Saturday, April 30

This Day In History

• 1789   George Washington took office in New York as the first president of the United States.
• 1803   The United States purchased the Louisiana Territory from France.
• 1812   Louisiana became the 18th state.
• 1900   Hawaii was organized as a U.S. territory.
• 1900   A legend was born as engineer John Luther ''Casey'' Jones of the Illinois Central Railroad died in a train wreck near Vaughan, Miss., after staying at the controls in an effort to save the passengers. The famous song about Jones is loosely relatable to the train accident which cost the railroad engineer his life.
• 1939   The New York World's Fair, billed as a look at ''the world of tomorrow,'' opened.
• 1939   The first railroad car equipped with fluorescent lights was put into service. The train car was known as the "General Pershing Zephyr".
• 1939   Public Television began. President Franklin D. Roosevelt became the first chief executive to appear on TV. Roosevelt spoke at the opening ceremonies of the New York World?s Fair in Flushing, NY on WNBT in New York.
• 1945   Arthur Godfrey began his CBS radio morning show. His theme was "Seems Like Old Times". "Arthur Godfrey Time" ran until this very same day in 1972.
• 1945   Adolf Hitler committed suicide along with his wife of one day, Eva Braun, as Russian troops approached his Berlin bunker.
• 1947   President Harry S. Truman signed a measure changing the name of Boulder Dam to Hoover Dam.
• 1948   The Organization of American States held its first meeting, in Bogota, Colombia.
• 1964   TV sets would be drastically different after a ruling by the FCC stating that all TV receivers should be equipped to receive both VHF (channels 2-13) and the new UHF (channels 14-83). As a result, TV dealers scrambled to unload their VHF-only models as fast as possible. Antenna manufacturers were kept busy, as the new UHF receivers required new antennas too.
• 1975 The South Vietnamese capital of Saigon fell to Communist forces.
• 1970   President Richard Nixon announced the United States was sending troops into Cambodia, an action that sparked widespread protest.
• 1975   Saigon -- and all of Vietnam -- fell into communist hands this day, the unofficial end of the Vietnam War. As the U.S. withdrew completely from Saigon, the old noncommunist capital fell to North Vietnamese tanks. Americans commemorate the fall of Saigon with memorial services for the 58,153 Americans who died in Southeast Asia during the war.
• 1991   An estimated 125,000 people died as a cyclone struck Bangladesh.
• 1993   Top-ranked women's tennis player Monica Seles was stabbed in the back by a man who ran onto the court during a match in Hamburg, Germany.
• 1997   ABC aired the ''coming out'' episode of the sitcom ''Ellen,'' in which the title character, played by Ellen DeGeneres, admitted she is a lesbian.
• 1999   The Rev. Jesse Jackson met with three U.S. soldiers being held prisoner by Yugoslavia.
• 2001   California businessman Dennis Tito arrived at the international space station aboard a Russian spacecraft.
• 2001   Chandra Levy, a federal government intern, was last seen at a health club near her apartment in Washington, D.C. Her remains were found more than a year later in a city park.
• 2003   Mahmoud Abbas took office as the first Palestinian prime minister. International mediators presented Israeli and Palestinian leaders with a U.S.-backed "road map" to peace.
• 2003   The U.S. Navy withdrew from its disputed Vieques bombing range in Puerto Rico.

Happy Birthday To

• 1898   Cornelius Vanderbilt (reporter, columnist, author, lecturer; great, great grandson of Cornelius Vanderbilt, the railroad tycoon; died in 1974)
• 1907   Eve Arden (Eunice Quedens) (Emmy Award-winning actress: Our Miss Brooks [1953], Anatomy of a Murder, Grease, Stage Door, Tea for Two; died Nov 12, 1990)
• 1926   Cloris Leachman (Academy Award-winning actress: The Last Picture Show [1971]; Emmy Award-winner: A Brand New Life [1972-73], The Mary Tyler Moore Show [1973-74], Cher [1974-75], Screen Actor?s Guild 50th Anniversary Celebration [1983-84]; Phyllis, Backstairs at the White House, The Facts of Life)
• 1933   Willie Nelson (Grammy Award-winning singer: Mamas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys, Good Hearted Woman, To All the Girls I've Loved Before, My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys; songwriter: Crazy [Patsy Cline], Night Life [Ray Price], Hello Walls [Faron Young]; leads annual Farm Aid benefit to raise money for poor farmers)