Sunday, March 31, 2013

Historical Events on 1 Apr

Historical Events on 1 Apr

1318 - Berwick-upon-Tweed is captured by the Scottish from the English.
1340 - Niels Ebbesen kills Gerhard III of Holstein in his bedroom, ending the 1332-1340 interregnum in Denmark.
1572 - In the Eighty Years' War, the Watergeuzen capture Brielle from the Spaniards, gaining the first foothold on land for what would become the Dutch Republic.
1789 - In New York City, the United States House of Representatives holds its first quorum and elects Frederick Muhlenberg of Pennsylvania as its first House Speaker.
1826 - Samuel Morey patents the internal combustion engine.
1854 - Hard Times begins serialisation in Charles Dickens magazine, Household Words.
1857 - Herman Melville publishes The Confidence-Man.
1865 - American Civil War: Battle of Five Forks - In Siege of Petersburg, Confederate General Robert E. Lee begins his final offensive.
1867 - Singapore becomes a British crown colony.
1873 - The British steamer SS Atlantic sinks off Nova Scotia, killing 547.
1891 - The Wrigley Company is founded in Chicago, Illinois.
1912 - The Greek athlete Konstantinos Tsiklitiras breaks the world record -in standing long jump jumping 3.47 meters.
1918 - The Royal Air Force is created by merging the Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Naval Air Service.
1924 - Adolf Hitler is sentenced to five years in jail for his participation in the "Beer Hall Putsch". However, he spends only nine months in jail, during which he writes the book Mein Kampf.
1924 - First revenue flight for Belgium's Sabena Airlines
1924 - The Royal Canadian Air Force is formed.
1933 - The recently elected Nazis under Julius Streicher organize a one-day boycott of all Jewish-owned businesses in Germany, ushering in the series of anti-Semitic acts that will gradually, yet ultimately lead to the Holocaust.
1936 - Orissa Formerly known as Kalinga or Utkal became a state in India.
1937 - Aden becomes a British crown colony.
1939 - Generalísimo Francisco Franco of the Spanish State announces the end of the Spanish Civil War, when the last of the Republican forces surrender.
1941 - The Blockade Runner Badge for German navy is instituted.
1944 - Accidental American bombing of the Swiss city of Schaffhausen. The bombers were lost.
1945 - World War II: Operation Iceberg - United States troops land on Okinawa in the last campaign of the war.
1946 - Aleutian Island earthquake: A 7.8 magnitude earthquake near the Aleutian Islands creates a tsunami that strikes the Hawaiian Islands killing 159 (mostly in Hilo, Hawaii).
1946 - Formation of the Malayan Union.
1948 - Faroe Islands receive autonomy from Denmark.
1948 - Cold War: Berlin Airlift - Military forces, under direction of the Soviet-controlled government in East Germany, set-up a land blockade of West Berlin.
1949 - Chinese Civil War: Communist Party of China holds unsuccessful peace talks with the Kuomintang in Beijing, after three years of fighting.
1949 - The twenty-six counties of the Irish Free State become the Republic of Ireland.
1954 - President Dwight D. Eisenhower authorizes the creation of the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado.
1955 - The EOKA rebellion against The Brtish Empire starts in Cyprus, with the goal of obtaining the desired unification ("enosis") with Greece.
1967 - The United States Department of Transportation begins operation.
1969 - The Hawker Siddeley Harrier enters service with the RAF.
1970 - President Richard Nixon signs the Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act into law, requiring the Surgeon General's warnings on tobacco products and banning cigarette advertisements on television and radio in the United States starting on January 1, 1971.
1973 - Project Tiger, a tiger conservation project, is launched in the Corbett National Park, India.
1974 - In the United Kingdom, the Metropolitan and non-metropolitan counties come into being.
1976 - Apple Computer is formed by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak.
1976 - Jovian-Plutonian gravitational effect is first reported by the astronomer Patrick Moore.
1976 - Conrail takes over operations from six bankrupt railroads in the northeastern U.S..
1978 - Philippine College of Commerce, through a presidential decree, becomes the Polytechnic University of the Philippines.
1979 - Iran's government becomes an Islamic Republic by a 98% vote, officially overthrowing the Shah.
1980 - New York City's Transit Worker Union 100 begins a strike lasting 11 days.
1981 - Daylight saving time is introduced in the USSR.
1989 - Margaret Thatcher's new local government tax, the Community Charge (commonly known as the 'poll tax'), is introduced in Scotland.
1996 - The Halifax Regional Municipality in Nova Scotia is created.
1999 - Nunavut is established as a Canadian territory carved out of the eastern part of the Northwest Territories.
2001 - Same-sex marriage becomes legal in the Netherlands, which is the first country to allow it.
2001 - An EP-3E United States Navy plane collides with a Chinese People's Liberation Army fighter jet. The Navy crew makes an emergency landing in Hainan, People's Republic of China and is detained. See Hainan Island incident.
2001 - Former president of Federal Republic of Yugoslavia Slobodan Milošević surrenders to police special forces, to be tried on charges of war crimes.
2002 - The Netherlands legalizes euthanasia, becoming the first nation in the world to do so.
2004 - Google introduces its Gmail product to the public. The launch is met with scepticism on account of the launch date.
2006 - The Serious Organised Crime Agency, dubbed the 'British FBI', is created in the United Kingdom.
527 - Byzantine Emperor Justin I names his nephew Justinian I as co-ruler and successor to the throne.

Saturday, March 30, 2013

Historical Events on 31 Mar

Historical Events on 31 Mar

1146 - Bernard of Clairvaux preaches his famous sermon in a field at Vézelay, urging the necessity of a Second Crusade. Louis VII is present, and joins the Crusade.
1492 - Queen Isabella of Castille issues the Alhambra decree , ordering her 150,000 Jewish subjects to convert to Christianity or face expulsion.
1717 - A sermon on "The Nature of the Kingdom of Christ" by Benjamin Hoadly, the Bishop of Bangor, provoked the Bangorian Controversy.
1774 - American Revolutionary War: The Kingdom of Great Britain orders the port of Boston, Massachusetts closed in the Boston Port Act.
1822 - The massacre of the population of the Greek island of Chios by soldiers of the Ottoman Empire following a rebellion attempt, depicted by the French artist Eugène Delacroix.
1854 - Commodore Matthew Perry signs the Treaty of Kanagawa with the Japanese government, opening the ports of Shimoda and Hakodate to American trade.
1866 - The Spanish Navy bombs the harbor of Valparaíso, Chile.
1877 - The family with samurai antecedents who responded to the Saigo army in ÅŒita Nakatsu rebels.
1885 - The United Kingdom establishes a protectorate over Bechuanaland.
1889 - The Eiffel Tower is inaugurated.
1903 - Richard Pearse allegedly makes a powered flight in an early aircraft.
1906 - The Intercollegiate Athletic Association of the United States (later National Collegiate Athletic Association) is established to set rules for amateur sports in the United States.
1909 - Serbia accepts Austrian control over Bosnia-Herzegovina.
1917 - The United States takes possession of the Danish West Indies after paying $25 million to Denmark, and renames the territory the United States Virgin Islands.
1918 - Daylight saving time goes into effect in the United States for the first time.
1921 - The Royal Australian Air Force is formed.
1930 - The Motion Pictures Production Code is instituted, imposing strict guidelines on the treatment of sex, crime, religion and violence in film for the next thirty eight years.
1931 - An earthquake destroys Managua, Nicaragua, killing 2,000.
1933 - The Civilian Conservation Corps is established with the mission to relieve rampant unemployment.
1942 - Holocaust in Ivano-Frankivsk (then called Stanislawow), western Ukraine. German Gestapo organize the first deportation of 5.000 Jews from Stanislawow ghetto to Belzec death camp. It was one of the biggest transports to Belzec in the first phase of the cam
1942 - World War II: Japanese forces invade Christmas Island, then of British possession.
1946 - The first election is held in Greece after World War II.
1949 - The Dominion of Newfoundland joins Confederation and becomes the 10th Province of Canada.
1951 - The first commercial United States made computer, the UNIVAC I, is delivered to the United States Census Bureau.
1957 - Elections to the Territorial Assembly of the French colony Upper Volta. After the elections PDU and MDV form a government.
1959 - The 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, crosses the border into India and is granted political asylum.
1964 - The Dictatorship in Brazil, under the aegis of general Castello Branco, begins.
1965 - Iberia Airlines Convair 440, crashed into the sea on approach to Tangier killing 47 of 51 occupants.
1966 - The Soviet Union launches Luna 10 which later becomes the first spaceprobe to enter orbit around the Moon.
1968 - President Lyndon B. Johnson announces he will not run for re-election.
1970 - Explorer 1 re-enters the Earth's atmosphere (after 12 years in orbit).
1970 - Nine terrorists from the Japanese Red Army hijacked Japan Airlines Flight 351 at Tokyo International Airport, wielding samurai swords and carrying a bomb.
1979 - The last British soldier leaves the Maltese Islands. Malta declares its Freedom Day (Jum il-Helsien).
1980 - The Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific railroad operates its final train after being ordered to liquidate its assets due to bankruptcy and debt owed to creditors.
1986 - Six metropolitan county councils are abolished in England.
1986 - A Mexicana Boeing 727 en route to Puerto Vallarta erupts in flames and crashes in the mountains northwest of Mexico City, killing 166.
1990 - 200,000 protestors took to the streets of London to protest against the newly introduced Poll Tax.
1991 - The Establishment of Islamic Constitutional Movement - Hadas in Kuwait.
1991 - Georgian independence referendum, 1991: nearly 99 percent of the voters support the country's independence from the Soviet Union.
1992 - The USS Missouri (BB-63), the last active United States Navy Battleship, is decommissioned in Long Beach, California.
1994 - Human evolution: The journal Nature reports the finding in Ethiopia of the first complete Australopithecus afarensis skull.
1995 - In Corpus Christi, Texas, Latin superstar Selena Quintanilla Perez is shot and killed by Yolanda Saldivar, the president of her own fan club.
1998 - Netscape releases the code base of its browser under an open-source license agreement; the project is given the code name Mozilla and would eventually be spun off into the non-profit Mozilla Foundation.
2004 - In Fallujah, Iraq, 4 American private military contractors working for Blackwater USA, are killed and their bodies mutilated after being ambushed.
2007 - In Sydney, Australia 2.2 million people take part in the first Earth Hour.
2008 - Aloha Airlines, a bankrupt airline, permanently ends passenger service
307 - After divorcing his wife Minervina, Constantine marries Fausta, the daughter of the retired Roman Emperor Maximian.