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Texas Ranger “Big Foot” Wallace born


1817
April 03



The legendary Texas Ranger and frontiersman “Big Foot” Wallace is born in Lexington, Virginia.

In 1836, 19-year-old William Alexander Anderson Wallace received news that one of his brothers
had been killed in the Battle of Goliad, an early confrontation in the Texan war of independence
with Mexico. Pledging to “take pay of the Mexicans” for his brother’s death, Wallace left Lexington
and headed for Texas. By the time he arrived, the war was over, but Wallace found he liked the
spirited independence of the new Republic of Texas and decided to stay.

Over six feet tall and weighing around 240 pounds, Wallace’s physique made him an intimidating man,
and his unusually large feet won him the nickname “Big Foot.” In 1842, he finally had a chance to
fight Mexicans and joined with other Texans to repulse an invasion by the Mexican General Adrian Woll.
During another skirmish with Mexicans, Wallace was captured and endured two years of hard time
in the notoriously brutal Perote Prison in Vera Cruz before finally being released in 1844.

After returning to Texas, Wallace decided to abandon the formal Texan military force for the less rigid
organization of the Texas Rangers. Part law-enforcement officers and part soldiers, the Texas Rangers
fought both bandits and Native Americans in the vast, sparsely populated reaches of the Texan frontier.
Williams served under Ranger John Coffee Hays until the start of the Civil War in 1861. Opposed to
secession but unwilling to fight against his own people, Williams spent most of the war defending Texas
against Native American attacks along the frontier.

During his many years in the wilds of Texas, Wallace had hundreds of adventures. Once, Native Americans
attacked Wallace while he was working as a stage driver on the hazardous San Antonio-El Paso route.
He escaped with his life but the Natives stole his mules, leaving him stranded in the Texas desert.
Forced to walk to El Paso, Wallace later claimed he ate 27 eggs at the first house he encountered after his
long journey, then he went into town to have a “real meal.”

In his later years, Wallace decided he had enough of life as a fighter and adventurer. In exchange for his
service, the state of Texas granted him land along the Medina River and in Frio County in the southern part
of the state. Always happy to regale listeners with highly embellished tales of his frontier days,
Wallace became a contemporary folk hero to the people of Texas.
Wallace died in 1899 and is buried in the Texas State Cemetery.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is assassinated


1968
April 04

Just after 6 p.m. on April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. is fatally shot while standing
on the balcony outside his second-story room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee.
The civil rights leader was in Memphis to support a sanitation workers’ strike and was on
his way to dinner when a bullet struck him in the jaw and severed his spinal cord.
King was pronounced dead after his arrival at a Memphis hospital.
He was 39 years old.

In the months before his assassination, Martin Luther King became increasingly concerned
with the problem of economic inequality in America. He organized a Poor People’s Campaign
to focus on the issue, including a march on Washington, and in March 1968 traveled to Memphis
in support of poorly treated African-American sanitation workers. On March 28, a workers’
protest march led by King ended in violence and the death of an African American teenager.
King left the city but vowed to return in early April to lead another demonstration.

On April 3, back in Memphis, King gave his last sermon, saying, “We’ve got some difficult
days ahead. But it really doesn’t matter with me now, because I’ve been to the mountaintop …
And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over, and I’ve seen the
Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight that we,
as a people, will get to the promised land.”

One day after speaking those words, Dr. King was shot and killed by a sniper. As word of the
assassination spread, riots broke out in cities all across the United States and National Guard
troops were deployed in Memphis and Washington, D.C. On April 9, King was laid to rest in his
hometown of Atlanta, Georgia. Tens of thousands of people lined the streets to pay tribute to
King’s casket as it passed by in a wooden farm cart drawn by two mules.











The evening of King’s murder, a Remington .30-06 hunting rifle was found on the sidewalk beside
a rooming house one block from the Lorraine Motel. During the next several weeks, the rifle,
eyewitness reports, and fingerprints on the weapon all implicated a single suspect: escaped convict
James Earl Ray. A two-bit criminal, Ray escaped a Missouri prison in April 1967 while serving a
sentence for a holdup. In May 1968, a massive manhunt for Ray began. The FBI eventually
determined that he had obtained a Canadian passport under a false identity, which at the time
was relatively easy.

On June 8, Scotland Yard investigators arrested Ray at a London airport. He was trying to fly to
Belgium, with the eventual goal, he later admitted, of reaching Rhodesia. Rhodesia, now called
Zimbabwe, was at the time ruled by an oppressive and internationally condemned white minority
government. Extradited to the United States, Ray stood before a Memphis judge in March 1969
and pleaded guilty to King’s murder in order to avoid the electric chair.
He was sentenced to 99 years in prison.

Three days later, he attempted to withdraw his guilty plea, claiming he was innocent of King’s
assassination and had been set up as a patsy in a larger conspiracy. He claimed that in 1967,
a mysterious man named “Raoul” had approached him and recruited him into a gunrunning
enterprise. On April 4, 1968, he said, he realized that he was to be the fall guy for the King
assassination and fled to Canada. Ray’s motion was denied, as were his dozens of other requests
for a trial during the next 29 years.

During the 1990s, the widow and children of Martin Luther King Jr. spoke publicly in support of
Ray and his claims, calling him innocent and speculating about an assassination conspiracy involving
the U.S. government and military. U.S. authorities were, in conspiracists’ minds, implicated
circumstantially. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover obsessed over King, who he thought was under
communist influence. For the last six years of his life, King underwent constant wiretapping and
harassment by the FBI. Before his death, Dr. King was also monitored by U.S. military intelligence,
which may have been asked to watch King after he publicly denounced the Vietnam War in 1967.
Furthermore, by calling for radical economic reforms in 1968, including guaranteed annual incomes
for all, King was making few new friends in the Cold War-era U.S. government.

Over the years, the assassination has been reexamined by the House Select Committee on Assassinations,
the Shelby County, Tennessee, district attorney’s office, and three times by the U.S. Justice Department.
The investigations all ended with the same conclusion: James Earl Ray killed Martin Luther King. The
House committee acknowledged that a low-level conspiracy might have existed, involving one or more
accomplices to Ray, but uncovered no evidence to definitively prove this theory. In addition to the
mountain of evidence against him—such as his fingerprints on the murder weapon and his admitted
presence at the rooming house on April 4—Ray had a definite motive in assassinating King: hatred.
According to his family and friends, he was an outspoken racist who informed them of his intent to
kill Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
He died in 1998.

Business magnate and famed aviator
Howard Hughes dies


1976
April 05






Howard Robard Hughes, one of the richest men to emerge from the American West
during the 20th century, dies while flying from Acapulco to Houston.

Born in Houston, Texas, in 1905, Hughes inherited an estate of nearly a million dollars
when his father died in 1923. Hughes’ father also left him the business that had created
this fortune, the Hughes Tool Company, which controlled the rights to a new oil drill
technology that was in high demand. The young Hughes quickly began to expand his
business empire into new fields. In 1926, he moved to Hollywood, where he became
involved in the rapidly growing movie industry. He produced several popular films,
including Hell’s Angels, Scarface and The Outlaw.


Fascinated with the new technology of airplanes, Hughes also invested heavily in the
burgeoning West Coast aviation industry. With some training in engineering from the
California Institute of Technology and the Rice Institute of Technology, Hughes designed
his own aircraft and then had his Hughes Aircraft Company build it. In 1935, he piloted
one of his airplanes to a new world-speed record of 352.46 mph. His reputation as an
aircraft designer and builder suffered after an ill-fated WWII government-sponsored project
to build an immense plane that Hughes claimed would be able to transport 750 passengers.
Nicknamed the Spruce Goose, Hughes’ monstrosity flew only once: a one-mile hop
on November 2, 1947.







Never an extrovert, Hughes became increasingly reclusive after 1950. Operating through
managers who rarely saw him in person, he bought up vast tracts of real estate in California,
Arizona, and Nevada that skyrocketed in value. In 1967, he became involved in the Nevada
gambling industry when he purchased the famous Desert Inn Hotel on the Las Vegas strip.
Nevada gaming authorities welcomed Hughes’ involvement because it counteracted the
popular image that the Mafia dominated the gambling industry. By the early 1970s, Hughes
had become the largest single landholder in Nevada, and with around 8,000 Nevada residents
on his payroll, Hughes was also the state’s largest employer.

Although the rumors of Hughes’ bizarre behavior have been exaggerated—in part due to a
fraudulent memoir published in 1971—in his final years the billionaire became even more
obsessed with privacy. He continually moved between his residences in Las Vegas, the Bahamas,
Nicaragua, Canada, England and Mexico. Other than a few male aides, almost nobody saw
Hughes, and he sometimes worked for days at a stretch in a black-curtained room without sleeping.

Emaciated and deranged from too little food and too many drugs, Hughes finally became so ill
that his aides decided that he needed medical treatment. He died in his airplane en route from
Acapulco to Houston at the age of 70.




Last known photograph of
Howard Hughes




X-rays revealed five broken-off hypodermic needles in the flesh of his arms as the germophobic
Hughes had insisted on using glass syringes with metal needles that became easily detached to
inject the codeine to which he was addicted into his muscles.

It was a desperately sad end for a man who had had the world at his fingertips.

But even stranger events were still to come.

About three weeks after Hughes was buried next to his parents in Houston’s Glenwood Cemetery,
a handwritten will was found on the desk of an official of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints
in Salt Lake City, Utah.

This so-called “Mormon Will” gave $1.5 BILLION to various charitable organizations,
including $625m to the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, half-a-billion to various
upper management types in his companies and aides, $156m to his first cousin and the
same amount to be split between his two ex-wives.



Howard Hughes with Ginger Rogers whom he was
engaged to in the late 1930s



Most bizarrely of all, the will endowed another $156m to a gas-station owner, one Melvin Dummar,
who had told reporters in 1967 that he’d found a dishevelled and dirty man lying alongside Route 95,
150 miles north of Las Vegas.

The man asked for a ride to Vegas, and Dummar says that after he dropped him off at the Sands Hotel,
he told him he was Howard Hughes.

Dummar went on to claim that several days after Hughes’ death, a “mysterious man” appeared at
his gas station, leaving an envelope containing the will on his desk.

Unsure if it was genuine and not knowing what to do, Dummar left the will at the LDS Church office.

The trouble was that the main elements of this will – leaving the bulk to the medical institute because
he was seriously ill and ignoring most of his family – were contrary to the many wills that surfaced
after Hughes’ death, and in 1978 a Nevada court ruled the Mormon Will a forgery and declared
Hughes had died intestate.

The whole crazy tale was later adapted into the hit 1980 movie Melvin And Howard, which won the
Oscar for Best Original Screenplay while Mary Steenburgen won Best Supporting Actress for her role
as Dummar’s first wife.

After much legal wrangling, Hughes’ $2.5bn estate was eventually split in 1983 among 22 cousins
while the court rejected claims from the states of Texas and California that they were owed inheritance tax.

You think the weirdness ends there? A year later, the Hughes estate paid an undisclosed amount to a
certain Terry Moore who claimed she and Hughes had secretly married in international waters off
Mexico – as you do – in 1949 and never divorced.

Moore never produced proof of a marriage but her book, The Beauty And The Billionaire, became a bestseller.

Many of you will be familiar with how Howard Robert Hughes Jr, who often claimed to have been born
on Christmas Eve 1905 – there are conflicting sources – built his vast fortune.

He first found fame as a prominent film producer, building his way up to become a movie tycoon in
control of RKO studios.

He then founded the successful Hughes Aircraft Company, and acquired Trans World Airlines,
before using his entrepreneurial genius to build a vast and varied business empire that included
huge real estate holdings.

The latter began when, staying in the Desert Inn in Vegas in 1966, Hughes refused to vacate his
room and instead decided to purchase the entire hotel and casino complex, later buying up many
of the city’s well-known hotels and being instrumental in changing its image from a
cowboy town to a cosmopolitan city.

But the aviation obsession was partly responsible for Hughes’ unravelling as a near-fatal plane crash,
when he was test flying his prototype XF-11 over Beverly Hills, left him in chronic pain and addicted
to painkillers.

Hughes sustained a crushed collar bone, multiple cracked ribs, a crushed chest which collapsed his left
lung and shifted his heart to the right side of his chest cavity, and third-degree burns.

He was also increasingly deaf, something that often leads to increased isolation, and his
obsessive compulsive disorder began to dominate his life.

He’d always eaten the same thing for dinner, a New York strip steak cooked medium rare,
salad and peas – but only the smaller ones, he’d push the larger peas to the side.

In 1958 Hughes wanted to screen some movies at a studio near his home. He stayed in the
darkened screening room for four months, eating only chocolate and chicken and drinking
only milk, surrounded by Kleenex boxes, storing his urine in bottles.

He sat in his seat, often naked, endlessly watching movies and staff were told not to look at
him nor speak to him.

He then spent $11m staying at the Beverly Hills Hotel for a year, and later became obsessed
with the film Ice Station Zebra, watching it 150 times in a loop.



The film Ice Station Zebra which Hughes became obsessed with


In the last decade of his life, Hughes disappeared from public view, moving from hotel to hotel
around the world with his entourage, starting at the aforementioned Desert Inn, always staying
in the penthouse.

Worried about nuclear testing near Vegas, he offered million-dollar bribes to Lyndon B Johnson and
Richard Nixon to stop them.

Hughes’ business holdings were controlled by a small cabal dubbed The Mormon Mafia because of
the many followers of that particular church on the committee.

Hmm, I wonder if that has any connection to a certain will?

They went to great pains to satisfy his every whim, once persuading Baskin-Robbins to produce a
special batch of their banana nut ice cream after HH became obsessed with it.

A few days later Hughes announced himself bored of the flavor, saying he only wanted French vanilla
from then on, and the Desert Inn ended up distributing free banana nut ice to casino customers for a year.

Unsurprisingly, Hughes has inspired several films and movie characters, including the tall,
Texan reclusive billionaire Willard Whyte who operates his business empire from the
penthouse of a Vegas hotel in the 007 picture Diamonds Are Forever.

And you have to say, being in a Bond movie is a fitting memorial
to one of the world’s truly odd men.





Desert Inn Casino Las Vegas in the Afternoon
1968 Photograph by Aloha Art




Things You May Not Know About Howard Hughes



1. Hughes was a millionaire at 18.

The 1901 discovery of oil at Spindletop, near Beaumont, Texas, marked the birth of the modern
petroleum industry, and drew Hughes’ father, Howard Sr., a Harvard dropout, to East Texas to
try his luck as a wildcatter. After becoming frustrated by the difficulty of drilling into hard-rock
formations with the “fishtail” drill bit that was standard at the time, he devised a superior
two-cone bit, which made drilling easier and revolutionized the oil industry. Hughes patented
the technology in 1909 and, with partner Walter Sharp, formed the Houston-based
Sharp-Hughes Tool Company to manufacture the bit. After Sharp died in 1912, Hughes bought
his interest in the company. When he in turn passed away in 1924, Howard Jr., an only child
whose mother had died two years earlier, inherited the thriving company and became a millionaire.
The 18-year-old Hughes dropped out of Rice University, let others manage the oil-tool business
and set out for Hollywood in 1925.


Beaumont Confederated Oil & Pipe Line Company -
American Oil & Gas Historical Society
Circa 1903




2. Hughes set an around-the-world flight record.

During the 1930s, Hughes began to seriously pursue his passion for flying, establishing
Hughes Aircraft Company in 1932 (it eventually became a major aerospace and defense contractor)
and setting a series of aviation records. In 1935, he broke the record for flying a plane over land,
traveling 352 miles per hour near Santa Ana, California. Two years later, he set a record for
transcontinental U.S. speed, journeying from Burbank, California, to Newark, New Jersey,
in 7 hours, 28 minutes and 25 seconds. On July 10, 1938, Hughes and a four-man crew took
off from Brooklyn’s Floyd Bennett Field on an around-the-world flight. After dipping his
Lockheed Super Electra’s wings over the Old Saybrook, Connecticut, home of his girlfriend
Katharine Hepburn, Hughes made refueling stops in Paris, Moscow, Omsk and Yakutsk (both in Siberia),
Fairbanks and Minneapolis before landing back in Brooklyn. There, thousands of spectators
greeted Hughes, who had set a new record for circumnavigating the globe,
with a time of three days, 19 hours and 17 minutes. He was hailed as a hero and honored with
a ticker-tape parade in New York City and celebrations around the country.



3. Hughes was part of a CIA plot to recover a sunken Soviet submarine.

In March 1968, during the Cold War, a Soviet submarine carrying nuclear-armed ballistic missiles
accidentally sank in the Pacific Ocean. The Soviets embarked on a two-month search for the sub
but were unable to locate it; not long afterward, the U.S. found it some 1,500 miles northwest of
Hawaii, 16,500 feet below the water’s surface. Believing the 1,750-ton sub was a source of
important intelligence information, the CIA launched a complex covert operation, codenamed
Project Azorian, to recover it. The U.S. commissioned the construction of a ship with the specialized
capabilities needed to lift the sub from the ocean’s depths, and the CIA devised a cover story that
the vessel, named the Hughes Glomar Explorer, was being built for Howard Hughes, who planned
to use it for a new commercial venture: mining minerals from the ocean floor.
The Glomar Explorer finally arrived at the wreckage site in the summer of 1974 but was unable to
retrieve the whole sub because a portion broke off as it was being raised.
A second recovery effort was planned; however, in the meantime there was a burglary at the
Los Angeles headquarters of Hughes’ Summa Corporation, and among the stolen items was
thought to be a secret document linking Howard Hughes to the CIA and the Glomar Explorer.
The news media learned about the burglary and the story of the Glomar Explorer’s real purpose
became public in 1975. As a result, the mission to recover the rest of the sub was scrapped.



4. When a Vegas hotel tried to kick him out, he bought the place.

Faced with a huge tax bill in California, he decided to move to Las Vegas in late 1966, arriving
by private train car and taking up residence on the top floor of the Desert Inn. When the hotel’s
owner tried to evict Hughes and his staff, who didn’t gamble, in order to free up rooms for
high-roller guests, Hughes decided to buy the place (technically, he purchased a long-term lease),
for $13 million. Afterward, he went on a Vegas buying spree, snapping up other hotel-casinos,
an airport and airline and various tracts of undeveloped land. Also, because Hughes, by then
a recluse who never left his Desert Inn penthouse, wanted to watch his favorite old movies on
late-night TV—and the city had no all-night stations–he acquired a local TV station of his own.
After four years in Vegas, during which time he became one of Nevada’s biggest employers and
private landholders, he left abruptly in 1970. He spent the final six years of his life living in
hotels in the Bahamas, Nicaragua, Vancouver, London and Acapulco.

The United States officially enters World War I



1917
April 06








April 6, 1917: Two days after the U.S. Senate voted 82 to 6 to declare war against Germany,
the U.S. House of Representatives endorses the declaration by a vote of 373 to 50,
and America formally enters World War I.

When World War I erupted in 1914, President Woodrow Wilson pledged neutrality for the
United States, a position that the vast majority of Americans favored. Britain, however,
was one of America’s closest trading partners, and tension soon arose between the United States
and Germany over the latter’s attempted quarantine of the British Isles.

Several U.S. ships traveling to Britain were damaged or sunk by German mines, and in
February 1915 Germany announced unrestricted warfare against all ships, neutral or otherwise,
that entered the war zone around Britain. One month later, Germany announced that a German
cruiser had sunk the William P. Frye, a private American vessel. President Wilson was outraged,
but the German government apologized and called the attack an unfortunate mistake

On May 7, the British-owned Lusitania ocean liner was torpedoed without warning just off the
coast of Ireland. Of the 1,959 passengers, 1,198 were killed, including 128 Americans. The German
government maintained that the Lusitania was carrying munitions, but the U.S. demanded
reparations and an end to German attacks on unarmed passenger and merchant ships. In August,
Germany pledged to see to the safety of passengers before sinking unarmed vessels, but in November
sunk an Italian liner without warning, killing 272 people, including 27 Americans. With these attacks,
public opinion in the United States began to turn irrevocably against Germany.

In 1917, Germany, determined to win its war of attrition against the Allies, announced the resumption
of unrestricted warfare in war-zone waters. Three days later, the United States broke diplomatic relations
with Germany, and just hours after that the American liner Housatonic was sunk by a German U-boat.
On February 22, Congress passed a $250 million arms appropriations bill intended to make the
United States ready for war. In late March, Germany sunk four more U.S. merchant ships, and on
April 2 President Wilson appeared before Congress and called for a declaration of war against Germany.
Four days later, his request was granted.

On June 26, the first 14,000 U.S. infantry troops landed in France to begin training for combat.
After four years of bloody stalemate along the western front, the entrance of America’s well-supplied
forces into the conflict marked a major turning point in the war and helped the Allies to victory. When
the war finally ended, on November 11, 1918, more than two million American soldiers had served on
the battlefields of Western Europe, and some 50,000 of them had lost their lives.








ALSO ON THIS DAY




WORLD WAR II
1941
Germany invades Yugoslavia and Greece

The German air force launches Operation Castigo, the bombing of Belgrade,
on April 6, 1941, as 24 divisions and 1,200 tanks drive into Greece. The attack
on Yugoslavia was swift and brutal, an act of terror resulting in the death
of 17,000 civilians—the largest number of civilian ... read more





EXPLORATION
1909
Robert Peary almost reaches the North Pole

On April 6, 1909, American explorer Robert Peary accomplishes a long elusive dream,
when he, assistant Matthew Henson and four Inuits reach what they determine to be
the North Pole. Decades after Peary’s death, however, navigational errors in his
travel log surfaced, placing the ... read more





RELIGION
1830
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints established

In Fayette, New York, Joseph Smith, founder of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
(also known as the Mormon Church), organizes the Church of Christ during a meeting with a
small group of believers. Born in Vermont in 1805, Smith claimed in 1823 that he had been ...
read more






SPORTS
1896
First modern Olympic Games

On April 6, 1896, the Olympic Games, a long-lost tradition of ancient Greece, are reborn in
Athens 1,500 years after being banned by Roman Emperor Theodosius I. At the opening of
the Athens Games, King Georgios I of Greece and a crowd of 60,000 spectators welcomed
athletes from ... read more






U.S. PRESIDENTS
1841
John Tyler is inaugurated as 10th president

On April 6, 1841, John Tyler is sworn in as president. Tyler was elected as William Harrison’s
vice president earlier in 1841 and was suddenly thrust into the role of president when Harrison
died one month into office. He was the first vice president to immediately assume the ... read more






NATIVE AMERICAN HISTORY
1832
Black Hawk War begins

Determined to resist the growing presence of Anglo settlers on traditional tribal lands, the
Sauk warrior Black Hawk is drawn into war with the United States.
Called Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak by his people, Black Hawk was born in 1767 in the village
of Saukenuk in the present-day ... read more

1979
April 07


Astros' Ken Forsch pitches no-hitter,
matching feat by his brother






On April 7, 1979, nearly a year after his brother Bob pitched a no-hitter,
Houston Astros pitcher Ken Forsch tosses his first career no-hitter.
Ken and Bob become the first—and only—brothers to pitch official no-hitters
in Major League Baseball history.

On April 16, 1978, Bob Forsch pitched a no-hitter for the St. Louis Cardinals
against the Philadelphia Phillies. Brothers Pascual and Melido Pérez pitched
rain-shortened, unofficial no-hitters—Pascual in five innings for the 1988
Montreal Expos and Melido in six innings for the 1990 Chicago White Sox.

Ken, who led the Astros to a 6-0 victory in his no-hitter, had his brother's feat
on his mind by the middle of the historic game. Days before the game, the
righthander was listed as questionable to start because of an insect bite that
caused swelling on his left elbow. "I just told myself I was going to go out there
tonight, try to keep them off balance and give it the best shot I had,"
Forsch told reporters after the no-hitter.

Ken kept the Braves off balance all game, forcing ground ball out after ground
ball out. After the game fittingly ended with three straight ground-ball outs in
the ninth inning, Astros shortstop Craig Reynolds said, via the Houston Chronicle:
"I have never seen so few balls hit hard against a pitcher in a game."


Ken, who spent some of his career in the shadow of his younger brother,
pitched 16 years in the big leagues as a starter and reliever. His career record
was 114-113, and he finished with 51 saves. He also made two All-Star
Game appearances.

Like his brother, Bob Forsch enjoyed a long career, the majority as a starting pitcher.
Over 16 seasons, he had a 168-136 record. He won 20 games in 1977 and played
for the St. Louis Cardinals World Series champions in 1982.

Ken, who spent some of his career in the shadow of his younger brother, pitched 16
years in the big leagues as a starter and reliever. His career record was 114-113, and
he finished with 51 saves. He also made two All-Star Game appearances.

Like his brother, Bob Forsch enjoyed a long career, the majority as a starting pitcher.
Over 16 seasons, he had a 168-136 record. He won 20 games in 1977 and played for
the St. Louis Cardinals World Series champions in 1982.





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1963
Tito is made president of Yugoslavia for life

On April 7, 1963, a new Yugoslav constitution proclaims Tito the president
for life of the newly named Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
Formerly known as Josip Broz, Tito was born to a large peasant family
in Croatia in 1892. At that time, Croatia was part of the ... read more




1953
Sweden’s Dag Hammarskjöld elected U.N. head

By a vote of 57 to 1, Dag Hammarskjöld is elected secretary-general of
the United Nations. The son of Hjalmar Hammarskjöld, a former prime
minister of Sweden, Dag joined Sweden’s foreign ministry in 1947, and
in 1951 formally entered the cabinet as deputy foreign minister.  ... read more



CRIME
1994
Violence erupts in Rwanda, foreshadowing genocide

On April 7, 1994, violence fuels the launch of what would become the
worst episode of genocide since World War II: the massacre of an
estimated 500,000 to 1 million innocent civilian Tutsis and moderate Hutus.
Following the first wave of massacres, Rwandan forces manage to ... read more



WORLD WAR II
1945
Japanese battleship Yamato is sunk by Allied forces

On April 7, 1945, the Japanese battleship Yamato, one of the greatest battleships
of its time, is sunk in Japan’s first major counteroffensive in the struggle for Okinawa.
Weighing 72,800 tons and outfitted with nine 18.1-inch guns, the battleship Yamato
was Japan’s only hope of ... read more



U.S. PRESIDENTS
1961
JFK lobbies Congress to help save historic sites in Egypt

On April 7, 1961, President John F. Kennedy sends a letter to Congress in which
he recommends the U.S. participate in an international campaign to preserve
ancient temples and historic monuments in the Nile Valley of Egypt. The campaign,
initiated by UNESCO, was designed to save ... read more




WESTWARD EXPANSION
1805
Lewis and Clark depart Fort Mandan

After a long winter, the Lewis and Clark expedition departs its camp among the
Mandan tribe and resumes its journey West. The Corps of Discovery had begun
its voyage the previous spring, and it arrived at the large Mandan and Minnetaree
villages along the upper Missouri River ... read more

Hank Aaron breaks Babe Ruth’s all-time home run record



1974
April 08



"Hammerin" Hank Aaron



On April 8, 1974, Hank Aaron of the Atlanta Braves hits his 715th career home run,
breaking Babe Ruth’s legendary record of 714 homers. A crowd of 53,775 people,
the largest in the history of Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium, was with Aaron that night
to cheer when he hit a 4th inning pitch off the Los Angeles Dodgers’ Al Downing.
However, as Aaron was an African American who had received death threats and
racist hate mail during his pursuit of one of baseball’s most distinguished records,
the achievement was bittersweet.

Henry Louis Aaron Jr., born in Mobile, Alabama, on February 5, 1934, made his
Major League debut in 1954 with the Milwaukee Braves, just seven years after
Jackie Robinson broke baseball’s color barrier and became the first African American
to play in the majors. Aaron, known as hard working and quiet, was the last
Negro league player to also compete in the Major Leagues. In 1957, with
characteristically little fanfare, Aaron, who primarily played right field, was named
the National League’s Most Valuable Player as the Milwaukee Braves won the pennant.
A few weeks later, his three home runs in the World Series helped his team triumph
over the heavily favored New York Yankees. Although “Hammerin’ Hank” specialized
in home runs, he was also an extremely dependable batter, and by the end of his
career he held baseball’s career record for most runs batted in: 2,297.

Aaron spent his 23-year big league career with two organizations. He was with the
Braves from 1954 to 1974—first in Milwaukee and then in Atlanta, when the franchise
moved in 1966—and closed it out with two seasons back in Milwaukee for the Brewers.

Aaron hung up his cleats in 1976 with 755 career home runs—a record that stood until
2007, when it was broken by controversial slugger Barry Bonds (Bonds admitted to
using steroids in 2011). Aaron's achievements didn't end when his career did, though.
He went on to become one of baseball’s first African American executives, with the
Atlanta Braves, and a leading spokesperson for minority hiring. Hank Aaron was
inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1982. He died on January 22, 2021,
at age 86.










ALSO ON THIS DAY



SPORTS
1989
Pitcher Jim Abbott, born without right hand, makes MLB debut

On April 8, 1989, California Angels rookie pitcher Jim Abbott,
who was born without a right hand, makes his Major League Baseball
debut in a 7-0 loss to the Seattle Mariners. His debut generates
a buzz throughout the sports world. "Maybe I was unnerved
by all the attention," ... read more



SPORTS
1975
Frank Robinson becomes first Black manager in MLB

On April 8, 1975, against the New York Yankees in Cleveland,
the Indians' Frank Robinson becomes the first African American
to manage a game in Major League Baseball. Robinson, who
also bats second, homers in his first at-bat in Cleveland's 5-3 win.
Nearly 28 years earlier, the ... read more



AFRICA
2009
Somali pirates hijack Maersk Alabama ship

Pirates had not captured a ship sailing under the American flag
since the 1820s until April 8, 2009, when the MV Maersk Alabama
was hijacked off the coast of Somalia. The high-profile incident
drew worldwide attention to the problem of piracy, commonly
believed to be a thing of ... read more



1990S
1990
18-year-old Ryan White, national symbol of the AIDS crisis, dies

On April 8, 1990, 18-year-old Ryan White dies of pneumonia,
due to having contracted AIDS from a blood transfusion. He had
been given six months to live in December of 1984 but defied
expectations and lived for five more years, during which time
his story helped educate the ... read more



SPACE EXPLORATION
1993
Astronaut Ellen Ochoa becomes the first Hispanic woman in space

On April 8, 1993, the space shuttle Discovery lifts off from the
Kennedy Space Center. On board is astronaut Ellen Ochoa,
soon to become the first Hispanic woman in space. Ochoa
started at NASA in 1988 after receiving a doctorate in electrical
engineering from Stanford ... read more



CRIME
2005
Olympic Park bomber Eric Rudolph agrees to plead guilty

Eric Rudolph agrees to plead guilty to a series of bombings,
including the fatal bombing at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta,
in order to avoid the death penalty. He later cited his
anti-abortion and anti-homosexual views as motivation for
the bombings.  Eric Robert Rudolph was born ... read more

“Chicago Eight” plead not guilty to federal conspiracy charges


1969
April 09







The Chicago Eight, indicted on federal charges of conspiracy to incite a riot at the 1968
Democratic Convention in Chicago, plead not guilty. The defendants included David Dellinger
of the National Mobilization Committee (NMC); Rennie Davis and Thomas Hayden of the
Students for a Democratic Society (SDS); Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, founders of the
Youth International Party (“Yippies”); Bobby Seale of the Black Panthers; and two lesser
known activists, Lee Weiner and John Froines.

They were charged with conspiracy to cross state lines with intent to incite a riot.
Attorneys William Kunstler and Leonard Weinglass represented all but Seale. The trial,
presided over by Judge Julius Hoffman, turned into a circus as the defendants and
their attorneys used the court as a platform to attack Nixon, the war, racism and
oppression. Their tactics were so disruptive that at one point Judge Hoffman ordered
Seale gagged and strapped to his chair. (Seale was eventually tried separately.)
When the trial ended in February 1970, Hoffman found the defendants and their
attorneys guilty of 175 counts of contempt of court and sentenced them to terms
ranging from two to four years. Although declaring the defendants not guilty of
conspiracy, the jury found all but Froines and Weiner guilty of intent to riot. The
others were each sentenced to five years and fined $5,000. However, none of the
defendants served time because in 1972 a Court of Appeals overturned the criminal
convictions and eventually most of the contempt charges were also dropped.





ALSO ON THIS DAY




CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT
1947
The Journey of Reconciliation—considered the first Freedom Ride—sets out from D.C.

On April 9, 1947, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) sends 16 Black and
white activists on a bus ride through the American South to test a recent
Supreme Court decision striking down segregation on interstate bus travel.
The so-called Journey of Reconciliation, which lasted ... read more



ART, LITERATURE, AND FILM HISTORY
1962
Rita Moreno becomes the first Hispanic woman to win an Oscar

On April 9, 1962, Puerto Rican actress Rita Moreno becomes the first
Hispanic woman to win an Oscar, for her role of Anita in West Side Story
(1961).  Moreno, who was born in Puerto Rico in 1931 and grew up in
Long Island, New York, began acting at a young age, landing her first ... read more



MIDDLE EAST
2003
Baghdad falls to U.S. forces

On April 9, 2003, just three weeks into the invasion of Iraq, U.S. forces
pull down a bronze statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad’s Firdos Square,
symbolizing the end of the Iraqi president’s long, often brutal reign, and
a major early victory for the United States. Dramatic ... read more








GREAT BRITAIN
2005
Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles wed

Nearly eight years after Princess Diana’s death in a car crash was mourned the
world over, Prince Charles, her widower and heir to the British throne, weds his
longtime mistress, Camilla Parker Bowles. The marriage, a private civil ceremony,
took place at Windsor Guildhall, 30 ... read more




SPACE EXPLORATION
1959
NASA introduces America’s first astronauts

On April 9, 1959, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
introduces America’s first astronauts to the press: Scott Carpenter,
L. Gordon Cooper Jr., John H. Glenn Jr., Virgil “Gus” Grissom, Walter Schirra Jr.,
Alan Shepard Jr. and Donald Slayton. The seven men ... read more







CIVIL WAR
1865
Robert E. Lee surrenders

In Appomattox Court House, Virginia, on April 9, 1865, Robert E. Lee surrenders
his 28,000 Confederate troops to Union General Ulysses S. Grant, effectively
ending the American Civil War. Forced to abandon the Confederate capital of
Richmond, blocked from joining the surviving ... read more

Bataan Death March begins



1942
April 10







The day after the surrender of the main Philippine island of Luzon to the Japanese,
the 75,000 Filipino and American troops captured on the Bataan Peninsula begin a
forced march to a prison camp near Cabanatuan. During this infamous trek, known
as the “Bataan Death March,” the prisoners were forced to march 85 miles in six days,
with only one meal of rice during the entire journey. By the end of the march, which
was punctuated with atrocities committed by the Japanese guards, hundreds of
Americans and many more Filipinos had died.

The day after Japan bombed the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, the Japanese invasion
of the Philippines began. Within a month, the Japanese had captured Manila, the capital
of the Philippines, and the U.S. and Filipino defenders of Luzon were forced to retreat
to the Bataan Peninsula. For the next three months, the combined U.S.-Filipino army,
under the command of U.S. General Jonathan Wainwright, held out impressively despite
a lack of naval and air support.

Finally, on April 7, with his army crippled by starvation and disease, Wainwright began
withdrawing as many troops as possible to the island fortress of Corregidor in Manila Bay.
However, two days later, 75,000 Allied troops were trapped by the Japanese and forced
to surrender. The next day, the Bataan Death March began. Of those who survived to
reach the Japanese prison camp near Cabanatuan, few lived to celebrate
U.S. General Douglas MacArthur’s liberation of Luzon in 1945.

n the Philippines, homage is paid to the victims of the Bataan Death March every April
on Bataan Day, a national holiday that sees large groups of Filipinos solemnly re-walking
parts of the death route.





ALSO ON THIS DAY




SPORTS
1975
Lee Elder becomes first Black golfer to play in Masters

On April 10, 1975, 41-year-old Lee Elder becomes the first Black golfer
to play in the Masters, considered the most prestigious event in the
sport. Elder shoots 37 on the front and back nine for a 74 at the
Augusta (Georgia) National Golf Club and trails leader
Bobby Nichols by ... read more



SPORTS
1961
South African Gary Player becomes first international Masters champion

On April 10, 1961, Gary Player, a 25-year-old South African, beats defending
champion Arnold Palmer and amateur Charles Coe by a stroke to become
the first international champion at the Masters. Palmer double-bogeys the
18th hole at Augusta National to give Player the win. As ... read more




MEXICO
1919
Revolutionary leader Emiliano Zapata assassinated in Mexico

Emiliano Zapata, a leader of peasants and indigenous people during the
Mexican Revolution, is ambushed and shot to death in Morelos by
government forces. Born a peasant in 1879, Zapata was forced into the
Mexican army in 1908 following his attempt to recover village lands
taken ... read more




19TH CENTURY
1866
ASPCA is founded

On April 10, 1866, the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty
to Animals (ASPCA) is founded in New York City by philanthropist and
diplomat Henry Bergh, 54. In 1863, Bergh had been appointed by
President Abraham Lincoln to a diplomatic post at the Russian
court of Czar ... read more








ART, LITERATURE, AND FILM HISTORY
1906
O. Henry’s “The Gift of the Magi” is published

O. Henry’s second short story collection, The Four Million, is published.
The collection includes one of his most beloved stories, "The Gift of the Magi,"
about a poor but devoted couple who each sacrifice their most valuable
possession to buy a ... read more





ART, LITERATURE, AND FILM HISTORY
1970
Paul McCartney announces the breakup of the Beatles

The legendary rock band the Beatles spent the better part of three years
breaking up in the late 1960s, and even longer than that hashing out who
did what and why. And by the spring of 1970, there was little more than a
tangled set of business relationships keeping the group ... read more

Apollo 13 launches to the moon



1970
April 11








On April 11, 1970, Apollo 13, the third lunar landing mission, is successfully launched
from Cape Canaveral, Florida, carrying astronauts James A. Lovell, John L. Swigert and
Fred W. Haise. The spacecraft’s destination was the Fra Mauro highlands of the moon,
where the astronauts were to explore the Imbrium Basin and conduct geological experiments.
After an oxygen tank exploded on the evening of April 13, however, the new mission
objective became to get the Apollo 13 crew home alive.

At 9:00 p.m. EST on April 13, Apollo 13 was just over 200,000 miles from Earth.
The crew had just completed a television broadcast and was inspecting Aquarius,
the Landing Module (LM). The next day, Apollo 13 was to enter the moon’s orbit,
and soon after, Lovell and Haise would become the fifth and sixth men to walk on
the moon. At 9:08 p.m., these plans were shattered when an explosion rocked the
spacecraft. Oxygen tank No. 2 had blown up, disabling the normal supply of oxygen,
electricity, light, and water. Lovell reported to mission control:
“Houston, we’ve had a problem here,” and the crew scrambled to find out what
had happened. Several minutes later, Lovell looked out of the left-hand window and
saw that the spacecraft was venting a gas, which turned out to be the
Command Module’s (CM) oxygen.
The landing mission was aborted.

As the CM lost pressure, its fuel cells also died, and one hour after the explosion mission
control instructed the crew to move to the LM, which had sufficient oxygen, and use it
as a lifeboat. The CM was shut down but would have to be brought back on-line for
Earth reentry. The LM was designed to ferry astronauts from the orbiting CM to the
moon’s surface and back again; its power supply was meant to support two people
for 45 hours. If the crew of Apollo 13 were to make it back to Earth alive, the LM would
have to support three men for at least 90 hours and successfully navigate more
than 200,000 miles of space.
The crew and mission control faced a formidable task.

To complete its long journey, the LM needed energy and cooling water. Both were to be
conserved at the cost of the crew, who went on one-fifth water rations and would later
endure cabin temperatures that hovered a few degrees above freezing. Removal of
carbon dioxide was also a problem, because the square lithium hydroxide canisters
from the CM were not compatible with the round openings in the LM environmental
system. Mission control built an impromptu adapter out of materials known to be
onboard, and the crew successfully copied their model.

Navigation was also a major problem. The LM lacked a sophisticated navigational system,
and the astronauts and mission control had to work out by hand the changes in propulsion
and direction needed to take the spacecraft home. On April 14, Apollo 13 swung around
the moon. Swigert and Haise took pictures, and Lovell talked with mission control about
the most difficult maneuver, a five-minute engine burn that would give the LM enough
speed to return home before its energy ran out. Two hours after rounding the far side
of the moon, the crew, using the sun as an alignment point, fired the LM’s small descent
engine.
The procedure was a success; Apollo 13 was on its way home.

For the next three days, Lovell, Haise and Swigert huddled in the freezing lunar module.
Haise developed a case of the flu. Mission control spent this time frantically trying to develop
a procedure that would allow the astronauts to restart the CM for reentry. On April 17,
a last-minute navigational correction was made, this time using Earth as an alignment guide.
Then the re-pressurized CM was successfully powered up after its long, cold sleep. The
heavily damaged service module was shed, and one hour before re-entry the LM was
disengaged from the CM. Just before 1 p.m., the spacecraft reentered Earth’s atmosphere.
Mission control feared that the CM’s heat shields were damaged in the accident, but after
four minutes of radio silence Apollo 13‘s parachutes were spotted, and the astronauts
splashed down safely into the Pacific Ocean.









ALSO ON THIS DAY



SPORTS
1921
First live sporting event broadcast on radio

On April 11, 1921, KDKA in Pittsburgh broadcasts the first live sporting
event on the radio, a boxing match between Johnny Ray and Johnny Dundee.
Pittsburgh Daily Post sports editor Florent Gibson calls the event,
about four months before KDKA's Harold Arlin announces the first ... read more



21ST CENTURY
2015
Barack Obama and Raúl Castro meet in Panama

For the first time in over 50 years, the presidents of the United States
and Cuba meet on April 11, 2015. Barack Obama and Raúl Castro,
President of Cuba and brother of Fidel Castro, with whom the United States
broke off diplomatic contact in 1961, shook hands and expressed a ... read more



AFRICA
1979
Ugandan dictator Idi Amin overthrown

On April 11, 1979, Ugandan dictator Idi Amin flees the Ugandan capital of Kampala
as Tanzanian troops and forces of the Uganda National Liberation Front close in.
Two days later, Kampala fell and a coalition government of former exiles took power.
Amin, chief of the Ugandan army ... read more



INVENTIONS & SCIENCE
1888
Henry Ford marries Clara Jane Bryant

On April 11, 1888, 24-year-old Henry Ford marries Clara Jane Bryant on her 22nd
birthday at her parent’s home in Greenfield Township, Michigan. Clara Ford would
prove to be a big supporter of her husband’s business ideas: Fifty years later,
Henry Ford—who by then had founded the ...read more




FRANCE
1814
Napoleon abdicates the throne and is exiled to Elba

On April 11, 1814, Napoleon Bonaparte, emperor of France and one of the greatest
military leaders in history, abdicates the throne, and, in the Treaty of Fontainebleau,
is banished to the Mediterranean island of Elba. The future emperor was born in
Ajaccio, Corsica, on August 15 ... read more




SPORTS
2004
Phil Mickelson wins first major at Masters

On April 11, 2004, Phil Mickelson wins the Masters Golf Tournament at Augusta National
Golf Club, his first major championship in nearly 12 years as a professional golfer.
A native of California, Mickelson graduated from Arizona State University,
where he won three NCAA ... read more

Bill Haley and His Comets record
“Rock Around The Clock”


1954
April 12






On April 12, 1954— Bill Haley and His Comets recorded “(We’re Gonna) Rock Around The Clock.”
If rock and roll was a social and cultural revolution, then “(We’re Gonna) Rock Around The Clock”
was its Declaration of Independence. And if Bill Haley was not exactly the revolution’s
Thomas Jefferson, it may be fair to call him its John Hancock.

Bill Haley put his enormous signature on rock and roll history during the final 40 minutes of a
three-hour recording session in New York City—a session set up not for the recording of
“(We’re Gonna) Rock Around The Clock,” but of a song called “Thirteen Women
(and Only One Man in Town).” It took the group nearly all of their scheduled session to get a
useable take of “Thirteen Women,” a song that was entirely new to them but was chosen as
the A-side of their upcoming single by their new record label, Decca. With time running out
and no chance of extending the session, Haley and his Comets were eager to lay down the
song they’d been playing live for many months to enthusiastic audience response. The lead
guitarist brought in for the session, Danny Cedrone, had not had time to work up a new solo
for the instrumental break on “(We’re Gonna) Rock Around The Clock,” so he repurposed one
he’d used on a Haley recording two years earlier called “Rock This Joint.” Cedrone was paid $31
for his work that evening, which included performing what is still recognized as one of the
greatest guitar solos of all time.

Haley and the band had time for only two takes, and in the first, they played so loud that Haley’s
vocals were almost inaudible on tape. In an era before multi-track recording, the only solution was
to do a second take with minimal accompaniment and hope for the best. Later, a Decca engineer
painstakingly spliced together segments from both takes—a near-miracle given the technology
of 1954. The finished version was judged good enough to include as the B-side on “Thirteen Women,”
which was released in May 1954.

The single sold a respectable but underwhelming 75,000 copies in the coming months, and was
destined to be forgotten until a 10-year-old kid in Los Angeles flipped “Thirteen Women” and fell
in love with the now-famous B-side. That kid, Peter Ford, happened to be the son of actor Glenn Ford,
who was slated to star in the upcoming teenage-delinquency drama Blackboard Jungle. Peter turned
his father on to “(We’re Gonna) Rock Around The Clock,” and soon enough, the song was chosen to
play over the opening credits of Blackboard Jungle, which is how it became a pop sensation, selling
a million copies in a single month in the spring of 1955.





ALSO ON THIS DAY




WORLD WAR I
1917
Canadians capture Vimy Ridge in northern France

After three days of fierce combat and over 10,000 casualties suffered, the
Canadian Corps seizes the previously German-held Vimy Ridge in northern
France on April 12, 1917. Many historians have pointed to the victory at
Vimy Ridge during World War I as a moment of greatness for ... read more




CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT
1963
Martin Luther King Jr. is jailed; writes "Letter from a Birmingham Jail"

On April 3, 1963, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., his Southern Christian
Leadership Conference and their partners in the Alabama Christian Movement
for Human Rights led a campaign of protests, marches and sit-ins against
segregation in Birmingham, Alabama. By April 12, King ... read more




CIVIL WAR
1864
Hundreds of Union soldiers killed in Fort Pillow Massacre

During the American Civil War, Major General Nathan Bedford Forrest’s Confederate
raiders attack the isolated Union garrison at Fort Pillow, Tennessee, overlooking the
Mississippi River. The fort, an important part of the Confederate river defense system,
was captured by federal ... read more



SPACE EXPLORATION
1961
Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin becomes the first man in space

On April 12, 1961, aboard the spacecraft Vostok 1, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Alekseyevich
Gagarin becomes the first human being to travel into space. During the flight,
the 27-year-old test pilot and industrial technician also became the first man to
orbit the planet, a feat ... read more




SPACE EXPLORATION
1981
The space shuttle Columbia is launched for the first time

The space shuttle Columbia is launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, becoming the
first reusable manned spacecraft to travel into space. Piloted by astronauts
Robert L. Crippen and John W. Young, the Columbia undertook a 54-hour space
flight of 36 orbits before successfully ... read more




CIVIL WAR
1861
Civil War begins as Confederate forces fire on Fort Sumter

The bloodiest four years in American history begin when Confederate shore
batteries under General P.G.T. Beauregard open fire on Union-held Fort Sumter
in South Carolina’s Charleston Harbor on April 12, 1861. During the next 34 hours,
50 Confederate guns and mortars launched more ... read more