TODAY HISTORY LESSON: APRIL 1
1578 William Harvey of England discovers blood circulation
1748 Ruins of Pompeii rediscovered by Spaniard Rocque Joaquin de Alcubierre
1778 Oliver Pollock, creates the dollar sign
1789 Frederick Muhlenberg of Pennsylvania was elected the first Speaker of the House of Representatives.
1826 Samuel Mory patents internal combustion engine
1863 The first wartime conscription law goes into effect in the United States.
1918 England’s Royal Air Force is formed.
1920 Germany’s Workers Party changes its name to the Nationalist Socialist German Worker’s Party (Nazis).
1928 China’s Chiang Kai-shek begins attacks on communists.
1929 The yo-yo is introduced in the United States by Louie Marx
1933 The Nazi persecution of Jews began in Germany with a boycott of Jewish businesses.
1939 US recognizes Franco government in Spain at end of Spanish civil war Pope Pius XII congratulates Generalissimo Franco’s victory in Spain
1942 The U.S. Navy begins a partial convoy system in the Atlantic.
1945 U.S. forces launch invasion of Okinawa.
1946 Weight Watchers forms
1946 A miner’s strike in the U.S. idles 400,000 workers.
1948 The Berlin Airlift begins, relieving the surrounded city from the Soviet siege.
1952 Big Bang theory proposed in Physical Review by Alpher, Bethe & Gamow
1957 The BBC broadcasts the spaghetti tree hoax. The 3-minute film shown on the current affairs program, Panorama, portrayed a Swiss family apparently harvesting spaghetti from a tree. A number of viewers later contacted the BBC to inquire where to find and how to grow such a plant. The hoax is regarded as one of the best April Fools jokes ever pulled.
1960 Tiros I, the world’s first meteorological satellite, was launched.
1970 President Nixon signed a bill into law banning cigarette ads from radio and television.
1974 Ayatollah Khomeini calls for an Islamic Republic in Iran
1976 Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs found Apple Computer in the garage of Jobs’ parents house in Cupertino, California
1982 The United States transfers control of the Panama Canal Zone to Panama.
1987 U.S. President Reagan told doctors in Philadelphia, “We’ve declared AIDS public health enemy No. 1.”
1990 It becomes illegal in Salem OR to be within 2′ of nude dancers
1991 US minimum wage goes from $3.80 to $4.25 per hour
1992 Battleship USS Missouri (on which, Japan surrendered) decommissioned
1998 A federal judge dismissed the Paula Jones’ sexual harassment lawsuit against U.S. President Clinton saying that the claims fell “far short” of being worthy of a trial.
2001 Netherlands becomes the first country in the world to make same-sex marriage legal
2001 Slobodan Milošević is arrested. The former President of Serbia was arrested on corruption charges. Later he was put on trial before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague for war crimes during the Yugoslav wars.
2001 China began holding 24 crewmembers of a U.S. surveillance plane. The EP-3E U.S. Navy crew had made an emergency landing after an in-flight collision with a Chinese fighter jet. The Chinese pilot was missing and presumed dead. The U.S. crew was released on April 11, 2001.
2003 Pvt. Jessica Lynch was rescued by U.S. commandos in a raid on an Iraqi hospital.
2004 President Bush signed the “Laci Peterson” bill making it a separate federal crime to harm a fetus during an attack on the mother.
2010 The U.S. Congress cut Medicare reimbursements to physicians by 21%.
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
