| On The Way To Today... April 19th |
EasyNews, UseNet made Ea .. |
| ::darkshadows:: (bat@cave.org) |
2009/04/19 20:08 |
Today In History
On The Way To Today... April 19th
1587 - English admiral Sir Francis Drake entered Cadiz harbor and sank
the Spanish fleet, an action he referred to "as singeing the king of
Spain's beard."
1775 - The first battle of the American Revolutionary War started when
British and American soldiers exchanged fire in Lexington and Concord
(Massachusetts). More than 650 British soldiers were sent to suppress
rebellious colonists who had taken up on arms against the Crown. This
was the first revolutionary battle in which British soldiers were
killed.
1824 - George Gordon Lord Byron, the talented English romantic poet
who penned the satirical masterpiece "Don Juan", died at age 36 in
Missolonghi, Greece. Byron's writings included long romances and
stories in verse. His many love affairs before and after his ill-fated
marriage to Anne Isabella Milbanke made him all the more celebrated.
1839 - The Treaty of London was signed, establishing recognition of
the Kingdom of Belgium by all the states of Europe.
1848 - The Associated Press, the worldwide news-gathering agency
dedicated to the ideals of objectivity and "truth in news," was
established.
1850 - The Clayton-Bulwer agreement was signed under which Britain and
the United States agreed not to obtain exclusive control of a proposed
Panama canal.
1853 - Russia claimed protectorate over Turkey in a prelude to the
Crimean War.
1892 - In the United States, the Duryea gasoline buggy was introduced.
1933 - President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued a proclamation removing
the United States from the gold standard.
1943 - Polish Jews rose up in the Warsaw ghetto in a failed rebellion
against the Nazis.
1945 - Rodgers and Hammerstein's musical-fantasy, Carousel, opened on
Broadway.
1951 - General Douglas MacArthur gave his "Old Soldiers" speech to the
United States Congress. The highlight of this address was MacArthur's
statement that "Old soldiers never die, they just fade away."
1951 - Shigeki Tanaka, a survivor of the atomic bomb dropped on
Hiroshima, Japan during World War II, won the Boston Marathon.
1960 - A student uprising toppled the authoritarian government of
South Korean President Syngman Rhee.
1966 - An advance party of 4,500 Australian troops left Sydney to
fight alongside United States troops in Vietnam.
1967 - The unmanned United States spacecraft Surveyor 3 landed on the
moon.
1971 - Russia launched its space station Salyut into earth's orbit.
1989 - Forty-seven crewmen died in an explosion on the United States
battleship USS Iowa during Atlantic maneuvers.
ground in the anticlimax of a 51-day standoff between the cult led by
David Koresh and United States federal agents from the Bureau of
Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms. In the fire, 86 people died including 17
children. Koresh and his followers refused to surrender themselves or
the children, instead choosing to exchanging gun fire. Nine members of
the cult did manage to escape.
1995 - The Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City,
Oklahoma was decimated by an estimated 5,000 pound bomb place in a
car. Charged with the murders of 169 people including 19 children and
a nurse injured in rescue efforts, in this the worst bombing on United
States soil, was Timothy McVeigh. On June 2, 1997, McVeigh was found
guilty on 11 different counts, including several first degree murder
charges for the deaths of federal officers. Terry L. Nicholls, an Army
friend of McVeigh, was also charged. In 2001, McVeigh was executed by
lethal injection for his crimes.
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