Friday, April 15

This Day In History

• 1817   The first American school for the deaf opened, in Hartford, Conn.
• 1850   The city of San Francisco was incorporated.
• 1861   President Abraham Lincoln declared a state of insurrection and called out Union troops, three days after the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter in South Carolina.
• 1865   Abraham Lincoln, 16th President of the United States of America, died at 7:22 a.m. Lincoln had been shot in the back of the head the previous evening while attending a performance of "Our American Cousin" at Ford?s Theatre in Washington, D.C. The assassin, John Wilkes Booth, escaped, only to be hunted down and shot to death. Lincoln was carried to a boarding house across the street from the theatre. He never regained consciousness.
• 1865   Andrew Johnson became the 17th president of the United States after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.
• 1912   The "unsinkable" luxury liner, "Titanic", sank at 2:27a.m. The largest passenger vessel in the world went under off the coast of Newfoundland two and one-half hours after striking an iceberg on its maiden voyage from Southampton, England to New York City. A young David Sarnoff, later of RCA and NBC, relayed telegraph messages to advise relatives on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean of the 700+ survivors. 1,517 lives were lost at sea. Many movies and documentaries about the monumental disaster have been filmed over the years. However, none had the exacting data gleaned by scientists from the 1986 expedition aboard "Atlantis II". Dr. Robert Ballard headed a crew and a robot named Jason in a descent to the deck of the "Titanic" aboard "Alvin", a submersible craft. They returned with information and photos that challenged and verified stories from the past. After years of studying the facts, the 1997 Academy Award-winning film, "Titanic", recreated the ship to the tiniest detail including the design on the elegant china. Although the film?s love story is fictitious, the true tragedy of the Titanic can now be seen by the world some eight decades later.
• 1923   Insulin became available for general use on this day. It was first discovered in 1922. Today, insulin is used daily in the treatment of diabetes. It is extracted from the pancreas of sheep, oxen and by other means, including synthesization in the laboratory. Insulin, a natural and vital hormone for carbohydrate metabolism in the body, is manufactured by the pancreas. An overabundance of insulin causes insulin shock and leads to a variety of symptoms, including coma.
• 1945   British and Canadian troops liberated the Nazi concentration camp Bergen-Belsen.
• 1947   Jackie Robinson became baseball's first black major-league player when he debuted with the Brooklyn Dodgers.
• 1955   This is the anniversary of McDonald's. Ray Kroc opened the first McDonald's -- in Des Plaines, IL.
• 1959   Cuban leader Fidel Castro arrived in Washington, D.C., to begin a goodwill tour of the United States.
• 1980   Existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre died in Paris at age 74.
• 1986   The United States launched an air raid against Libya in response to the bombing of a discotheque in Berlin on April 5; Libya said 37 people, mostly civilians, were killed.
• 1989   Students in Beijing launched a series of pro-democracy protests upon the death of former Communist Party leader Hu Yaobang.
• 1990   Actress Greta Garbo died at age 84.
• 1997   Jackie Robinson's No. 42 was retired 50 years after he became the first black player in major league baseball.
• 1998   Pol Pot, leader of the Khmer Rouge regime that killed an estimated 1.7 million Cambodians in the 1970s, died at age 73.
• 1999   NATO acknowledged mistakenly bombing a convoy of ethnic Albanian refugees under Serb escort in Kosovo. Yugoslav officials said 75 people died and more than two dozen were injured.
• 2000   Cal Ripken Jr. of the Baltimore Orioles became the 24th major league player to reach 3,000 hits.
• 2001   Punk rock musician Joey Ramone died in New York at age 49.
• 2002   Retired Supreme Court Justice Byron R. White died at age 84.
• 2003   Looters and arsonists ransacked and gutted Iraq's National Library, as well as Iraq's principal Islamic library.
• 2003   Umpire Laz Diaz was attacked by a fan during a baseball game between the Kansas City Royals and Chicago White Sox; the fan was later sentenced to six months in jail.

Happy Birthday To

• 1452   Leonardo da Vinci (artist: Mona Lisa, The Last Supper, The Virgin of the Rocks, The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne; died May 2, 1519)
• 1933   Elizabeth Montgomery (actress: Bewitched, Robert Montgomery Presents; died May 18, 1995)
• 1933   Roy Clark (musician: guitar, banjo; CMA Entertainer of the Year [1973], Comedian of the Year [1970, 1971, 1972], co-host: Hee Haw; country singer: Tips of My Fingers, Through the Eyes of a Fool, Yesterday, When I Was Young, Come and Live with Me, Somewhere Between Love and Tomorrow, Thank God and Greyhound [You?re Gone])
• 1937   Bob Luman (singer: Let?s Think About Living, Every Day I Have to Cry Some, The Pay Phone, Proud of You Baby; died Dec 27, 1978)