Category: Today

On April 27, 1759, English philosopher and author Mary Wollstonecraft was born. Wollstonecraft wrote several important political treatises, including her response to Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790), and her valiant effort in the emancipation of women, A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792).

English philosopher, psychologist, sociologist, and political theorist Herbert Spencer was born in Derby, England, on April 27, 1820. Among Spencer’s most famous books are First Principles, Principles of Ethics (chiefly its first part, The Data of Ethics), The Study of Sociology, The Man versus the State, and two editions of Social Statics. Spencer was an evolutionary theorist as well as a religious and political philosopher, and coiner of the phrase “survival of the fittest.” He called the basic principle of a free political order “The Law of Equal Freedom.”

Wollstonecraft married anarchist philosopher and bookseller William Godwin; the couple begat one daughter, Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus. Mary Wollstonecraft died on September 10, 1797.

Spencer never married, dying on December 8, 1903.

---

On April 26, 1777, Sybil Ludington, aged 16, rode 40 miles to alert American colonial forces to the approach of the British. Her ride was over twice as long as Paul Revere’s more famous effort.

Sybil’s story first appeared in Martha J. Lamb’s History of the City of New York (1880), based on Ludington family oral history, twenty years after Henry Wadsworth Longfellow commemorated Revere in “Paul Revere’s Ride,” a once-popular and quite famous poem. Sybil was commemorated on an 8-cent U.S. Postage Stamp in 1975.

Actual evidence for Miss Ludington’s adventure is slim to none, however.

On April 25, 1792, the French national anthem, “La Marseillaise,” was composed by Capt. Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle.

The United States Library of Congress was established on April 24, 1800, when President John Adams signed legislation to appropriate $5,000 to purchase “such books as may be necessary for the use of Congress.”

Du Hirte Israel, höre (“You Shepherd of Israel, hear”), BWV 104, a church cantata, was performed for the first time in Leipzig 301 years ago on April 23rd, the composer, Johann Sebastian Bach, conducting.

On April 22, 1864, the United States Congress passed the Coinage Act of 1864 that permitted the inscription In God We Trust be placed on all coins minted as currency.

In history:

April 21, 753 BC, is the traditional date on which Romulus founded Rome.

April 21, AD 1789, John Adams was sworn in as first Vice President of the United States nine days before George Washington was sworn in as President.

In 1962 on this date, the Seattle World’s Fair opened — the first World’s Fair in the United States since World War II. Three years later, to the day, the 1964–1965 New York World’s Fair opened for its second and final season.

On April 20, 1657, freedom of religion was granted to the Jews of New Amsterdam, which was later renamed New York City.

On April 19, 1775, the American Revolution began when the “shot heard around the world” was fired between the 700 British troops and the 77 armed minutemen under Captain John Parker waiting for them on the Lexington town green.

The British troops were on a mission to capture Patriot leaders Sam Adams and John Hancock and to seize a Patriot arsenal.

The Battle of Lexington ended with eight Americans killed and ten wounded, along with one wounded British soldier.

In Concord, a couple of hours later, British troops were encircled by hundreds of armed Patriots. The British commander ordered his men to return to Boston without directly engaging the Americans, but on the 16-mile journey they were constantly attacked by Patriot marksmen firing at them Indian-style from behind trees, rocks, and stone walls. By the time the British reached the safety of Boston, nearly 300 soldiers had been killed, wounded, or were missing in action. The Patriots suffered fewer than 100 casualties.

---

On April 19, 1782, John Adams secured the Dutch Republic’s recognition of the United States as an independent government.

On April 18, 2019, a redacted version of the Mueller Report was released to the United States Congress and the public. President Donald Trump claimed that it exonerated him. “It was called, ‘No collusion. No obstruction.’ I’m having a good day. There never was [collusion], by the way, and there never will be. . . . This should never happen to another president again, this hoax.”