Category: Today

On May 1, 1885, the original Chicago Board of Trade Building opened for business.

On May 1, 1915, the RMS Lusitania left New York City on her 202nd, and final, crossing of the North Atlantic. Six days later, the ship was torpedoed off the coast of Ireland with the loss of 1,198 lives, including 128 Americans, rousing American public sentiment against Germany.

On May 1, 1991, Oakland Athletics outfielder Rickey Henderson stole his 939th base to break Lou Brock’s record for career stolen bases. Henderson ended his major league career stealing a total of 1,406 bases, almost 500 more than Brock, the next closest player.

On April 30, 1492, Spain gave Christopher Columbus his commission of exploration.

On April 30, 1789, George Washington was sworn in as the first American president and delivered the first inaugural speech at Federal Hall in New York City.

On April 30, 1945, Nazi dictator Adolph Hitler committed suicide in his underground bunker in Berlin, Germany.

On April 28, 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson launched an invasion of the Dominican Republic by more than 20,000 U.S. troops, claiming the military action prevented a “communist dictatorship.” Johnson’s evidence was flimsy, but U.S. military power dominant.

On April 28, 1967, boxing champion Muhammad Ali refused to be inducted into the U.S. Army and was immediately stripped of his heavyweight title. Ali, a Muslim, cited religious reasons for his decision to forgo military service, and added, “I ain’t got no quarrel with those Vietcong.”

On April 27, 1773, the British Parliament passed the Tea Act, a bill designed to save the faltering East India Company from bankruptcy by greatly lowering the tea tax it paid to the British government and, thus, granting it a de facto monopoly on the American tea trade. Since it lowered the price of tea in America, British Prime Minister Lord North couldn’t imagine that the colonists would protest cheaper tea. He was mistaken. Within the year, the East India Company’s tea was dumped into Boston harbor in what became known as the Boston Tea Party.

On April 27, 1820, Herbert Spencer was born in Derby, England. Spencer became a philosopher, biologist, sociologist, and prominent classical liberal political theorist. An “enthusiastic exponent of evolution,” even writing about it “before Darwin did,” Spencer coined the term “survival of the fittest.” He was considered “the single most famous European intellectual in the closing decades of the nineteenth century.”

On April 26, 121, Marcus Aurelius was born in Rome. He would become emperor of Rome from 161 to 180 AD, and write “Meditations,” which remains revered as a literary monument to the Stoic philosophy.

On April 26, 1607, English colonists made landfall at Cape Henry, Virginia.

On April 26, 1933, the Gestapo, the brutal secret police force of Nazi Germany, was established.

On April 26, 1937, during the market’s busiest hour in Guernica, Spain, the Nazi Luftwaffe began an unprovoked three-hour attack aerial bombardment, which killed or wounded one-third of the city’s 5,000 residents. The indiscriminate killing of civilians at Guernica became a symbol of fascist brutality.

On April 25, 1599, Oliver Cromwell, who would become Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland, was born in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire.

On April 25, 1908, journalist Edward R. Murrow was born. Murrow became widely heard by listeners in the United States and Canada through his series of radio news broadcasts during World War II. Murrow produced a series of TV news reports that helped lead to the censure of Senator Joseph McCarthy, which was portrayed in the 2005 movie, “Good Night, and Good Luck.”

On April 25, 1961, Robert Noyce was granted a patent for an integrated circuit.

On April 24, 1916, an Easter Monday in Dublin, the Irish Republican Brotherhood, a secret organization of nationalists led by Patrick Pearse, launched an armed uprising against British rule, known as the Easter Rebellion. Soon, the rebels controlled much of the city and proclaimed the independence of Ireland, which had been under the repressive thumb of the United Kingdom for centuries. However, British authorities launched a counteroffensive crushing the uprising in the next days. Nevertheless, the Easter Rebellion is considered a significant marker on the road to establishing an independent Irish republic. The British executed Pearse and 14 other nationalist leaders for their participation, though they were held up as martyrs by many in Ireland.

On April 24, 1904, the Lithuanian press ban was lifted after almost 40 years in force. The ban was imposed in 1864 by administrative order after the failed January Uprising of 1863. The ban made it illegal to print, import, distribute, or possess any publications in the Latin alphabet within the Russian Empire. Tsarist authorities hoped to decrease Polish influence on Lithuanians and return them to their ancient historical ties with Russia.

On April 24, 1898, the U.S. Congress declared war on Spain, following the sinking of the USS Maine in Havana harbor. The Spanish-American War marked the first U.S. foreign intervention outside the Americas.

On April 23, 1954, Hank Aaron hit the first home run of his Major League Baseball career. Twenty years later, he would break Babe Ruth’s career home run mark of 714.

On April 23, 1968, students at New York City’s Columbia University held a demonstration to protest military research and the condemnation of part of the neighboring Morningside Heights section of Harlem to make way for a new student gymnasium. The protest escalated into a week-long occupation of five campus buildings before police moved in. Some 712 students were arrested, and over 100 injured during the forcible eviction. After the university-ordered police response, a student strike shut down the campus for the rest of the semester.

On April 22, 1898, U.S. Navy began a blockade of Cuban ports and the USS Nashville captured a Spanish merchant ship in the early days of the Spanish-American War.

On April 22, 1889, at high noon, the Oklahoma Land Rush of 1889 began with roughly 50,000 people lined up for their piece of the available two million acres of land in what is today Canadian, Cleveland, Kingfisher, Logan, Oklahoma, and Payne counties in Oklahoma.

On April 22, 2004, Pat Tillman, the professional football star who left his lucrative career after 9-11 to join the U.S. Army Rangers, was killed in action in Afghanistan. The Pentagon would later determine that Tillman died from friendly fire.