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.
“Don’t let your mouth write no checks that your tail can’t cash.”
On April 29, 1429, Joan of Arc entered the eastern gate of the city of Orleans to relieve French forces badly in need of supplies and more soldiers. Barely a week later, on May 8, the English siege of Orleans was broken by the French.
On April 29, 1945, the U.S. Seventh Army’s 45th Infantry Division liberated Dachau, the first concentration camp established by Germany’s Nazi regime, just five weeks after Hitler became chancellor in 1933.
On April 29, 1992, three days of rioting erupted after four Los Angeles police officers — videotaped beating Rodney King with Billy clubs, after a high-speed car chase and subsequent confrontation — were acquitted of wrongdoing. Rioters in south-central Los Angeles blocked freeway traffic and beat motorists, damaged and looted downtown stores and buildings, and set more than 100 fires. On May 1, President George Bush ordered military troops and riot-trained federal officers to LA and by the end of the next day the city was under control. In three days of disorder, 55 people were killed, almost 2,000 injured, 7,000 people were arrested, and nearly $1 billion in property damage reported, including the burnings of nearly 4,000 buildings. Rodney King had been released without charges after his arrest. The four police officers, acquitted of state charges on this day, were later prosecuted under federal law for violating Rodney King’s constitutional rights. Two officers were convicted, and sentenced to 2½ years in prison, and two were acquitted of the federal charges.
“The will of the majority, the natural law of every society, is the only sure guardian of the rights of man. Perhaps even this may sometimes err; but its errors are honest, solitary and short-lived.”
Guess: What is the first rule of No Fight Club? For the answer, go to Townhall.com. Then come back here to check the source material:
“I know where I’m going and I know the truth and I don’t have to be what you want me to be. I’m free to be what I want.”
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.”
Strained analogy or “giving away the game”?
This video, brought to public attention by Sen. James Inhofe, has received no small amount of attention:
“The great aim of education is not knowledge but action.”
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.”