Also on this day
Lead Story
1968
Just after 6 p.m. on April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. is fatally shot while standing on the balcony outside his second-story room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. The civil rights leader was in Memphis to support a sanitation workers’ strike and was on his way to...
American Revolution
1776
After the successful siege of Boston, General George Washington begins marching his unpaid soldiers from their headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts, toward New York in anticipation of a British invasion, on this day in 1776.
In a letter to the president of Congress, General Washington wrote of his intentions in marching to...
Automotive
1933
Bill France Jr., the leading force behind the transformation of the National Association of Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR) from a regional sport into a multibillion-dollar industry with fans worldwide, is born on this day in 1933 in Washington, D.C. France’s father, William France Sr. (1909-92), founded NASCAR in 1948.
In...
Civil War
1865
President Abraham Lincoln visits the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia, a day after Union forces capture it.
Lincoln had been in the area for nearly two weeks. He left Washington, D.C., at the invitation of general-in-chief Ulysses S. Grant to visit Grant’s headquarters at City Point, near the lines at Petersburg...
Cold War
1949
The United States and 11 other nations establish the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a mutual defense pact aimed at containing possible Soviet aggression against Western Europe. NATO stood as the main U.S.-led military alliance against the Soviet Union throughout the duration of the Cold War.
Relations between the United States...
Crime
1968
Martin Luther King Jr. is shot to death at a hotel in Memphis, Tennessee. A single shot fired by James Earl Ray from over 200 feet away at a nearby motel struck King in the neck. He died an hour later at St. Joseph’s Hospital. The death of America’s leading...
Disaster
1933
On this day in 1933, a dirigible crashes in New Jersey, killing 73 people in one of the first air disasters in history. The Akron was the largest airship built in the United States when it took its first flight in August 1931. In its short life of less than...
General Interest
1841
Only 31 days after assuming office, William Henry Harrison, the ninth president of the United States, dies of pneumonia at the White House.Born in Charles County, Virginia, in 1773, Harrison served in the U.S. Army in the old Northwest Territory and in 1800 was made governor of the Indian Territory,...
1918
During World War I, the Second Battle of the Somme, the first major German offensive in more than a year, ends on the western front.On March 21, 1918, a major offensive against Allied positions in the Somme River region of France began with five hours of bombardment from more than...
1949
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is established by 12 Western nations: the United States, Great Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Italy, Luxembourg, Norway, Iceland, Canada, and Portugal. The military alliance, which provided for a collective self-defense against Soviet aggression, greatly increased American influence in Europe.Greece, Turkey, and West...
1975
On this day in 1975, at a time when most Americans use typewriters, childhood friends Bill Gates and Paul Allen found Microsoft, a company that makes computer software. Originally based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Microsoft relocated to Washington State in 1979 and eventually grew into a major multinational technology corporation....
Hollywood
1960
Clocking in at three hours and 32 minutes, William Wyler’s Technicolor epic Ben-Hur is the behemoth entry at the 32nd annual Academy Awards ceremony, held on this day in 1960, at the RKO Pantages Theatre in Hollywood. Setting an Oscar record, the film swept 11 of the 12 categories in...
Literary
1928
Poet and novelist Maya Angelou-born Marguerite Johnson-is born in St. Louis, Missouri. Her parents divorced when she was three, and she and her brother went to live with their grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas. When she was eight, she was raped by her mother’s boyfriend. When she revealed what happened,...
Music
1913
When Bob Dylan picked up an electric guitar at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965, he permanently alienated a portion of his passionate fan base. When Muddy Waters went electric roughly 20 years earlier, he didn’t have a fan base to be concerned about, and those who did go to...
Old West
1843
William Jackson is born in Keeseville, New York. His powerful photographs of Yellowstone helped make it the first national park.
Jackson received no formal training in photography. As a young man, he began experimenting with simple cameras, and he gradually mastered the arcane skills needed to capture images on chemically...
Presidential
1841
President William Henry Harrison dies after serving only 32 days in office on this day in 1841. Harrison holds the unfortunate presidential record of shortest term in office.
Ironically, the man with the shortest White House tenure delivered the longest inaugural address in history, which may have been his undoing. ...
1865
According to the recollection of one of his friends, Ward Hill Lamon, President Abraham Lincoln dreams on this night in 1865 of “the subdued sobs of mourners” and a corpse lying on a catafalque in the White House East Room. In the dream, Lincoln asked a soldier standing guard “Who...
Sports
1982
On this day in 1982, hockey sensation Wayne Gretzky of the Edmonton Oilers finishes the NHL season with 212 points, the first and only player in NHL history to break the 200-point barrier.
A hockey prodigy, Gretzky turned pro at 17 and joined the Indianapolis Racers of the World Hockey Association...
Vietnam War
1967
The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, delivers a speech entitled “Beyond Vietnam” in front of 3,000 people at Riverside Church in New York City. In it, he says that there is a common link forming between the civil rights and peace movements. King...
1975
A major U.S. airlift of South Vietnamese orphans begins with disaster when an Air Force cargo jet crashes shortly after departing from Tan Son Nhut airbase in Saigon. More than 138 passengers, mostly children, were killed. Operation Baby Lift was designed to bring 2,000 South Vietnamese orphans to the United...
World War I
1918
On this day in 1918, German forces in the throes of a major spring offensive on the Western Front launch a renewed attack on Allied positions between the Somme and Avre Rivers.
The first stage of the German offensive, dubbed “Operation Michael,” began March 21, 1918; by the first days of...
World War II
1884
Yamamoto Isoroku, perhaps Japan’s greatest strategist and the officer who would contrive the surprise air attack on U.S. naval forces at Pearl Harbor, is born on this day in 1884.
A graduate of the Japanese naval academy in 1904, Yamamoto worked as a naval attaché for the Japanese embassy in Washington,...