SPEEKERBOXX

 What Happened Today... April 1st

1875 - The Times of London became the first newspaper to print a daily weather chart.

1948 - The blockade of Berlin started when the Russians began checking all road and rail traffic between Berlin and the Western Zones.

 What Happened Today... April 2nd

1889 - Charles Hall patented aluminium.

1982 - Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands and overthrew the British administration; Britain responded by sending a task force to retake the islands.

1990 - President Saddam Hussein threatened to incinerate half of Israel with advanced chemical weapons if it joined a conspiracy against Iraq.

What Happened Today... April 3rd

1882 - After more than 15 years of robbing banks, outlaw Jesse James was shot in the back at St Joseph, Missouri, by Robert Ford, one of his own gang.

1933 - The first flight over the peak of Mount Everest in the Himalayas was made by four Britons in two Westland biplanes.

1996 - A plane carrying United States Commerce Secretary Ron Brown crashed in Croatia, killing all 29 passengers and six crew members aboard.

 What Happened Today... April 4th

1905 - An earthquake in Kangra India killed 370,000 people.

1932 - After 5 years of research, Professor C.G. King, of the University of Pittsburgh, isolated vitamin C.

1945 - Hungary was liberated from Nazi occupation.

1949 - The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) treaty was signed.

1969 - Dr. Denton Cooley implanted the first temporary artificial heart.

  What Happened Today... April 5th

1955 - In England, Winston Churchill resigned as prime minister.

1988 - Arab gunmen seized a Kuwait Airways Boeing 747 carrying 115 passengers and killed two Kuwaitis.

 What Happened Today... April 6th

648 BC - The earliest total solar eclipse -- chronicled by Greeks -- was recorded.

1580 - Earthquake badly damaged St Paul's Cathedral and other churches in London.

1992 - "Barney and Friends" premiered on PBS.

  What Happened Today... April 7th

1864 - The United States first camel race was held in Sacramento, California.

1943 - Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini met for an Axis conference in Salzburg.

1945 - United States navy aircraft sank Japan's largest battleship, the Yamato.

  What Happened Today... April 8th

1513 - Florida was discovered and claimed for Spain by Juan Ponce de Leon.

1968 - The Beatles went gold with the single, "Lady Madonna".

  What Happened Today... April 9th

715 - Constantine ended his reign as pope.

1838 - The National Galley opened in London.

1940 - Germany invaded Norway and Denmark during World War II.

1941 - The PGA established the Golf Hall of Fame.

1967 - The first Boeing 737 rolled out.

1969 - The supersonic aircraft Concorde made its maiden flight, from Bristol to Fairford in England.

1970 - Paul McCartney announced the official split of the Beatles.

1981 - In Northern Ireland, IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands won a seat in the British parliament in the Fermanagh and South Tyrone by-election.

What Happened Today... April 10th

1944 - A British midget submarine secretly entered Bergen harbour in Norway and sank the German merchant ship Barenfels.

1970 - Paul Mac Cartney announced he was leaving the Beatles.

1972 - More than 50 countries signed a treaty outlawing the stockpiling of biological weapons.

1992 - A huge Irish Republican Army bomb exploded in London's financial district; three people were killed and 91 injured.

  What Happened Today... April 11th

1941 - Germany blitzed Conventry, England.

1965 - 40 tornadoes struck the United States Midwest, killing 272 people and injuring 5,000.

1970 - Apollo 13 was launched to the moon; unable to land, it returned in 6 days.

1986 - Halley's Comet made its closest approach to Earth.

 What Happened Today... April 12th

1796 - Napoleon's forces defeated the Austrian and Sardinian armies at the end of the Battle of Montenotte; it was Napoleon's first significant victory.

1963 - Bob Dylan made his first solo concert appearance at Town Hall in New York City.

1981 - The world's first re-usable space shuttle Columbia was launched at Cape Canaveral.

 What Happened Today... April 13th

1829 - The English Parliament granted freedom of religion to Catholics.

1932 - The German government banned the Nazi paramilitary groups the SS and SA.

1959 - A Vatican edict forbids Roman Catholics for voting for Communists.

1990 - The Soviet Union admitted for the first time that it was responsible for the 1940 massacre of thousands of Polish officers at Katyn, Poland.

 What Happened Today... April 14th

1028 - Henry III, son of Conrad, was elected king of the Germans.

1849 - Hungary declared itself independent of Austria with Louis Kossuth as its leader.

1981 - NASA's space shuttle Columbia made a perfect landing at Edwards Air Force Base on its maiden flight.

1985 - Bernhard Langer shot a 282, winning the Masters golf tournament. Surprisingly, it was the West German’s first official year as a member of the PGA Tour.

1993 - British archaeologists unearthed a 7,000-year-old seafarers village on Dalma Island in the United Arab Emirates. They said it was the first major settlement of the Ubaid period in that area.

What Happened Today... April 15th

1450 - The French defeated the English at the Battle of Formigny in the last phase of the 100 Years' War.

1912 - At 2:27 a.m., the ‘unsinkable’ luxury liner, "Titanic", sank. Two and a half a total of 1,517 people were lost at sea.

1923 - Insulin, discovered in 1922, became available for general use.

1956 - General Motors announced the first, free piston automobile was developed.

1968 - Two unmanned Soviet satellites, Cosmos 212 and 213, found each other and docked automatically while in Earth's orbit.

What Happened Today... April 16th

1705 - Queen Anne of England knighted Isaac Newton.

1912 - United States pilot Harriet Quimby became the first woman to fly the English Channel.

1922 - The Soviet Union and Germany signed the Treaty of Rapallo, forcing Germany to recognize the Soviet Union, thus restoring diplomatic and trade relations.

1951 - The British submarine Affray sank in the English Channel with the loss of 75 lives.

1964 - Nine men received sentences of between 25 and 30 years for their part in Britain's 1963 Great Train Robbery.

1972 - Apollo 16 was launched to make the fifth manned moon landing.

What Happened Today... April 17th

1492 - Christopher Columbus received a commission from the Spanish monarchy to explore the "western ocean."

1944 - In Italy, Marshal Pietro Badoglio's Cabinet resigned, and he was invited to form a new government.

1969 - Sirhan B. Sirhan was found guilty of the first-degree murder of Robert F. Kennedy, shot while campaigning in California in June 1968.

1970 - The United States spacecraft Apollo 13 splashed down after a near-disastrous trip to the moon.

1977 - Women voted in Liechtenstein for the first time.

What Happened Today... April 19th

1839 - The Treaty of London was signed, establishing recognition of the Kingdom of Belgium by all the states of Europe.

1906 - Pierre Curie, French chemist and physicist, was run over and killed in Paris. Together with his wife, Marie, he had worked on magnetism and radioactivity.

1943 - Polish Jews rose up in the Warsaw ghetto in a failed rebellion against the Nazis.

1967 - The unmanned United States spacecraft Surveyor 3 landed on the moon.

1971 - Russia launched its space station Salyut into earth's orbit.

  What Happened Today... April 20th

1534 - French explorer Jacques Cartier set sail from St. Malo to explore the North American coastline.

1689 - The siege of Londonderry began when supporters of James II attacked the city. The population nearly starved to death before the siege was raised on July 30.

1865 - Safety matches were advertised for the first time.

1916 - Sir Roger Casement, British diplomat who worked to support Irish republicanism, landed in Ireland to incite rebellion against the British; he was captured within hours and hanged for high treason on August 3.

1943 - In World War II, the massacre of Jews in the Warsaw ghetto began.

 What Happened Today... April 21st

753 BC - According to the historian Varro, Romulus founded Rome.

1945 - The last of the German troops pulled out of Bologna, Italy.

1945 - Russian troops reached the suburbs of Berlin.

1967 - A military coup in Athens established the regime of the "Greek Colonels."

1992 - California carried out its first execution in 25 years when double murderer Robert Alton Harris was put to death in the gas chamber.

1994 - A Belfast court cleared Paul Hill of the 1974 murder of a former British soldier, formally absolving him of IRA guerrilla links for which he was wrongfully jailed for 13 years.

  What Happened Today... April 22nd

1838 - The British steamship Sirius became the first to cross the Atlantic from Britain to New York on steam power only.

 1969 - British lone yachtsman Robin Knox-Johnston arrived at Falmouth after completing the first solo non-stop circumnavigation of the Earth in just 312 days.

1970 - The first Earth Day was observed. Using the slogan “Give Earth a Chance,” Earth Day is celebrated on either this anniversary or on the vernal equinox.

What Happened Today... April 23rd

1014 - Brian Boru, high king of Ireland, was killed repelling Viking invaders at the battle of Clontarf.

1564 - The birth of William Shakespeare, England's greatest playwright, is traditionally celebrated on this date. He died on the same date in 1616.

1985 - The Coca-Cola Company of Atlanta, Georgia, announced it was changing its 99-year-old secret formula. New Coke was termed “the most significant soft drink development” in the company’s history. Fans of original Coke didn’t like or buy the new Coke, and it became one of the biggest corporate flops in history.

1992 - McDonald's opened its first fast-food restaurant in the Chinese capital of Beijing.

1997 - The presidents of Russia and China signed a declaration opposing the domination of one superpower in the post-Cold War world

  What Happened Today... April 24th

1898 - Spain declared war on the United States after receiving an ultimatum to withdraw from Cuba.

1916 - The Easter Rising in Dublin, an insurrection aimed at setting up an Irish Republic, began.

1993 - A huge IRA bomb exploded in the heart of London's financial district, killing one person.

 What Happened Today... April 25th

1898 - The United States declared war on Spain.

1945 - The last Boeing B-17 attack against Nazi Germany occurred.

1956 - Elvis Presley's "Heartbreak Hotel" went No. 1.

1990 - The Hubble space telescope was placed into orbit by the shuttle Discovery.

What Happened Today... April 26th

1915 - Italy secretly signed the Pact of London with Britain, France and Russia, which would put them on the side of the allies in World War I.

1942 - At least 1,540 people died in the world's worst mining disaster at a colliery in Benxi, in Japanese-occupied China.

1962 - Britain's first satellite, Ariel I, was launched from Cape Canaveral by a Thor-Delta booster.

1986 - At 1:23 a.m. in Pripyat, Ukraine, the Chernobyl atomic power station exploded. In an attempt to save the 100,000 people living in the area from radiation poisoning, a three-hundred-square-mile area was evacuated. Still, 31 people died and unknown thousands were exposed as the radioactive material spread through the world, carried in the atmosphere.

1994 - South Africa held its first all-race elections for the national assembly and provincial parliaments.

 What Happened Today... April 27th

1880 - The electrical hearing aid was patented by Francis Clarke and M.G. Foster.

1941 - German tanks rolled into Athens in World War II.

1945 - Allies rejected peace offers by German SS chief Heinrich Himmler, insisting on unconditional surrender.

1946 - The first commercial, carrier ship equipped with radar, the "SS African Star", was put in use.

 What Happened Today... April 28th

1932 - A vaccine to fight yellow fever was announced.

1989 - Argentina, hit by hyperinflation, ran out of money, leaving thousands stranded without cash.

 What Happened Today... April 29th

1965 - The Australian government announced it had decided to send troops to Vietnam.

1981 - In England, Peter Sutcliffe admitted he was the Yorkshire Ripper, murderer of 13 women.

1981 - In a whites-only election, the National Party was returned to power in South Africa but with a reduced majority.

  What Happened Today... April 30th

311 - Galerius Valerius Maximianus issued an edict under which Christians were legally recognized in the Roman Empire.

1789 - George Washington was inaugurated as America's first president.

1945 - Adolf Hitler and his wife, Eva Braun, committed suicide in his underground bunker in Berlin; Russian troops penetrated central Berlin, capturing the Reichstag and other government buildings; Allied troops captured Munich and the French crossed the border into Austria.

1980 - In London, armed gunmen seized the Iranian embassy demanding the release of political prisoners in Iran; the siege lasted six days.