April 28 in history

On April 28:

1192  Assassination of Conrad of Montferrat (Conrad I), King of Jerusalem, in Tyre, two days after his title to the throne was confirmed by election.

 

1253 Nichiren, a Japanese Buddhist monk, propounded Nam Myoho Renge Kyo for the very first time and declared it to be the essence of Buddhism, in effect founding Nichiren Buddhism.

 

1611 Establishment of the Pontifical and Royal University of Santo Tomas, The Catholic University of the Philippines, the largest Catholic university in the world.

1715 Franz Sparry, composer, was born (d. 1767).

1758 James Monroe, 5th President of the United States (d. 1831), was born.

1789 Mutiny on the Bounty: Captain William Bligh and 18 sailors were set adrift; the rebel crew returned to Tahiti briefly and then set sail for Pitcairn Island.

 

1792  France invaded the Austrian Netherlands (present day Belgium), beginning the French Revolutionary War.

1796  The Armistice of Cherasco was signed by Napoleon Bonaparte and Vittorio Amedeo III, the King of Sardinia, expanding French territory along the Mediterranean coast.

1862 American Civil War: Admiral David Farragut captured New Orleans.

1864 The assault of Gate Pa began.

 1902  Using the ISO 8601 standard Year Zero definition for the Gregorian calendar preceded by the Julian calendar, the one billionth minute since the start of January 1, Year Zero occured at 10:40 AM on this date.

1912 Odette Sansom, French resistance worker, was born (d. 1995).

1916 Ferruccio Lamborghini, Italian automobile manufacturer, was born (d. 1993).

1920 Azerbaijan was added to the Soviet Union.

1922 Alistair MacLean, Scottish novelist, was born (d. 1987).

1926 Harper Lee, American author, was born.

1930 The first night game in organised baseball history took place in Independence, Kansas.

1932 A vaccine for yellow fever was announced for use on humans.

1937Saddam Hussein, President of Iraq, was born (d. 2006).

1941 Ann-Margret, Swedish-born actress, was born.

1945 Benito Mussolini and his mistress Clara Petacci were executed by a firing squad consisting of members of the Italian resistance movement.

1947 Thor Heyerdahl and five crew mates set out from Peru on the Kon-Tiki to prove that Peruvian natives could have settled Polynesia.

 

1948 Terry Pratchett, English author, was born.

1949  Former First Lady of the Philippines Aurora Quezon, 61, was assassinated while en route to dedicate a hospital in memory of her late husband; her daughter and 10 others are also killed.

1950 Jay Leno, American comedian and television host, was born.

1950  Bhumibol Adulyadej married Queen Sirikit.

 

1952 Dwight D. Eisenhower resigned as Supreme Commander of NATO.

 

1952 Occupied Japan: The United States occupation of Japan ended with the ratification of Treaty of San Francisco.

 

1952 The Sino-Japanese Peace Treaty (Treaty of Taipei) iwa signed in Taipei between Japan and the Republic of China to officially end the Second Sino-Japanese War.

1956 Jimmy Barnes, Scottish-born singer, was born.

1960  Ian Rankin, Scottish novelist, was born.

1965 United States troops landed in the Dominican Republic to “forestall establishment of a Communist dictatorship” and to evacuate U.S. Army troops.

1967  Expo 67 opened to the public in Montreal.

 

1969 Charles de Gaulle resigned as President of France.

1969 – Terence O’Neill announced his resignation as Prime Minister of Northern Ireland.

1970 Vietnam War: U.S. President Richard M. Nixon formally authorised American combat troops to fight communist sanctuaries in Cambodia.

1974 Penélope Cruz, Spanish actress, was born.

1977 The Red Army Faction trial ended with Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin and Jan-Carl Raspe found guilty of four counts of murder and more than 30 counts of attempted murder.

1977 The Budapest Treaty on the International Recognition of the Deposit of Microorganisms for the Purposes of Patent Procedure was signed.

1978 President of Afghanistan, Mohammed Daoud Khan, was overthrown and assassinated in a coup led by pro-communist rebels.

1981  Jessica Alba, American actress, was born.

1986 The aircraft carrier USS Enterprise became the first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier to transit the Suez Canal, navigating from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean Sea to relieve the USS Coral Sea.

1987 American engineer Ben Linder was killed in an ambush by U.S. funded Contras in northern Nicaragua.

1988  Near Maui, Hawaii, flight attendant Clarabelle “C.B.” Lansing was blown out of Aloha Flight 243, a Boeing 737 and fell to her death when part of the plane’s fuselage rips open in mid-flight.

1994  Former C.I.A. official Aldrich Ames pleaded guilty to giving U.S. secrets to the Soviet Union and later Russia.

1996  Whitewater controversy: Bill Clinton gave a 4½ hour videotaped testimony for the defense.

1996 – In Tasmania Martin Bryant went on a shooting spree, killing 35 people and seriously injuring 21 more.

1997 – The 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention goes into effect, with Russia, Iraq and North Korea among the nations that have not ratified the treaty.

 

2001 – Millionaire Dennis Tito becomes the world’s first space tourist.

Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia

April 25 in history

On April 25:

1214  King Louis IX of France was born (d. 1270).

1228 Conrad IV of Germany was born (d. 1254).

 

1284 King Edward II of England was born (d. 1327).

1599 Oliver Cromwell, English statesman, was born (d. 1658).

 

1607 Eighty Years’ War: The Dutch fleet destroyed the anchored Spanish fleet at Gibraltar.

1707 The Habsburg army was defeated by Bourbon army at Almansa in the War of the Spanish Succession.

1775 Charlotte of Spain, Spanish Infanta and queen of Portugal, was born (d. 1830).

1792  Highwayman Nicolas J. Pelletier became the first person executed by guillotine.

1792 – La Marseillaise was composed by Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle.

1829 Charles Fremantle arrived in the HMS Challenger off the coast of modern-day Western Australia prior to declaring the Swan River Colony for the United Kingdom.

 

1846 Thornton Affair: Open conflict began over the disputed border of Texas, triggering the Mexican-American War.

1847 The last survivors of the Donner Party were out of the wilderness.

 

1849 The Governor General of Canada, Lord Elgin, sigeds the Rebellion Losses Bill, outraging Montreal’s English population and triggering the Montreal Riots.

1859 British and French engineers broke ground for the Suez Canal.

 

1861nAmerican Civil War: The Union Army arrived in Washington, D.C.

1862  American Civil War: Forces under Union Admiral David Farragut captured the Confederate city of New Orleans, Louisiana.

1864 American Civil War: The Battle of Marks’ Mills.

1873 Walter de la Mare, English poet, was born (d. 1956).

 

1898 Spanish-American War: The United States declared war on Spain.

1901 New York became the first U.S. state to require automobile license plates.

1905 George Nepia, New Zealand rugby player was born (d. 1986).

1915 New Zealand troops landed at Gallipoli.

The start of the Battle of Gallipoli – trrops from Australia, Britain and France were also part of the landings at  Anzac Cove and Cape Helles..

  

1916 Easter Rebellion: The United Kingdom declared martial law in Ireland.

 

1916 – Anzac Day was commemorated for the first time, on the first anniversary of the landing at Anzac Cove.

1917 Ella Fitzgerald, American singer, was born (d. 1996).

1927 Albert Uderzo, French cartoonist, was born.

1929  Yvette Williams First New Zealander woman to win an Olympic gold medal, was born.

1932 Foundation of the Korean People’s Army of North Korea. “4.25” appeared on the flags of the KPA Ground Force and the KPA Naval Force.

1932 William Roache, British television actor (Coronation Street), was born.

1938 U.S. Supreme Court delivereds opinion in Erie Railroad Co. v. Tompkins and overturned a century of federal common law.

1939  DC Comics published its second major superhero in Detective Comics #27; – Batman.

 

1940  Al Pacino, American actor, was born.

1943 The Demyansk Shield for German troops in commemoration of Demyansk Pocket was instituted.

1944 The United Negro College Fund was incorporated.

1945 Elbe Day: United States and Soviet troops met in Torgau along the River Elbe, cutting the Wehrmacht in two, a milestone in the approaching end of World War II in Europe.

 

1945 – The Nazi occupation army surrendered and left Northern Italy after a general partisan insurrection by the Italian resistance movement; the puppet fascist regime dissolved and Mussolini tried to escape. This day is taken as symbolic of the Liberation of Italy.

 

1945 – Fifty nations gathered in San Francisco to begin the United Nations Conference on International Organisations.

1945 Last German troops retreated from Finland’s soil in Lapland, ending the Lapland War.

 

1948 Yu Shyi-kun, former Premier of Taiwan, was born.

1953 Francis Crick and James D. Watson published Molecular structure of nucleic acids: a structure for deoxyribose nucleic acid describing the double helix structure of DNA.

1959  The St. Lawrence Seaway, linking the North American Great Lakes and the Atlantic Ocean, officially opened to shipping.

1961 Robert Noyce was granted a patent for an integrated circuit.

 

1966 The city of Tashkent was destroyed by a huge earthquake.

Memorial to victims of the earthquake

1972  Vietnam War: Nguyen Hue Offensive – The North Vietnamese 320th Division forced 5,000 South Vietnamese troops to retreat and traps about 2,500 others northwest of Kontum.

1974 Carnation Revolution: A leftist military coup in Portugal restored democracy after more than forty years as a corporate authoritarian state.

 Prime Minister Marcelo Caetano, overthrown in the Carnation Revolution (Revolução dos Cravos).

1975 As North Vietnamese forces closed in on the South Vietnamese capital Saigon, the Australian Embassy was closed and evacuated, almost ten years to the day since the first Australian troop commitment to South Vietnam.

1976 Chicago Cubs’ outfielder, Rick Monday, rescued the American flag from two protestors who had run on to the field at Dodger Stadium. The two people covered the flag In lighter fluid but before the match was put to the flag, Monday, sprinted in and grabbed it away from them.

 

1981  More than 100 workers were exposed to radiation during repairs of a nuclear power plant in Tsuruga.

1982 Israel completed its withdrawal from the Sinai peninsula per the Camp David Accords.

1983 American schoolgirl Samantha Smith was invited to visit the Soviet Union by its leader Yuri Andropov after he read her letter in which she expressed fears about nuclear war.

1983 – Pioneer 10 traveled beyond Pluto’s orbit.

1986  Mswati III was crowned King of Swaziland, succeeding his father Sobhuza II.

1988 In Israel, John Demjanuk was sentenced to death for war crimes committed in World War II.

1990  The Hubble Telescope was deployed into orbit from the Space Shuttle Discovery.

2003 The Human Genome Project came to an end 2.5 years before first anticipated.

 

2005 The final piece of the Obelisk of Axum was returned to Ethiopia after being stolen by the invading Italian army in 1937.

 

2005 Bulgaria and Romania signed accession treaties to join the European Union.

2005 – 107 died in Amagasaki rail crash in Japan.

2007  Boris Yeltsin‘s funeral – the first to be sanctioned by the Russian Orthodox Church for a head of state since the funeral of Emperor Alexander III in 1894.

 

Sourced from NZ History Online & WIkipedia

April 24 in history

On April 24:

1479 BC – Thutmose III ascended to the throne of Egypt, although power effectively shifted to Hatshepsut.

1184 BC – The Greeks entered Troy using the Trojan Horse (traditional date).

 

1533 William I of Orange (d. 1584), was born.

1558 Mary, Queen of Scots, married the Dauphin of France, François, at Notre Dame de Paris.

 

1581 Vincent de Paul, French saint (d. 1660), was born.

1620  John Graunt, English statistician and founder of the science of demography (d. 1674), was born.

1704 The first regular newspaper in the United States, the News-Letter, was published.

 

1800 The United States Library of Congress was established when President John Adams signed legislation to appropriate $5,000 to purchase “such books as may be necessary for the use of Congress”.

1815 Anthony Trollope, English novelist (d. 1882), was born.

1862 American Civil War: A flotilla commanded by Union Admiral David Farragut passed two Confederate forts on the Mississippi River on its way to capture New Orleans.

 

1877  Russo-Turkish War: Russia declared war on Ottoman Empire.

1898 The Spanish-American War: The United States declared war on Spain.

1904 The Lithuanian press ban was lifted after almost 40 years.

1907 Hersheypark, founded by Milton S. Hershey for the exclusive use of his employees, was opened.

1913 The Woolworth Building skyscraper in New York was opened.

1915  The Armenian Genocide began when Ottoman authorities arrested some 250 Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Constantinople.:

 

1916 Easter Rising: The Irish Republican Brotherhood led by nationalists Patrick Pearse, James Connolly, and Joseph Plunkett started a rebellion.

1916 Ernest Shackleton and five men of the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition launched a lifeboat from uninhabited Elephant Island to organise a rescue for the ice-trapped ship Endurance.

 

1918 First tank-to-tank combat, at Villers-Bretonneux, when three British Mark IVs met three German A7Vs.

 

1922 New Zealand’s first Poppy Day.

1926 The Treaty of Berlin was signed. Germany and the Soviet Union each pledged neutrality in the event of an attack on the other by a third party for the next five years.

1932 Benny Rothman led the Mass trespass of Kinder Scout, leading to substantial legal reforms in the United Kingdom.

 

1953 Winston Churchill is knighted by Queen Elizabeth II.

 

1955 – The Bandung Conference ended Twenty-nine non-aligned nations of Asia and Africa finished a meeting that condemned colonialism, racism, and the Cold War.

 

1957 Suez Crisis: The Suez Canal was reopened following the introduction of UNEF peacekeepers to the region.

1960 A severe earthquake shook Lar in Fars province, Iran, killing more than 200 people.

1961 The 17th century Swedish ship Vasa was salvaged.

1963 Marriage of Princess Alexandra of Kent to Angus Ogilvy at Westminster Abbey.

1965 Civil war broke out in the Dominican Republic when Colonel Francisco Caamaño, overthrew the triumvirate that had been in power.

1967 Cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov died in Soyuz 1 when its parachute failed to open. He was the first human to die during a space mission.

 

1967 – Vietnam War: American General William Westmoreland said in a news conference that the enemy had “gained support in the United States that gave him hope that he could win politically that which he cannot win militarily.”

1970 The first Chinese satellite, Dong Fang Hong I, was launched.

1970 – The Gambia became a republic with Dawda Jawara as the first President.

1971 Soyuz 10 docked with Salyut 1.

1980 Eight U.S. servicemen died in Operation Eagle Claw as they attempted to end the Iran hostage crisis.

1990 STS-31: The Hubble Space Telescope was launched by the Space Shuttle Discovery.

 

1990 – Gruinard Island, Scotland, was officially declared free of the anthrax disease after 48 years of quarantine.

 

1993 – An IRA bomb devastated the Bishopsgate area of London.

1996  In the United States, the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 was introduced.

2004 The United States lifted economic sanctions imposed on Libya 18 years previously, as a reward for its cooperation in eliminating weapons of mass destruction.

200 Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was inaugurated as the 265th Pope taking the name Pope Benedict XVI.

2005  Snuppy, the world’s first cloned dog was born in South Korea.

2006  King Gyanendra of Nepal gave into the demands of protesters and restored the parliament that he dissolved in 2002.

2007 Iceland announced that Norway would shoulder the defense of Iceland during peacetime.

2007 – Gliese 581 d discovered by a Chilean observatory and believed to be a planet capable of holding extraterresial life.

Sourced from NZ History Online & Wikipedia