1471 Wars of the Roses: The Yorkists under Edward IV defeated the Lancastrians near the town of Barnet, killing Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick.
1629 - Christiaan Huygens, Dutch mathematician born. (d. 1695) (Huygens was a Dutch mathematician, astronomer and physicist; born in The Hague as the son of Constantijn Huygens, a friend of Rene Descartes. He studied law and mathematics at the University of Leiden and the College of Orange in Breda before turning to science. Historians commonly associate Huygens with the scientific revolution. Huygens achieved note for his arguments that light consisted of waves, which became instrumental in the understanding of wave-particle duality.)
1759 - George Frideric Handel, German composer died. (b. 1685) (Handel was a German-born Baroque composer who is famous for his operas, oratorios and concerti grossi.)
Allegro from Water Music, English Concert and Choir
1828 - Noah Webster copyrights the first edition of his dictionary.
1865 Actor and Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth shot U.S. President Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C.
1912 - The British passenger liner RMS Titanic hits an iceberg in the North Atlantic, and sinks the following morning with the loss of 1,503 lives.
RMS Titanic
1931 King Alfonso XIII left Spain. The Second Spanish Republic was proclaimed by a provisional government led by Niceto Alcalα-Zamora.
1956 The use of the quadruplex videotape was first demonstrated in public.
1964 - Rachel Carson, American environmentalist died. (b. 1907) (Carson was an American marine biologist and nature writer whose writings are credited with advancing the global environmental movement. In the late 1950s, Carson turned her attention to conservation and the environmental problems caused by synthetic pesticides. The result was Silent Spring (1962), which brought environmental concerns to an unprecedented portion of the American public.)
1970 An oxygen tank aboard Apollo 13 exploded, causing the NASA spacecraft to lose most of its oxygen and electrical power.
1978 Thousands of Georgians demonstrated in Tbilisi against an attempt by the Supreme Soviet of the Georgian SSR to change the constitutional status of the Georgian language.
2003 - Human Genome Project successfully completed with 99% of the human genome sequenced to 99.99% accuracy.
Pictures of the Day
The 1999 Sydney hailstorm was the costliest natural disaster in Australian history, causing extensive damage along the east coast of New South Wales. The storm developed south of Sydney on the afternoon of April 14, 1999 and struck the city's eastern suburbs, including the central business district, later that evening. The storm dropped an estimated 500,000 tonnes of hailstones in its path. Insured damages caused by the storm were over A$1.7 billion, with the total damage bill (including uninsured damages) estimated to be around A$2.3 billion, equivalent to US$1.5 billion. It was the costliest in Australian history in terms of insured damages, overtaking the 1989 Newcastle earthquake that had resulted in A$1.1 billion in insured damages. Lightning also claimed one life during the storm, and the event caused approximately 50 injuries. The storm was classified as a supercell following further analysis of its erratic nature and extreme attributes. During the event, the Bureau of Meteorology was consistently surprised at the frequent changes in direction, as well as the severity of the hail and the duration of the storm. The event was also unique as the time of year and general conditions in the region were not seen as conducive for an extreme storm cell to form.
...Freedom of Speech......Freedom of Religion......Freedom from Want......Freedom from Fear
The Four Freedoms or Four Essential Human Freedoms is a series of oil paintings produced in 1943 by Norman Rockwell. The paintings are approximately equal in dimension with measurements of 45.75 inches (116.2 cm) Χ 35.5 inches (90 cm). The series, now in the Norman Rockwell Museum, were made for reproduction in The Saturday Evening Post over the course of four consecutive weeks in 1943 alongside essays by prominent thinkers of the day. Later they were the highlight of a touring exhibition sponsored by the Saturday Evening Post and the United States Department of the Treasury. The touring exhibition and accompanying sales drives raised over US$132 million in the sale of war bonds.
The Four Freedoms theme was derived from the 1941 State of the Union Address by United States President Franklin Roosevelt delivered to the 77th United States Congress on January 6, 1941. During the speech he identified four essential human rights that should be universally protected and should serve as a reminder of our motivation for fighting. The theme was incorporated into the Atlantic Charter, and it became part of the charter of the United Nations.
On This Day (April 13)
1570 - Guy Fawkes, English Catholic conspirator born. (d. 1606) (Fawkes, sometimes known as Guido Fawkes, was a member of a group of Roman Catholic revolutionaries from England who planned to carry out the Gunpowder Plot. The aim of the plot was to displace Protestant rule by attempting to blow up the Houses of Parliament, while king James I and the entire Protestant aristocracy were inside, a reaction to increasing oppression of Roman Catholics in England.)
1598 King Henry IV of France issued the Edict of Nantes, allowing freedom of religion to the Huguenots.
1742 - George Frideric Handel's oratorio Messiah makes its world-premiere in Dublin, Ireland.
Hallelujah Chorus from the Messiah, Robert Shaw conducting the Atlanta Symphony and Choir
1743 - Thomas Jefferson, 3rd President of the United States born. (d. 1826) (Jefferson was the third President of the United States (18011809), the principal author of the Declaration of Independence (1776), and one of the most influential Founding Fathers for his promotion of the ideals of republicanism in the United States.)
1873 In the wake of a contested election for local political offices in Colfax, Louisiana, USA, armed white supremacists overpowered freedmen and the African American state militia trying to control the parish courthouse, killing over 100 of them.
1902 - James C. Penney opens his first store in Kemmerer, Wyoming.
1919 British Indian Army troops opened fire on a peaceful gathering in Amritsar, Punjab in India, killing hundreds of unarmed of men, women and children.
1943 World War II: Germany announced the discovery of a mass grave of Polish prisoners-of-war executed by Soviet forces in the Katyn Forest Massacre.
1984 Indian forces launched a preemptive attack on the disputed Siachen Glacier region of Kashmir, triggering a military conflict with Pakistan.
Picture of the Day
Lisa del Giocondo was a member of the Gherardini family of Florence and Tuscany in Italy. Her name was given to Mona Lisa, her portrait commissioned by her husband and painted by Leonardo da Vinci during the Italian Renaissance. Little is known about Lisa's life. Married as a teenager to a cloth and silk merchant who later became a local official, she was mother to five children and led what is thought to have been a comfortable and ordinary middle-class life. Lisa outlived her husband, who was about 20 years her senior. Centuries after Lisa's death, Mona Lisa became the world's most famous painting and took on a life separate from Lisa, the woman. Speculation by scholars and hobbyists made the work of art a globally-recognized icon and an object of commercialization. During the early 21st century, a discovery made at a university library was powerful enough evidence to end speculation about the sitter's identity and definitively identified Lisa del Giocondo as the subject of the Mona Lisa.
On This Day (April 12)
65 - Seneca the Younger, Roman philosopher, statesman and dramatist died. (b. 4 BCE) (Seneca was a Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, dramatist, and in one work humorist, of the Silver Age of Latin literature. He was tutor and later advisor to emperor Nero.)
1204 Alexios V fled Constantinople as forces under Boniface the Marquess of Montferrat and Enrico Dandolo the Doge of Venice entered and sacked the Byzantine capital, effectively ending the Fourth Crusade.
1606 A royal decree established the Union Flag to symbolise the Union of the Crowns, merging the designs of the Flag of England and the Flag of Scotland.
1633 - The formal inquest of Galileo Galilei by the Inquisition begins.
1861 Confederate forces began firing at Fort Sumter in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina, starting the American Civil War.
1927 Chinese Civil War: A large-scale purge of communists from the nationalist Kuomintang began in Shanghai.
1961 Aboard Vostok 3KA-2, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first man to enter outer space, completing one orbit in a time of 108 minutes.
1981 - Human spaceflight: The first launch of a Space Shuttle: Columbia launches on the STS-1 mission.
Space Shuttle Columbia, Mission STS-1
Picture of the Day
The jaguar (Panthera onca), shown here at Edinburgh Zoo, is a New World mammal of the Felidae family and one of four "big cats". The jaguar is the third-largest feline after the tiger and the lion, and on average the largest and most powerful feline in the Western Hemisphere
04-13-2008, 09:09 PM
On This Day (April 14) 
