Illustration of the Surrender of General Lee at Appomattox

Robert E. Lee surrenders

Born on This Day

Mary Jackson At Work

Mary Jackson

1921 - 2005

NASA's first Black female engineer who focused on the airflow around aircraft.

Hugh Hefner

Hugh Hefner

1926 - 2017

Founder of Playboy magazine, which helped shape the sexual revolution of the 1960s.

The 2024 Met Gala Celebrating "Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion" - Red Carpet

Lil Nas X

1999 -

Singer-songwriter known for 2019's crossover country-rap hit "Old Town Road."

Mary JacksonGetty Images

Hugh HefnerGetty Images

Lil Nas XGetty Images for The Met Museum/

1965

APR9

The Houston Astrodome opens, the world's first indoor, air-conditioned domed sports stadium. A year later, the Dome made history again when it showcased the first installation of Astroturf.

Timeline

Also on This Day in History

Discover more of the major events, famous births, notable deaths and everything else history-making that happened on April 9th

Mark Twain receives steamboat pilot’s license

On April 9, 1859, a 23-year-old Missouri youth named Samuel Langhorne Clemens receives his steamboat pilot’s license. Clemens had signed on as a pilot’s apprentice in 1857 while on his way to Mississippi. He had been commissioned to write a series of comic travel letters for the Keokuk Daily Post, but after writing five, decided […]

1:52m read read

Ulysses S. Grant arrested for speeding in his horse buggy, newspaper reports

On April 9, 1866, exactly one year after Robert E. Lee’s surrender at Appomattox Court House—and decades before police officers would be pulling over speeding cars—the National Intelligencer reports that Ulysses S. Grant, Lieutenant General of the U.S. Army, had been pulled over for speeding in his horse buggy in Washington, D.C. According to the […]

1:52m read read

Billy the Kid convicted of murder

After a one-day trial, Billy the Kid is found guilty of murdering the Lincoln County, New Mexico, sheriff and is sentenced to hang. There is no doubt that Billy the Kid did indeed shoot the sheriff, though he had done so in the context of the bloody Lincoln County War, a battle between two powerful […]

2:32m read read

Marian Anderson sings on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial

After being denied the opportunity to sing in a famous Washington, D.C.. concert hall due to the color of her skin, opera star Marian Anderson takes an even bigger—and more symbolic—stage: the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. On these same steps, at the height of the civil rights movement in 1963, Martin Luther King Jr., […]

2:24m read read

Marian Anderson performing at the Lincoln Memorial, 1939.

Germany invades Norway and Denmark

On April 9, 1940, German warships enter major Norwegian ports, from Narvik to Oslo, deploying thousands of German troops and occupying Norway. At the same time, German forces occupy Copenhagen, among other Danish cities. German forces were able to slip through the mines Britain had laid around Norwegian ports because local garrisons were ordered to […]

1:10m read read

Troops surrender in Bataan, Philippines, in largest-ever U.S. surrender

On April 9, 1942, Major General Edward P. King Jr. surrenders at Bataan, Philippines—against General Douglas MacArthur’s orders—and 78,000 troops (66,000 Filipinos and 12,000 Americans), the largest contingent of U.S. soldiers ever to surrender, are taken captive by the Japanese. The prisoners were at once led 55 miles from Mariveles, on the southern end of […]

1:04m read read

Anti-Nazi theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer is hanged

On April 9, 1945, Lutheran pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer is hanged at Flossenburg, only days before the American liberation of the POW camp. The last words of the brilliant and courageous 39-year-old opponent of Nazism were “This is the end—for me, the beginning of life.” Two days after Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany, […]

1:18m read read

The Journey of Reconciliation—considered the first Freedom Ride—sets out from D.C.

On April 9, 1947, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) sends 16 Black and white activists on a bus ride through the American South to test a recent Supreme Court decision striking down segregation on interstate bus travel. The so-called Journey of Reconciliation, which lasted two weeks, was an important precursor to the Freedom Rides […]

NASA introduces America’s first astronauts

On April 9, 1959, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) introduces America’s first astronauts to the press: Scott Carpenter, L. Gordon Cooper Jr., John H. Glenn Jr., Virgil “Gus” Grissom, Walter Schirra Jr., Alan Shepard Jr. and Donald Slayton. The seven men, all military test pilots, were carefully selected from a group of 32 […]

2:42m read read

Rita Moreno becomes the first Hispanic woman to win an Oscar

On April 9, 1962, Puerto Rican actress Rita Moreno becomes the first Hispanic woman to win an Oscar, for her role of Anita in West Side Story (1961). Moreno, who was born in Puerto Rico in 1931 and grew up in Long Island, New York, began acting at a young age, landing her first Broadway […]

1:46m read read

“Chicago Eight” plead not guilty to federal conspiracy charges

The Chicago Eight, indicted on federal charges of conspiracy to incite a riot at the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago, plead not guilty. The defendants included David Dellinger of the National Mobilization Committee (NMC); Rennie Davis and Thomas Hayden of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS); Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, founders of the […]

1:22m read read

Man attempts to kill wife for money using car bomb

Margaret Backhouse turns the ignition of her husband’s car, setting off a pipe bomb filled with nitroglycerine and shotgun pellets in the small farming community of Horton, England. Hundreds of pellets lacerated her body and practically tore away her legs, but she was relatively lucky in that most of the bomb’s force was deflected away […]

2:00m read read

Baghdad falls to U.S. forces

On April 9, 2003, just three weeks into the invasion of Iraq, U.S. forces pull down a bronze statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad’s Firdos Square, symbolizing the end of the Iraqi president’s long, often brutal reign, and a major early victory for the United States. Dramatic images of the toppled statue and celebrating citizens […]

0:58m read read

Statue of Saddam Hussein toppled on April 9, 2003

Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles wed

Nearly eight years after Princess Diana’s death in a car crash was mourned the world over, Prince Charles, her widower and heir to the British throne, weds his longtime mistress, Camilla Parker Bowles. The marriage, a private civil ceremony, took place at Windsor Guildhall, 30 miles outside of London. The ceremony was originally supposed to […]

2:34m read read

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