1652 ~ The Dutch established a settlement at Cape Town, South Africa.

1770 ~ Birthday of William Wordsworth, one of the 'Lake Poets'.

1795 ~ France adopted the meter as the unit of length and the base of the metric system.

1860 ~ Birthday of W.K. Kellog, who started a business named ‘Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flake Company’.

1908 ~ Birthday of Percy Faith, Composer.

1915 ~ Birthday of Billie Holiday, Jazz Singer

1920 ~ Birthday of Ravi Shankar, Sitar player & Composer.

1945 ~ The Japanese battleship ‘Yamato’, the world’s largest battleship, was sunk during the battle for Okinawa.

1949 ~ The musical ‘South Pacific’ by Rogers and Hammerstein opened on Broadway.

1975 ~ Beverly Sills made her debut at the Metropolitan Opera in Gioacchino Rossini's "Siege of Corinth". What a voice!

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1513 ~ Juan Ponce de Leon claimed Florida for Spain.

1692 ~ Birthday of Giuseppe Tartini, Voilinist & Composer.

1730 ~ 1st Jewish congregation in US forms synagogue, "Shearith Israel, NYC"

1850 ~ Birthday of William Henry Welch, who, as the first dean of the medical school at Johns Hopkins University, played a major role in the introduction of modern medical practice to the U.S.

1939 ~ Italy invaded Albania. King Zog I flees.

1953 ~ Dag Hammarskjold chosen as Secretary-General of UN

1963 ~ At the 35th Academy Awards, "Lawrence of Arabia", Anne Bancroft & Gregory Peck win.

1966 ~ Leonid Brezhnev elected Secretary-General of USSR Communist Party.

1974 ~ Hank Aaron hits 715th home run breaking Babe Ruth's record.

1975 ~ Frank Robinson became first black manager of a major league baseball team.

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193 ~ Lucius Septimius Severus proclaimed Roman emperor. April was a good month for him.

1682 ~ Robert La Salle claimed the lower Mississippi River and all lands that touch it for France.

1865 ~ General Robert E. Lee and his 26,765 troops surrendered to Union General Grant. This event was effectively the end of the U.S. Civil War.

1906 ~ Birthday of Antal Dorati, Conductor.

1919 ~ Birthday of John Presper Eckert, who worked with John Mauchly to build what many think was the first general-purpose electronic digital computer, ENIAC. (J.A.).

1926 ~ Birthday of Hugh Hefner, founder of Playboy magazine.

1928 ~ Birthday of Tom Lehrer, one of comedy's great paradoxes: a respected Harvard mathematics professor by day, at night he was among the foremost song satirists of the postwar era.

1933 ~ Birthday of Jean-Paul Belmondo, France's most popular male film star throughout the 1960s.

1940 ~ Germany invaded Norway and Denmark.

1966 ~ Percy Sledge's "When A Man Loves A Woman" was released.

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1633 ~ Bananas appeared on sale in Britain for the first time, in the shop window of Thomas Johnson of Snow Hill, London.

1794 ~ Birthday of Matthew Perry, American Commodore who forced the opening of Japan to the West.

1814 ~ Napoleon was defeated at the Battle of Toulouse by the British and the Spanish. The defeat led to his abdication and exile to Elba.

1865 ~ Birthday of Jack Miner, Naturalist, Author, and bird Conservationist.

1912 ~ RMS Titanic departs Southampton, England on its maiden voyage.

1932 ~ Birthday of Omar Sharif, Actor (Lawrence of Arabia, Doctor Zhivago, Funny Girl ).

1963 ~ The submarine USS Thresher lost at sea, with all hands (129 officers, crewmen and civilian technicians).

1967 ~ The song "Somethin' Stupid" became the first father-daughter song to hit No. 1. The song was performed by Nancy and Frank Sinatra.

1970 ~ Paul McCartney announces that The Beatles have broken up.

1972 ~ United States and the Soviet Union joined some 70 nations in signing an agreement banning biological warfare.

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146 ~ Birthday of Lucius Septimius Severus, Roman emperor. April was a good month for him.

1689 ~ William III and Mary II were crowned as joint sovereigns of Britain.

1775 ~ Last execution for witchcraft in Germany.

1945 ~ American soldiers liberated the notorious Nazi concentration camp, Buchenwald, in Germany.

1947 ~ Jackie Robinson made his major-league debut, playing in an exhibition between the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Yankees.

1961 ~ The trial began in Israel of Adolf Eichmann, the man accused of helping Hitler in his plan to exterminate the Jews.

1968 ~ The Civil Rights Act was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson.

1970 ~ Apollo 13 was launched on a mission to the moon that was disrupted when an explosion crippled the spacecraft. Cmdr Swigert reported: "Houston, we've had a problem". The astronauts managed to return safely.

1991 ~ The U.N. Security Council announced a formal end to the Persian Gulf War.

1992 ~ The musical "Miss Saigon," denounced by detractors as racist and sexist, opened on Broadway. Sound familiar?

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65 ~ Death of Lucius Seneca, Philosopher & Statesman.

1204 ~ The Fourth Crusade sacks Constantinople.

1606 ~ England adopts the Union Jack as its flag.

1633 ~ Galileo is convicted of heresy.

1857 ~ Gustave Flaubert's "Madame Bovary" published.

1861 ~ The American Civil War begins with Confederate forces firing on Fort Sumter, in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina.

1877 ~ British annex Transvaal, South Africa.

1954 ~ The Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) began hearings to revoke Robert Oppenheimer's security clearance.

1961 ~ Yuri Gagarin is the first man in space.

1984 ~ Arthur Scargill vetoes national ballot on NUM strike. This brought about the destruction of his union.

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1205 ~ Battle of Adrianople between Bulgars and Crusaders. Ever notice how large the Balkans figure in European history?

1629 ~ Birthday of Christiaan Huygens, Mathematician.

1828 ~ Noah Webster copyrights the first edition of his dictionary.

1865 ~ Abraham Lincoln is assassinated by John Wilkes Booth.

1866 ~ Birthday of Anne Sullivan, special educator (Hellen Keller).

1899 ~ Birthday of Arnold Toynbee, Historian.

1904 ~ Birthday of Sir John Gielgud, Actor.

1940 ~ Birthday of Loretta Lynn, Singer.

1962 ~ Georges Pompidou becomes PM of France.

2000 ~ Kenneth Noye, who carried out a "road rage" killing just off M25, received a life sentence.

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1452 ~ Birthday of Leonardo da Vinci, Renaissance Man.

1688 ~ Birthday of Johann Friedrich Fasch, Composer.

1843 ~ Birthday of Henry James, Author.

1871 ~ "Wild Bill" Hickok became the marshal of Abilene, Kansas.

1880 ~ William Gladstone became PM of England.

1912 ~ The RMS Titanic sank at 2:27 AM.

1924 ~ Rand McNally published its first road atlas.

1955 ~ Ray Kroc opened his first McDonald’s restaurant in Des Plaines, Illinois.

1989 ~ 96 people die and more than 200 injured at Hillsborough, in Britain's worst-ever sporting disaster.

1998 ~ Pol Pot died, and thereby evaded prosecution for the deaths of 2 million Cambodians.

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1705 ~ Queen Anne of England knighted Isaac Newton.

1746 ~ Battle of Culloden, in Scotland, the last battle fought on British soil.

1889 ~ Birthday of Charlie Chaplin, Actor, Writer.

1917 ~ Vladmir Lenin returns from exile.

1921 ~ Birthday of Peter Ustinov, Actor, Writer.

1924 ~ Birthday of Henry Mancini, film and TV Composer.

1927 ~ Birthday of Joseph Ratzinger, Cardinal.

1943 ~ Dr. Albert Hofmann discovers the psychic effects of LSD.

1947 ~ Birthday of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Athlete.

2002 ~ Sony Music Entertainment filed a complaint against the Dixie Chicks for breach of contract.

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1524 ~ Giovanni da Verrazano discovered New York harbor.

1622 ~ Birthday of Henry Vaughan, Metaphysical Poet.

1837 ~ Birthday of J.P. Morgan, Financier.

1861 ~ Virginia secedes from the U.S.

1894 ~ Birthday of Nikita Khrushchev, Soviet Leader.

1903 ~ Birthday of Gregor Piatigorsky, Cellist.

1924 ~ Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios is formed.

1961 ~ Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba begins.

1969 ~ Czechoslovak Communist Party chairman Alexander Dubcek is deposed, bringing to and end the “Prague Spring”.

1984 ~ Yvonne Fletcher is killed by gunfire from Libyan embassy in London. Ten other people were wounded.

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1521 ~ Martin Luther confronted the emperor Charles V in the Diet of Worms and refused to retract his views that led to his excommunication.

1775 ~ American revolutionaries Paul Revere, William Dawes and Samuel Prescott rode though the towns of Massachusetts giving the warning that "the British are coming."

1819 ~ Birthday of Franz von Suppe, Composer.

1857 ~ Birthday of Clarence Darrow, Lawyer.

1882 ~ Birthday of Leopold Stokowski, one of the greatest conductors of all time.

1946 ~ Birthday of Hayley Mills, Actress.

1949 ~ The Republic of Ireland was established.

1954 ~ Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser seized power in Egypt.

1980 ~ Rhodesia became in independent nation of Zimbabwe.

1984 ~ Michael Jackson went into surgery to repair damage done after his hair caught fire during the filming of a Pepsi commercial.

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1587 ~ Sir Francis Drake sinks the Spanish fleet in Cadiz Harbor.

1770 ~ Captain James Cook first spots Australia.

1772 ~ Birthday of David Ricardo, Economist.

1861 ~ A clash between pro-South civilians and Union troops in Baltimore, Maryland resulted in what is commonly accepted to be the first bloodshed of the American Civil War.

1927 ~ Birthday of Erma Bombeck, humorist.

1943 ~ German troops enter the Warsaw ghetto to round up the remaining Jews, starting the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

1956 ~ Grace Kelly marries Rainier III of Monaco.

1993 ~ A 50-day siege of the Branch Davidian complex outside Waco, Texas ends when a fire broke out. Eighty-one people died.

1995 ~ In retaliation for the deaths of the Branch Davidians in 1993, the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma is bombed, killing 168.

1999 ~ The German Parliament returns to Berlin.

Today is Primrose Day in England. Primroses are placed on the statue of Benjamin Disraeli in Parliament Square, London on the anniversary of his death in1881.

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1139 ~ The Second Lateran Council opens. It was at this council that the prohibition of marriage by religious was formalized.

1745 ~ Birthday of Phillip Pinel, French physician who pioneered in the humane treatment of the mentally ill.

1889 ~ Birthday of Adolf Hitler, Dictator.

1908 ~ Birthday of Lionel Hampton, Musician.

1928 ~ Birthday of Gerald S. Hawkins, Astronomer and Mathematician who identified Stonehenge to be a prehistoric astronomical observatory.

1951 ~ General MacArthur addressed the joint session of Congress after being relieved by U.S. President Truman.

1968 ~ English politician Enoch Powell makes controversial “Rivers of Blood Speech”.

1983 ~ Korean Airlines Flight 007 was shot down over Soviet airspace.

1984 ~ Britain announced that its administration of Hong Kong would cease in 1997.

1999 ~ Columbine High School massacre: Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold open fire in their high school leaving 15 dead and 23 wounded.

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1816 ~ Birthday of Charlotte Brontë, Author.

1838 ~ Birthday of John Muir, Naturalist.

1899 ~ Birthday of Randall Thompson, Composer.

1912 ~ The New York Giants and New York Yankees play an exhibition game to benefit survivors of the Titanic.

1915 ~ Birthday of Anthony Quinn, Actor

1918 ~ Manfred von Richthofen, the “Red Barron” lost in action.

1926 ~ Birthday of Elizabeth Windsor, Queen of England.

1960 ~ Brazil inaugurated its new capital, Brasilia, transferring the seat of national government from Rio de Janeiro.

1970 ~ Hutt River Province secedes from the Commonwealth of Australia.

1994 ~ The first discovery of extrasolar planets are announced by astronomer Alexander Wolszczan.

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1529 ~ Spain and Portugal divided the eastern hemisphere in Treaty of Saragosa.

1658 ~ Birthday of Giuseppe Torelli, Composer.

1724 ~ Birthday of Immanuel Kant, Philosopher.

1864 ~ The U.S. Congress mandated that coins minted as U.S. currency bear the inscription "In God We Trust".

1870 ~ Birthday of Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (Lenin), Dictator.

1904 ~ Birthday of J. Robert Oppenheimer, Physicist.

1915 ~ At the Second Battle Ypres the Germans introduced the use of poison gas.

1916 ~ Birthday of Yehudi Menuhin, Musician.

1970 ~ First Earth Day led to many apocalyptic predictions.

2000 ~ Elian Gonzalez was reunited with his father. He had to be taken from his Miami relatives by U.S. agents in a predawn raid.

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