Thursday, April 14, 2005

Thursday, April 14

This Day In History

  • 1759   Composer George Frideric Handel died in London.
  • 1775   The first American society for the abolition of slavery was organized by Benjamin Franklin and Benjamin Rush.
  • 1828   The first edition of Noah Webster's ''American Dictionary of the English Language'' was published.
  • 1902   J.C. Penney opened his first store, in Kemmerer, Wyo.
  • 1912   The British liner Titanic collided with an iceberg in the North Atlantic and began to sink.
  • 1931   King Alfonso XIII of Spain went into exile and the Spanish Republic was proclaimed.
  • 1939   ''The Grapes of Wrath'' by John Steinbeck was published.
  • 1956   Ampex Corp. demonstrated its first commercial videotape recorder.
  • 1981   America's first operational space shuttle, Columbia, landed at Edwards Air Force Base in California after its first test flight.
  • 1997   Whitewater figure James McDougal drew a three-year prison sentence for 18 felony fraud and conspiracy counts.
  • 1999   NATO mistakenly bombed a convoy of ethnic Albanian refugees; Yugoslav officials said 75 people were killed.
  • 2002   Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez returned to office two days after being ousted and arrested by his country's military.
  • 2002   Tiger Woods became only the third player to win back-to-back Masters titles.
  • 2003   Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit fell with unexpectedly light resistance, the last Iraqi city to succumb to overpowering U.S.-led ground and air forces.
  • 2003   U.S. commandos in Baghdad captured Abul Abbas, leader of the Palestinian group that killed an American on the hijacked cruise liner "Achille Lauro" in 1985.
Happy Birthday To
  • 1866   Anne Sullivan (Macy) ("The Miracle Worker": famous for teaching the blind and deaf Helen Keller to read, write and speak; died Oct 20, 1936)

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