Monday, April 18, 2005

Monday, April 18

This Day In History

  • 1775   Paul Revere began his ride from Charlestown to Lexington, Mass., warning American colonists that the British were coming.
  • 1906   The Great San Francisco Earthquake occurred at 5:13 a.m. The tremendous earthquake was responsible for some 3,000 deaths and catastrophic damage. There were many fires that followed the quake and they took days -- even weeks -- to contain. Survivors of the earthquake gathered annually for memorial services beginning at the moment the predawn temblor struck and became history.
  • 1923   The first game was played at Yankee Stadium in New York City, with the Yankees beating the Boston Red Sox 4-1.
  • 1934   The first Laundromat opened -- in Fort Worth, TX. For the first time, folks could rent washing machines for laundering clothes. Eventually progress made it possible to rent dryers, too!
  • 1942   An air squadron from the USS Hornet led by Lt. Col. James H. Doolittle raided Tokyo and other Japanese cities.
  • 1945   American war correspondent Ernie Pyle was killed by Japanese gunfire on the Pacific island of Ie Shima, off Okinawa.
  • 1946   The League of Nations went out of business.
  • 1949   The Irish Republic was proclaimed.
  • 1955   Physicist Albert Einstein died in Princeton, N.J.
  • 1956   Actress Grace Kelly married Prince Rainier of Monaco.
  • 1978   The U.S. Senate voted 68-32 to turn the Panama Canal over to Panamanian control on Dec. 31, 1999.
  • 1983   A suicide bomber killed 62 people, including 17 Americans, at the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon.
  • 1989   Thousands of Chinese students demanding democracy tried to storm Communist Party headquarters in Beijing.
  • 1994   Former President Richard Nixon suffered a stroke at his home in Park Ridge, N.J.; he died four days later.
  • 1999   Wayne Gretzky played his last National Hockey League game, at Madison Square Garden in New York.
  • 2002   Four Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan were killed when they were mistakenly bombed by an American F-16 pilot.
  • 2002   Police arrested actor Robert Blake in the shooting death of his wife, Bonny Lee Bakley, nearly a year earlier.
  • 2002   Norwegian adventurer Thor Heyerdahl died in Italy at age 87.
  • 2003   Scott Peterson was arrested in San Diego in the death of his wife, Laci, who was eight months pregnant when she vanished on Christmas Eve.
Happy Birthday To
  • 1921   Barbara Hale (actress: Perry Mason, The Oklahoman, The Defense Never Rests, Airport)
  • 1946   Hayley Mills (actress: The Parent Trap, The Moon Spinners, Pollyanna; singer: Let?s Get Together)
  • 1963   Conan O'Brien (TV talk show host: Late Night with Conan O?Brien; Emmy Award-winning writer: Saturday Night Live [1989]; The Simpsons; producer: Lockwell; comedian: Not Necessarily the News)
  • 1976   Melissa Joan Hart (actress: Clarissa Explains It All, Twisted Desire, Sabrina the Teenage Witch)

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