April 15th

 

Birthdays
Leonardo da Vinci 1452 - Artist ("Mona Lisa", "The Last Supper")

Charles Peale 1741 - Artist, portrait painter, primarily created works of colonial and American Revolutionary War figures

Henry James 1843 - Author ("The Turn of the Screw", "The Portrait of a Lady")

Thomas Benton 1889 - Artist

Bessie Smith 1894 - Blues singer

Hans Conried 1917 - Actor ("Bus Stop", "Oh! God: Book 2")

Jim Timmens 1920 - Composer, jazz musician, musical director

Michael Ansara 1922

Herb Pomeroy 1930 - Musician, bandleader

Roy Clark 1933 - Musician, country singer

Elizabeth Montgomery 1933 - Actress ("Bewitched")

Mel Kenyon 1933 - Auto racer

Frank Frost 1936

Bob Luman 1937 - Singer

Claudia Cardinale 1939 - Actress ("The Pink Panther")

Willie (William Henry) Davis 1940 - Baseball player

Woody (Woodrow Thompson) Fryman 1940 - Baseball player

Walt Hazzard 1942 - Basketball player

Julie Sommars 1942 - Actress ("Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo")

Allan Clarke 1942 - Musician (Hollies)

Dave Edmunds 1944

Ted Sizemore 1945 - Baseball player

Amy Wright 1950 - Actress ("The Deer Hunter", "The Scarlet Letter")

Dick (Richard Louis) Sharon 1950 - Baseball player

Michael Tucci 1950

Heloise (Ponce Kiah Marchelle Heloise Cruse Evans) 1951 - Newspaper columnist, daughter of original Heloise

Pete Shelley 1955 - Musician (Buzzcocks)

Evelyn Ashford 1957 - Track athlete, 4-time Olympic gold medalist

Emma Thompson 1959 - Actress

Samantha Fox 1966 - Singer

Graeme Clark 1966 - Musician (Wet Wet Wet)

Ed O'Brien 1968 - Musician (Radiohead)

Misc. History

1784 - The first balloon was flown in Ireland.

1794 - "Courrier Francais" became the first French daily newspaper to be published in the U.S.

1813 - U.S. troops under James Wilkinson attacked the Spanish-held city of Mobile that would be in the future state of Alabama.

1817 - The first American school for the deaf was opened in Hartford, CT.

1850 - The city of San Francisco was incorporated.

1858 - At the Battle of Azimghur, the Mexicans defeated Spanish loyalists.

1861 - U.S. President Lincoln mobilized the Federal army.

1865 - U.S. President Abraham Lincoln died from injuries inflicted by John Wilkes Booth.

1871 - "Wild Bill" Hickok became the marshal of Abilene, Kansas.

1880 - William Gladstone became Prime Minister of England.

1892 - The General Electric Company was organized.

1899 - Thomas Edison organized the Edison Portland Cement Company.

1912 - The ocean liner Titanic sank at 2:27 a.m. in the North Atlantic after hitting an iceberg the evening before. 1,517 people died and more than 700 people survived.

1917 - The British defeated the Germans at the battle of Arras.

1919 - British troops killed 400 Indians at Amritsar, India.

1923 - Insulin became generally available for people suffering with diabetes.

1934 - In the comic strip "Blondie," Dagwood and Blondie Bumstead welcomed a baby boy, Alexander. The child would be nicknamed, Baby Dumpling.

1940 - French and British troops landed at Narvik, Norway.

1945 - During World War II, British and Canadian troops liberated the Nazi concentration camp Bergen-Belsen.

1947 - Jackie Robinson played his first major league baseball game for the Brooklyn Dodgers. Previously he had only appeared in exhibition games.

1948 - The Arabs were defeated in the first Jewish-Arab battle.

1952 - U.S. President Harry Truman signed the official Japanese peace treaty.

1952 - The first B-52 prototype was tested in the air.

1953 - In Buenos Aires, six people were killed by a bomb at a rally addressed by President Peron.

1953 - Pope Pius XII gave his approval of psychoanalysis but warned of possible abuses.

1953 - Charlie Chaplin surrendered his U.S. re-entry permit rather than face proceedings by the U.S. Justice Department. Chaplin was accused of sympathizing with Communist groups.

1955 - Ray Kroc started the McDonald's restaurant chain.

1956 - The worlds’ first, all-color TV station was dedicated. It was WNBQ-TV in Chicago and is now WMAQ-TV.

1956 - General Motors announced that the first free piston automobile had been developed.

1959 - Cuban leader Fidel Castro began a U.S. goodwill tour.

1960 - The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was organized at Shaw University.

1967 - Richard Speck was found guilty of murdering eight student nurses.

1983 - Tokyo Disneyland opened.

1984 - Ten members of a family were found murdered in their home in New York City. An infant was found crawling among the corpses.

1986 - U.S. F-111 warplanes attacked Libya in response to the bombing of a discotheque in Berlin on April 5, 1986.

1987 - In Northhampton, MA, Amy Carter, Abbie Hoffman and 13 others were acquitted on civil disobedience charges related with a CIA protest.

1987 - In New York City, Mbongeni Ngema's "Asinamali!" opened as the first South African play on Broadway.

1989 - Students in Beijing launched a series of pro democracy protests upon the death of former Communist Party leader Hu Yaobang. The protests led to the Tienanmen Square massacre.

1989 - In Sheffield, England, 93 people were killed and 180 were injured at a soccer game at Hillsborough Stadium when a crowd surged into an overcrowded standing area.

1994 - The World Trade Organization was established.

1997 - Christopher Reeve received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

1998 - Pol Pot died at the age of 73. The leader of the Khmer Rouge regime thereby evaded prosecution for the deaths of 2 million Cambodians.

1999 - In Algeria, former Foreign Minister Abdelaziz Bouteflika was elected president. All of the opposition candidates claimed that the vote was fraudulent and withdrew from the election.

1999 - In Rawalpindi, Pakistan, a panel of two Lahore High Court judges convicted former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and her husband, Asif Ali Zardari, of corruption.

2000 - 600 anti-IMF (International Monetary Fund) protesters were arrested in Washington, DC, for demonstrating without a permit.