Friday, April 29

This Day In History

• 1429   Joan of Arc entered the besieged city of Orleans to lead a victory over the English.
• 1861   Maryland's House of Delegates voted against seceding from the Union.
• 1862   New Orleans fell to Union forces during the Civil War.
• 1879   Electric arc lights were used for the first time -- in Cleveland, OH.
• 1899   Jazz legend Duke Ellington was born in Washington D.C.
• 1916   The Easter uprising in Dublin collapsed as Irish nationalists surrendered to British authorities.
• 1945   American soldiers liberated the Dachau concentration camp in Germany.
• 1945   In a Berlin bunker, Adolf Hitler married Eva Braun. The couple killed themselves the next day.
• 1946   Twenty-eight former Japanese leaders were indicted as war criminals.
• 1959   UNIVAC, the electronic computer that was the size of a house, actually picked four out of six winners at Churchill Downs in Louisville, KY. The electronic brain set a record for right choices in horse races. Of course, the winners all paid 2-1 or even odds, so it didn?t win much. But, most of us don?t...
• 1974   President Richard Nixon announced he was releasing edited transcripts of secretly made White House tape recordings related to the Watergate scandal.
• 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.
• 1983   Harold Washington was sworn in as the first black mayor of Chicago.
• 1996   Former CIA Director William Colby was missing and presumed drowned after an apparent boating accident in Maryland.
• 1997   A worldwide treaty to ban chemical weapons went into effect.
• 1997   Staff Sgt. Delmar Simpson, a drill instructor at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland, was convicted of raping six female trainees.
• 1997   Newspaper columnist Mike Royko died in Chicago at age 64.
• 1997   Astronaut Jerry Linenger and cosmonaut Vasily Tsibliyev went on the first U.S.-Russian space walk.
• 2002   A year after the loss of a seat it had held for over 50 years, the United States won election to the U.N. Human Rights Commission.
• 2003   The Palestinian parliament approved Mahmoud Abbas as prime minister, clearing the final obstacle to the launch of a U.S.-backed ''road map'' to peace.

Happy Birthday To

• 1863   William Randolph Hearst (publisher of U.S. newspapers and magazines; influenced the establishment of comic strips; built San Simeon estate; subject of biography, Citizen Kane; grandfather of Patricia Hearst; died Aug 14, 1951)
• 1912   Richard Carlson (actor: I Led Three Lives, MacKenzie's Raiders, Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Doomsday Flight, Tormented; died Nov 24, 1977)
• 1951   Dale Earnhardt (NASCAR auto racer: champ: Winston Cup [7 times], Daytona [34 times], 76 career victories; killed in crash in Daytona 500 Feb 18, 2001)
• 1954   Jerry Seinfeld (Emmy Award-winning producer: Seinfeld [1992-1993]; comedian, actor)
• 1958   Michelle Pfeiffer (actress: Dangerous Liaisons, Batman Returns, The Fabulous Baker Boys, Grease 2, Ladyhawke, Scarface, The Witches of Eastwicke, The Age of Innocence)
• 1970   Andre Agassi (tennis champion: Wimbledon [1992], U.S. Open [1994])
• 1970   Uma (Karuna) Thurman (actress: The Truth about Cats and Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Mad Dog and Glory, Final Analysis, Robin Hood, Henry and June, Dangerous Liaisons, Kiss Daddy Goodnight)