Today in History

Today in History

0425 Theodosius effectively founds a university in Constantinople.

1531 German Protestants form the League of Schmalkalden to resist the power of the emperor.

1700 The Pacific Island of New Britain is discovered.

1814 Napoleon’s Marshal Nicholas Oudinot is pushed back at Barsur-Aube by the Emperor’s allied enemies shortly before his abdication.

1827 The first Mardi-Gras celebration is held in New Orleans.

1864 The first Union prisoners arrive at Andersonville Prison in Georgia.

1865 Confederate raider William Quantrill and his bushwackers attack Hickman, Kentucky, shooting women and children.

1905 The Japanese push Russians back in Manchuria and cross the Sha River.

1908 The forty-sixth star is added to the U.S. flag, signifying Oklahoma’s admission to statehood.

1920 The United States rejects a Soviet peace offer as propaganda.

1925 Glacier Bay National Monument is dedicated in Alaska.

1933 The burning down of the Reichstag building in Berlin gives the Nazis the opportunity to suspend personal liberty with increased power.

1939 The Supreme Court outlaws sit-down strikes.

1942 British Commandos raid a German radar station at Bruneval on the French coast.

1953 F-84 Thunderjets raid North Korean base on Yalu River.

1962 South Vietnamese president Ngo Dinh Diem is unharmed as two planes bomb the presidential palace in Saigon.

1963 The Soviet Union says that 10,000 troops will remain in Cuba.

1969 Thousands of students protest President Richard Nixon’s arrival in Rome.

1973 U.S. Supreme Court rules that a Virginia pool club can’t bar residents because of color.

1988 Debi Thomas becomes the first African American to win a medal at the Winter Olympics.

1991 Coalition forces liberate Kuwait after seven months of occupation by the Iraqi army.

Born

1807 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, American poet.

1886 Hugo Black, U.S. Supreme Court justice.

1888 Lotte Lehmann, German opera singer.

1891 David Sarnoff, RCA board chairman and a pioneer of U.S. television

1897 Marian Anderson, singer.

1902 John Steinbeck, American novelist (The Grapes of Wrath, Of Mice and Men).

1904 James T. Farrell, author (Young Lonigan).

1910 Peter De Vries, writer, poetry editor (Poetry Magazine, The New Yorker).

1912 Lawrence Durrell, novelist (The Alexandria Quartet).

1917 John Connally, Texas Governor, wounded in the assassination of President John Kennedy.

1930 Joanne Woodward, actress (Rachel, Rachel, The Three Faces of Eve).

1932 Elizabeth Taylor, actress (Cleopatra, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?).

1934 Ralph Nader, consumer advocate.

History