Congress for help.
1913: Swedish-born engineer Gideon Sundback of
Hoboken, New Jersey, patented the improved version of the zipper; naming it
the "separable fastener."
1916: The Easter Rising in Dublin collapsed as
Irish nationalists surrendered to British authorities.
1916: After a siege of 143 days, the British
surrendered Kut-el-Amara to the Turks.
1918: Germany's main offensive on the Western
Front in World War I ended.
1927: Construction of the "Spirit of St.
Louis" was completed. B.F. Mahoney was the 'mystery man' behind the
Ryan company that built Lindbergh's plane.
1928: A British ultimatum forced Egypt to
provide freedom of public meetings.
1941: The Boston Bees agreed to rename the
National League team, The Braves, the name they used prior to 1935.
1942: The Japanese army captured the town of
Lashio, cutting off the Burma Road between China and India.
1944: U.S. forces attacked Truk in the
Caroline Islands, dropping over 800 tons of bombs.
1945: American troops liberated 32,000
prisoners from the Dachau concentration camp near Munich.
1946: 28 former Japanese leaders were indicted
as war criminals.
1946: Anglo-U.S. committee advised against the
partition of Palestine.
1954: Ernest Borgnine made his network
television debut in "Night Visitor" on Ford Theatre on NBC-TV.
1961: ABC-TV's "Wide World of
Sports" made its debut. The show, featuring Jim McKay as host, along
with Howard Cosell, Frank Gifford, Al Michaels, Jack Whitaker and Heywood
Hale Brun and others, was not an immediate hit.
1972: In Burundi, the deposed King Ntare V was
killed in an abortive coup.
1974: President Nixon announced he was
releasing edited transcripts of some secretly made White House tape
recordings related to the Watergate scandal.
1979: Jaime Roldos of the Concentration of
Popular Forces party was elected president of Ecuador.
1980: Sir Alfred Hitchcock, British-born film
director best known for his suspense thrillers, notably ``Psycho,'' died.
1981: Truck driver Peter Sutcliffe admitted in
a London court to being the "Yorkshire Ripper," the killer of 13
women in northern England during a five-year period.
1981: In a whites-only election, the National
Party was returned to power in South Africa but with a reduced majority.
1983: Harold Washington was sworn in as the
first black mayor of Chicago.
1984: President Reagan and his wife, Nancy,
flew 600 miles from Beijing to central China, where they saw farms, peasant
villages and an archeological site.
1985: The space shuttle "Challenger"
lifted off with seven astronauts and a "mini-zoo" of monkeys and
rats aboard.
1986: The Soviet Union appealed to the West
for help in fighting a reactor fire at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant
that had sent a radioactive cloud across northeastern Europe.
1987: Ronnie DeSillers, a seven-year-old liver
transplant recipient whose story had prompted thousands of Americans,
including President Reagan, to lend support, died at a Pittsburgh hospital
while awaiting a fourth transplant.
1988: The first condor conceived in captivity
was born at San Diego Wild Animal Park.
1988: McDonald's announced it would open its
first restaurants in Moscow.
1989: In a sign that student demonstrators in
Beijing had gained influence, China's government conducted informal talks
with leaders of the democracy protests, and then televised the discussions.
1989: 14 Liverpool football supporters were
sentenced to jail terms for their part in the 1985 Heysel stadium tragedy in
Belgium.
1990: Wrecking cranes began tearing down the
section of the Berlin Wall surrounding the Brandenburg Gate, the wall's most
famous section.
1990: The space shuttle Discovery landed
safely at Edwards Air Force Base in California after a mission which
included the deployment of the Hubble Space Telescope.
1991: More than 100 people were killed when an
earthquake measuring 7.0 on the Richter scale rocked Soviet Georgia,
destroying hospitals, schools, factories and 17,000 homes.
1991: U.S. troops continued airlifting Iraqi
refugees from a camp in southern Iraq to Saudi Arabia.
1992: Rioting erupted in Los Angeles after a
jury in Simi Valley, California, acquitted 4 white policemen of nearly all
charges in the beating of black motorist Rodney King. A total of 54 people
died in the 3 days of unrest.
1992: Exxon executive Sidney Reso was
kidnapped outside his Morris Township, New Jersey, home by Arthur Seale, a
former Exxon security official, and Seale's wife, Irene; Reso died in
captivity.
1992: Deadly rioting that claimed 54 lives and
caused $1 billion in damage erupted in Los Angeles after a jury in Simi
Valley acquitted four Los Angeles police officers of almost all state
charges in the videotaped beating of Rodney King.
1993: Alfred Brendel gave a recital in
Chicago. It's an all-Beethoven, all-sonata program... five sonatas mostly
from the middle years, including the "Pastoral."
1993: Britain's Queen Elizabeth the Second
announced that for the first time, Buckingham Palace would be opened to
tourists to help raise money for repairs at fire-damaged Windsor Castle.
1993: In Costa Rica, 18 Supreme Court justices
were freed after being held captive by gunmen for three days.
1994: Hundreds of thousands of refugees
fleeing the terror of ethnic massacres in Rwanda were pouring into Tanzania.
1994: Israel and the PLO signed an agreement
in Paris granting Palestinians broad authority to set taxes, control trade
and regulate banks under self-rule in the Gaza Strip and Jericho.
1995: Rescue workers in Oklahoma City
continued the grim task of searching for bodies and pulling debris from the
bombed-out Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, where the remains of more than
120 of the 168 victims had been removed.
1996: Former CIA Director William Colby was
missing and presumed drowned by authorities in Maryland after an apparent
boating accident; his body was later recovered.
1997: Staff Sergeant Delmar Simpson, a drill
instructor at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland, was convicted of raping
six female trainees. (He was sentenced to 25 years in prison and
dishonorably discharged.)
1997: A worldwide treaty to ban chemical
weapons went into effect.
1997: Astronaut Jerry Linenger and cosmonaut
Vasily Tsibliyev went on the first US-Russian space walk.
1997: Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper
columnist Mike Royko died in Chicago at age 64.
1998: The United States, Canada, and Mexico
agreed to eliminate tariffs on items accounting for $1 billion in trade at a
meeting in Paris of the North American Free Trade Agreement.
1998: Israelis began marking the 50th
anniversary of the founding of their country (although, according to the
Western calendar, the anniversary fell on May 14th).
1999: Yugoslavia filed World Court cases
against 10 countries, including the United States, claiming their bombing
campaign breached international law.
1999: The Rev. Jesse Jackson arrived in
Belgrade on a mission to win freedom for three American prisoners of war
held by Yugoslavia.
2000: Tens of thousands of angry Cuban-Americans marched peacefully through Miami's Little Havana, protesting the
gruesome raid in which armed federal agents yanked six-year-old Elian Gonzalez from the home of relatives.
2000: Lennox Lewis knocked out Michael Grant in the second round at Madison Square Garden in New York to retain his WBC and IBF heavyweight titles.
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