On This Day (April 7)

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• 529 – Byzantine Emperor Justinian I issued the first draft of the Corpus Juris Civilis, a first attempt to codify Roman law.
• 1348 – King Charles of Bohemia issued a Golden Bull to establish Charles University in Prague, the first university in Central Europe.
• 1805 - First public performance of Beethoven's Third Symphony (Eroica).
  
  
  Symphony No. 3, Op. 55, Herbert Von Karajan conducting Berlin Philharmonic (?) (Part 1 – 24:31)
  
  
  
  Symphony No. 3, Op. 55, Herbert Von Karajan conducting Berlin Philharmonic (?) (Part 2 – 23:49)
  
  
• 1506 - Saint Francis Xavier, Spanish founder of the Society of Jesus born. (d. 1552) (Xavier was a Navarrese pioneering Roman Catholic Christian missionary and co-founder of the Society of Jesus (Jesuit Order). The Roman Catholic Church considers him to have converted more people to Christianity than anyone since St. Paul.)
• 1614 - El Greco, Greek-born artist died. (b. 1541) (The Greek)
  
  
  El Greco
  
  
• 1860 - Will Keith Kellogg, American cereal manufacturer born. (d. 1951) (Kellogg was a U.S. industrialist in food manufacturing. As a young businessman Kellogg started out selling brooms, before moving to Battle Creek, Michigan to help his brother John Harvey Kellogg run the Battle Creek Sanitarium. Together they pioneered the process of making flaked cereal. Because of the commercial potential of the discovery, Will wanted it kept a secret. John, however, allowed anyone in the sanitarium to observe the flaking process and one sanitarium guest, C. W. Post, copied the process to start his own company. The company became Post Cereals and later General Foods, the source of Post's first million dollars. This upset Kellogg to the extent that he left the sanitarium to create his own company.)
• 1868 – D'Arcy McGee, a Canadian Father Of Confederation, was assassinated – to date, the only Canadian political assassination at the federal level.
• 1891 - P. T. Barnum, American circus impresario died. (b. 1810) (Barnum was an American showman who is best remembered for his entertaining hoaxes and for founding the circus that eventually became the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus.)
  
  
  Phineas Taylor Barnum by Mathew Brady, 1860
  
  
• 1933 - Prohibition was repealed for beer of no more than 3.2% alcohol by weight, eight months before the ratification of XXI amendment.
• 1945 – World War II: American forces sunk the Japanese battleship Yamato during Operation Ten-Go.
• 1948 – The United Nations established the World Health Organization.
• 1947 - Henry Ford, American automobile manufacturer and industrialist died. (b. 1863) (Ford was the American founder of the Ford Motor Company and father of modern assembly lines used in mass production. His introduction of the Model T automobile revolutionized transportation and American industry. He was a prolific inventor and was awarded 161 U.S. patents. As owner of the Ford Company he became one of the richest and best-known people in the world.)
• 1954 – Cold War: U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower introduced the domino theory, speculating that if one nation in a region came under the influence of communism, then its surrounding countries would follow in a domino effect.
• 1969 - The Internet's symbolic birth date: publication of RFC 1.
  
  On This Day (April 6)
  
  
• 1483 - Raphael, Italian painter and architect born and died on this date. (d. 1520) (Raphael was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance, celebrated for the perfection and grace of his paintings and drawings. Together with Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci he forms the traditional trinity of great masters of that period.)
  
  
  St. George and the Dragon
  
  
• 1652 – Dutch sailor Jan van Riebeeck established the first permanent European settlement in sub-Saharan Africa on what eventually became known as Cape Town.
• 1782 – Rama I succeeded King Taksin of Siam, founding the Chakri Dynasty.
• 1830 – Joseph Smith, Jr., Oliver Cowdery, David Whitmer and others formally organized the Church of Christ, starting the Latter Day Saint movement.
• 1849 - John William Waterhouse, British painter born. (d. 1917) (Waterhouse was an English Pre-Raphaelite painter most famous for his paintings of female characters from mythology and literature.)
  
  
  Ophelia, 1889
  
  
• 1869 - Celluloid is patented.
• 1886 – Vancouver, one of British Columbia's youngest cities, was incorporated.
• 1896 – The first modern Olympic Games opened in Athens.
• 1928 - James D. Watson, American geneticist, Nobel laureate born. (Watson is an American molecular biologist, best known as one of the co-discoverers of the structure of DNA.)
• 1930 - James Dewar invents the Hostess cream-filled twinkie. (Not the Dewar who invented the Dewar flask.)
• 1965 - Launch of Early Bird, the first communications satellite to be placed in synchronous orbit.
• 1994 – The airplane carrying Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana and Burundian President Cyprien Ntaryamira was shot down as it prepared to land in Kigali, Rwanda, marking the beginning of the Rwandan Genocide.
  
  On This Day (April 5)
  
  
• 1242 – Northern Crusades: In the Battle of the Ice, Novgorod forces led by Alexander Nevsky rebuffed an invasion attempt by the Teutonic Knights at Lake Peipus on the present-day border of Estonia and Russia.
• 1614 – Native American Pocahontas married English colonist John Rolfe in Virginia, and was christened Lady Rebecca.
• 1827 - Joseph Lister, English surgeon born. (d. 1912) (Lister was an English surgeon who promoted the idea of sterile surgery while working at the Glasgow Royal Infirmary. He successfully introduced carbolic acid (phenol) to sterilize surgical instruments and to clean wounds.)
• 1847 – Britian's first civic public park, Birkenhead Park in Birkenhead, Merseyside, England, opened.
• 1976 – The Tiananmen Incident, a protest against the repression of the Chinese regime nearing the end of the Cultural Revolution, took place in Tiananmen Square in Beijing.
• 1998 – Japan's Akashi-Kaikyo Bridge, linking Awaji Island and Kobe, opened to traffic, becoming the longest suspension bridge in the world to date with a main span length of 1,991 metres (6,532 ft).