Category: Today

The Manifesto of the Anti-Fascist Intellectuals, written by philosopher Benedetto Croce in response to the Manifesto of the Fascist Intellectuals by Giovanni Gentile, declared the unreconcilable split between the philosopher and the Fascist government of Benito Mussolini, to which he had previously given a vote of confidence on October 31, 1922. 

The manifesto was published by Il Mondo on May 1, 1925, which was Workers’ Day, symbolically responding to the publication of the Fascist manifesto on the Natale di Roma, the founding of Rome (traditionally celebrated on April 21). The Fascist press claimed that Croce’s manifesto was “more authoritarian” than its Fascist counterpart — a typical leftist dismissal of what used to be called “liberalism.”

According to official records and all the respectable historians, Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun — after being married for less than 40 hours — committed suicide on April 30, 1945. Nevertheless, rumors about Hitler’s survival in South America, until the 1960s, continue.

On April 29, 1945, U.S. troops of the Seventh Army liberated the Dachau concentration camp.

On April 28, 1788, Maryland became the seventh state to ratify the new United States Constitution.

• In 1667 on this date, a blind and impoverished poet named John Milton sold his greatest work, Paradise Lost, to a printer for £10, so that it could be entered into the Stationers’ Register, which was an early form of copyright protection and censorship mechanism rolled into one.
• The year was A.D. 1805, and the United States Marines and Berbers attacked the Tripolitan city of Derna on the 27th of April, referenced in the “shores of Tripoli” in the well-known Marines’ Hymn.
• On April 27, 1861, Abraham Lincoln — having served as president of the United States for less than two months — suspended the writ of habeas corpus, twelve days after he had declared that an insurrection was underway.
• As World War II neared its European conclusion, Benito Mussolini was arrested — on the 27th day of the fourth month of 1945 — in the act of fleeing . . . disguised as a German soldier.

On April 26, 1803, thousands of meteor fragments fell from the sky over L’Aigle, France — convincing European scientists that meteors exist.

On April 25, 1792, Nicolas J. Pelletier, a highwayman, became the first person to be executed by guillotine.

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 302 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.