Thursday, April 7

This Day In History

• 1862   Gen. Ulysses S. Grant defeated the Confederates at the battle of Shiloh.
• 1864   The first camel race in America was held. Nope -- not in the Mojave Desert; but in Sacramento, California.
• 1927   U.S. secretary of commerce Herbert Hoover’s Washington speech was seen and heard in New York in the first long-distance television transmission.
• 1940   Booker T. Washington became the first black to be pictured on a U.S. postage stamp. His likeness was issued on a 10-cent stamp this day.
• 1948   The World Health Organization, a UN agency, was founded.
• 1949   Rodgers’ and Hammerstein’s Pulitzer Prize winner, South Pacific opened on Broadway. 1953   The U.N. General Assembly elected Dag Hammarskjold of Sweden to be secretary-general.
• 1957   New York City's last electric trolley completed its final run from Queens to Manhattan.
• 1969   The Supreme Court unanimously struck down laws prohibiting private possession of obscene material.
• 1970   John Wayne, a movie veteran of over 200 films, won his first and only Oscar. The Duke earned an Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in "True Grit", also starring Kim Darby and Glen Campbell.
• 1992   PLO chairman Yasser Arafat survived the crash-landing of his plane in the Libyan desert; three crew members were killed.
• 1994   Hutu extremists in Rwanda began massacring ethnic Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus. In 100 days of killing, an estimated 800,000 are murdered.
• 2001   NASA's Mars Odyssey spacecraft took off on a six-month, 286-million-mile journey to the red planet.
• 2001   An unarmed black man wanted on 14 misdemeanor warrants was fatally shot by a white police officer in Cincinnati, sparking three days of riots.
• 2003   Cécile de Brunhoff, creator of Babar the elephant, died.
• 2003   The Supreme Court voted 6-3 to uphold a 50-year-old Virginia law making it a crime to burn a cross as an act of intimidation.

Happy Birthday To

• 1786   William King (13th U.S. Vice President: 1st VP to have served in both the House of Representatives and the Senate; took the only presidential or vice presidential oath ever administered outside of the United States [Havana, Cuba]; died Apr 18, 1853 [a month after taking that oath])
• 1897   Walter Winchell (vaudeville performer, journalist, gossip columnist: New York Mirror, radio commentator: “Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. America and all the ships at sea.”; died Feb 20, 1972)
• 1915   Billie Holiday (Eleanora Fagan) (‘Lady’: jazz singer: Lover Man, They Can’t Take that Away from Me, Fine and Mellow, Don’t Explain, Strange Fruit, God Bless the Child; died July 17, 1959)
• 1928   James Garner (James Scott Bumgarner) (actor: The Rockford Files, Maverick, The Americanization of Emily, Victor/Victoria, Tank, A Man Called Sledge, Duel at Diablo, The Distinguished Gentleman, My Fellow Americans, Space Cowboys)
• 1931   Daniel Ellsberg (author: known for releasing Pentagon Papers to the NY Times)
• 1933   Wayne Rogers (actor: M*A*S*H, Cool Hand Luke, Passion in Paradise, Pocket Money, The Killing Time, Chiefs, The Gig)
• 1939   Francis Ford Coppola (Academy Award-winning director: The Godfather: Part II [1974], screenwriter: Patton [1970], The Godfather [1973], The Godfather: Part II [1974]; The Godfather: Part III, Apocalypse Now, Finian’s Rainbow, Peggy Sue Got Married)
• 1939   David Frost (TV host: That Was the Week that Was, The David Frost Show)

Thanks to On This Day and Those Were The Days