TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – APRIL 4
1581 Francis Drake completes circumnavigation of the world.
1812 The territory of Orleans becomes the 18th state and will become known as Louisiana.
1818 Congress adopted a U.S. flag with one star for each state.
1841 President William Henry Harrison, aged 68, becomes the first president to die in office, just a month after being sworn in.
1902 Cecil Rhodes scholarship fund established with $10 million
1917 The U.S. Senate votes 90-6 to enter World War I on Allied side.
1945 The Ohrdruf death camp was liberated from Nazi occupation.
1949 The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) treaty is signed.
1968 Martin Luther King Jr. is assassinated
The civil rights activist was killed by James Earl Ray. Ray, a segregationist, received a 99-year prison sentence. He died in jail in 1998.
1969 Denton Cooley implants the first artificial heart
The machine kept patient Haskell Karp alive for 65 hours. He died before a human heart could become available.
1972 1st electric power plant fueled by garbage begins operating
1975 Microsoft is founded as a partnership between Bill Gates and Paul Allen to develop and sell BASIC interpreters for the Altair 8800
1975 USAF transport carrying orphans from Saigon crashes killing 155
1979 Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the president of Pakistan is executed.
1983 Sally Ride became the first U.S. woman in space aboard the space shuttle Challenger.
1984 Winston Smith in Orwell’s “1984” begins his secret diary
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
