Also on this day
Lead Story
1970
Earth Day, an event to increase public awareness of the world’s environmental problems, is celebrated in the United States for the first time. Millions of Americans, including students from thousands of colleges and universities, participated in rallies, marches, and educational programs.
Earth Day was the brainchild of Senator Gaylord Nelson of...
American Revolution
1778
At 11 p.m. on this day in 1778, Commander John Paul Jones leads a small detachment of two boats from his ship, the USS Ranger, to raid the shallow port at Whitehaven, England, where, by his own account, 400 British merchant ships are anchored. Jones was hoping to reach the...
Automotive
1933
Frederick Henry Royce, who with Charles Stewart Rolls founded the luxury British automaker Rolls-Royce, dies on this day in 1933 at the age of 70 in England.
Royce was born on March 27, 1863, near Peterborough, Cambridgeshire, England. He grew up in a family of modest means and worked a variety...
Civil War
1863
Colonel Benjamin Grierson’s Union troops bring destruction to Central Mississippi as part of a two-week raid along the entire length of the state.
This action was a diversion in General Ulysses S. Grant’s campaign to capture Vicksburg, Mississippi, the last remaining Confederate stronghold on the Mississippi River. Grant had his army...
Cold War
1954
Senator Joseph McCarthy begins hearings investigating the United States Army, which he charges with being “soft” on communism. These televised hearings gave the American public their first view of McCarthy in action, and his recklessness, indignant bluster, and bullying tactics quickly resulted in his fall from prominence.In February 1950, Senator...
Crime
1886
Ohio passes a statute that makes seduction unlawful. Covering all men over the age of 18 who worked as teachers or instructors of women, this law even prohibited men from having consensual sex with women (of any age) whom they were instructing. The penalty for disobeying this law ranged from...
1934
George “Baby Face” Nelson kills Special AgentW. Carter Baum during an FBI raid in northern Wisconsin. Nelson was holed up with notorious bank robber John Dillinger’s gang at the Little Bohemia resort but didn’t follow the planned escape route. As he was stealing a car to escape, he blasted several...
Disaster
1992
Dozens of sewer explosions in Guadalajara, Mexico, kill more than 200 people and damage 1,000 buildings on this day in 1992. The series of explosions was caused by a gas leak, the warning signs of which were ignored by the Mexican government and the national oil company.
Three days prior...
General Interest
1915
On April 22, 1915, German forces shock Allied soldiers along the western front by firing more than 150 tons of lethal chlorine gas against two French colonial divisions at Ypres, Belgium. This was the first major gas attack by the Germans, and it devastated the Allied line.Toxic smoke has been...
1997
In Lima, Peru, Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori orders a commando assault on the Japanese ambassador’s home, hoping to free 72 hostages held for more than four months by armed members of the Tupac Amaru leftist rebel movement.On December 16, 1996, 14 Tupac Amaru terrorists, disguised as waiters and caterers, slipped...
Hollywood
1937
On this day in 1937, John Joseph Nicholson, who will become known as one of the greatest actors of his generation and famous for his roles in such movies as Easy Rider, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and As Good As it Gets, is born in Neptune, New Jersey.
Nicholson’s...
Literary
1873
Southern writer Ellen Glasgow is born in Richmond, Virginia.
The daughter of a sadly mismatched couple, Glasgow felt pulled between her father’s stern pioneering background and her mother’s aristocratic Virginia family. The ninth of 10 children, the young Glasgow felt isolated growing up, and her mother was constantly in poor...
Old West
1889
At precisely high noon, thousands of would-be settlers make a mad dash into the newly opened Oklahoma Territory to claim cheap land.
The nearly two million acres of land opened up to white settlement was located in Indian Territory, a large area that once encompassed much of modern-day Oklahoma. Initially...
Presidential
1994
On this day in 1994, former President Richard M. Nixon dies after suffering a stroke four days earlier. In a 1978 speech at Oxford University, Nixon admitted he had screwed up during his presidency but predicted that his achievements would be viewed more favorably with time. He told the young...
Sports
2004
Pat Tillman, who gave up his pro football career to enlist in the U.S. Army after the terrorist attacks of September 11, is killed by friendly fire while serving in Afghanistan on April 22, 2004. The news that Tillman, age 27, was mistakenly gunned down by his fellow Rangers, rather...
Vietnam War
1968
In a news conference, Defense Secretary Clark Clifford declares that the South Vietnamese have “acquired the capacity to begin to insure their own security [and] they are going to take over more and more of the fighting.”
Clifford, who had succeeded Robert McNamara, had taken office with more than a little...
1972
Antiwar demonstrations prompted by the accelerated U.S. bombing in Southeast Asia draw somewhere between 30,000 to 60,000 marchers in New York; 30,000 to 40,000 in San Francisco; 10,000 to 12,000 in Los Angeles; and smaller gatherings in Chicago and other cities throughout the country. The new bombing campaign was in...
World War I
1915
On this day in 1915, German forces shock Allied soldiers along the Western Front by firing more than 150 tons of lethal chlorine gas against two French colonial divisions at Ypres in Belgium.
Toxic smoke had been used occasionally in warfare since ancient times, and in 1912, the French used small...
World War II
1944
On this day in 1944, Allied forces land in the Hollandia area of New Guinea. The Japanese occupiers, only 15,000 in number, many of whom were on administrative duty, fight for more than three months against ludicrous odds at great cost: When the battle for the northern coast of New...
1945
On this day in 1945, Adolf Hitler, learning from one of his generals that no German defense was offered to the Russian assault at Eberswalde, admits to all in his underground bunker that the war is lost and that suicide is his only recourse. Almost as confirmation of Hitler’s assessment,...
