| The nucleus of Halley's Comet is potato-shaped with dimensions around 8 by 8 by 16 kilometers. The density of the nucleus is between one tenth and one quarter the density of water. The nucleus is very dark, reflecting only around 4% of incident light. |
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| Cook then set course westwards, intending to strike for Van Diemen's Land (present-day Tasmania)
in order to establish whether or not it formed part of the fabled southern continent. However, they were forced to
maintain a more northerly course owing to prevailing gales, and sailed onwards until one afternoon when land was
sighted, which Cook named Point Hicks. This point was on the southeastern coast of the Australian continent, and in
doing so his expedition became the first recorded Europeans to have encountered its eastern coastline. The ship's log recorded the date as being Thursday April 19, 1770; however, Cook had not made the necessary adjustments when they had earlier crossed the 180th meridian of Longitude, and the actual calendar date was Friday, April 20. |
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| Existing as a colony of Great Britain for over a century, New York declared its independence on
July 9, 1776, becoming one of the original 13 states of the Federal Union. The next year, on April 20, 1777, New York's
first constitution was adopted. The state had, however, declared independence and functioned with Kingston as its capital, George Clinton as its first governor, and John Jay as its first chief justice. |
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| Mystery and crime stories as we know them today did not emerge until the mid-nineteenth century
when Edgar Allan Poe introduced mystery fiction's first fictional detective, Auguste C. Dupin, in his 1841 story,
"The Murders in the Rue Morgue." The acknowledged father of the mystery story, Poe continued Dupin's exploits in
novels such as The Mystery of Marie Roget (1842) and The Purloined Letter (1845).
"The Murders in the Rue Morgue" is the most famous example of a mystery style known as the locked room, in which "a murder victim is found inside an apparently sealed enclosure and the detective's challenge is to discover the murderer's modus operandi." |
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| Harriet Tubman began her work with the Underground Railroad, a network of antislavery activists
who helped slaves escape from the South. On her first trip, Tubman brought her own sister and her sister's two
children out of slavery in Maryland. A year later she rescued her brother, and in 1857 returned to Maryland to guide
her aged parents to freedom. Over a period of ten years Tubman made an estimated 19 expeditions into the South and personally escorted about 300 slaves to the North. The reason for her success in her adventures was partly due to her cunning, daring and ruthlessness in following well developed plans for her expeditions. For instance, when Tubman scouted an area, she sometimes took the precaution of carrying two chickens with her. |
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| In 1859 Lee was called upon to lead a force of marines, to join with the militia on the scene, to put an end to John Brown's Harper's Ferry Raid. Thereafter he served again in Texas until summoned to Washington on April 20, 1861 by Winfield Scott who tried to retain Lee in the U. S. service. But the Virginian rejected the command of the Union's field forces on the day after Virginia seceded. He then accepted an invitation to visit Governor John Letcher in Virginia. His resignation as colonel, 1st Cavalry-to which he had recently been promoted-was accepted on April 25, 1861. |
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| In 1827, an English pharmacist named John Walker produced his "sulphuretted peroxide strikables," gigantic, yard-long sticks that can be considered the real precursor of today's match. Small phosphorus matches were first marketed in Germany in 1832, but they were extremely hazardous. In 1836 in the United States, Alonzo D. Phillips of Springfield, Massachusetts, obtained a patent for "manufacturing of friction matches" and called them locofocos. The danger problem was not resolved until the invention of amorphous (red) phosphorus in 1845. Carl Lundstrom of Sweden introduced the first red phosphorus "safety" matches in 1855. |
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| From Samuel W. Baker's - "Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879" My gypsy-van was not of doubtful character. I had purchased it direct from the gypsies in England, and it had been specially arranged for the Cyprus journey by Messrs. Glover Bros. of Dean Street, Soho, London. It had been painted and varnished with many coats both inside and out, and nobody, unless an experienced gipsy, would have known that it was not newly born from the maker's yard. Originally it had been constructed for shafts, as one horse was considered sufficient upon the roads of England, but when it arrived in Cyprus it appeared to have grown during the voyage about two sizes larger than when it was last seen. |
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| His operetta El Capitan, composed in 1895, was the first operetta by an American composer to enjoy a successful European tour. Sousa constructed marches on themes from most of his operettas, the El Capitan march being the most famous. |
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| U.S. inventor and entrepreneur Simon Lake was responsible for a significant share of the key developments that made possible the modern submarine. Although some authorities have questioned the claims of Lake's proponents for his invention of the periscope, the double-hulled submarine, and the diver's lock-in/lock-out chamber, he was a genuine innovator in the field of undersea technology, and his Lake Torpedo Boat Company built a total of 33 submarines for the U.S. Navy between 1909 and 1922. |
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| Turning to minerals, her attention was drawn to pitchblende, a mineral whose activity, superior to that of pure uranium, could only be explained by the presence in the ore of small quantities of an unknown substance of very high activity. Pierre Curie then joined her in the work that she had undertaken to resolve this problem and that led to the discovery of the new elements, polonium and radium. While Pierre Curie devoted himself chiefly to the physical study of the new radiations, Marie Curie struggled to obtain pure radium in the metallic state | |
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| The World's Fair of 1904 celebrates the Centennial of the Louisiana Purchase. The territory
acquired from France by this purchase embraced all the land lying between the Mississippi river and the crest of the
Rocky Mountains. The Fair, also called the Universal Exposition of 1904, covered 1,240 acres making it larger than any other World's Fair. It was twice as large as Chicago's Columbian Exposition in 1893 and 10 times as big as the 1891 Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo. Some 50 foreign countries and 43 of the 45 states that existed at the time had exhibits at the Fair. The exposition conducted competitions in 807 categories with international juries doing the judging, and it made a total of 33,158 awards. |
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| Halley's Comet appeared in the sky when Mark Twain was born in 1835. The comet moves in a
seventy-five or seventy-six-year orbit, and, as it neared Earth once again, Twain said, "I came in with Halley's
Comet... It is coming again ... and I expect to go out with it... The Almighty has said, no doubt: Now here are
these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together."
Twain died on April 21, 1910, just as the comet made its next pass within sight of Earth. |
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| The Boston Red Sox opened in the new Fenway Park with a 7-6, 11-inning win over the New York
Yankees before 27,000 fans. Spitballer Bucky O'Brien and Sea Lion Hall top Jumbo Jim Vaughn, handing the Yankees their
6th straight loss.
Before moving into Fenway Park, the Red Sox played at Huntington Avenue Baseball Grounds. The Boston gmes in the first World Series in 1903 were played there. |
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| Detroit opens remodeled Navin Park and beats Cleveland 6-5 in 11 innings before 24,384. George
Mullin wins his own game with a RBI single. Detroit opens with two double steals in the 1st inning, including Ty
Cobb's swipe of home when Sam Crawford takes 2B. Cobb has two singles and two steals today.
The ballpark was a concrete-and-steel structure that seated 23,000, nearly five times the capacity of Bennett Park. The $300,000 project would have cost about $50 million by today's standards, featuring a giant scoreboard in left field, a relocated home plate that kept batters eyes out of the afternoon sun, and a 125-foot flagpole in center field that would be the tallest obstacle ever built in fair territory in a major league park. |
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| The Cubs play their first game in the newly built Federal League park that will soon have its
name changed to Wrigley Field. The stadium, minus the upper deck added later, seats 14,000, but 20,000 fans are on
hand. Greeting fans on the Addison Street side is JOA, a bear cub owned by Cub's (partial) owner J. Ogden Armour.
Everyone goes home happy as Vic Saier's 11th inning sac fly gives the Cubs 7-6 a win over the Reds.
Originally named Weeghman Park, construction began on the 14,000 seat ballpark on March 14,1914. The ballpark had only one deck of grandstands in a V-shape, with wooden bleachers in the outfield. Construction on the $250,000 ballpark was completed by April 23, 1914. Meanwhile, the Chicago Cubs, played at West Side Grounds until Charles Weeghman bought the club and moved them to his ballpark in 1916. |
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| WMAQ led the field in sports broadcasting, presenting the first daily play-by-play descriptions of major league games. The first such broadcast was on April 20, 1925, when the Pittsburgh Pirates defeated the Chicago Cubs by a score of 2 to 1. The radio deal that WMAQ station manager Judith Waller negotiated with Cubs owner P.K Wrigley (the first of its kind) led to a significant increase in fan attendance at the ballpark. |
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| By 1910 Dr Arthur Korn of Germany had established phototelegraphy links from Berlin to Paris and
London, and in 1922 successfully transmitted by radio a picture from Rome to New York. In 1926 a commercial radio
link for facsimile working was opened between the London office of the Marconi Wireless and Telegraph Company, and
the New York office of the RCA.
The need to have material photographed to provide a negative for transmission, and the consequential high cost of the equipment developed on this principle, led to further research, and a system of transmission based on reflected light was evolved. |
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| His 1929 recording of Ain't Misbehavin' introduced the use of a pop song as material for jazz interpretation, helping set the stage for the popular acceptance of jazz that would follow. In 1931, he first recorded When It's Sleepytime Down South, the tune that became his theme song. In 1932, he toured England for three months, and during the next few years, continued his extensive domestic and international tours, including a lengthy stay in Paris. |
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| "Your Hit Parade" starred Kay Thompson, Charles Carlyle, Gogo DeLys and Johnny Hanser, on the
first broadcast on radio. A youngster named Frank Sinatra would later be part of the program as a featured vocalist.
"Your Hit Parade" stayed on the radio airwaves for 24 years and later on television.
Every Saturday night, Your Hit Parade presented the top tunes of the week, saving the top three songs for the end of the show. As a nod to longtime sponsor Lucky Strike Cigarettes, Your Hit Parade occasionally featured an old favorite as a "Lucky Strike Extra." More than 50 singers appeared on the radio version of Your Hit Parade, including Frank Sinatra (1943-45; 1947-49), Dick Haymes, "Wee" Bonnie Baker, Johnny Mercer, Dinah Shore, Andy Russell, and Gisele MacKenzie. |
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| It was able to produce a magnification of 100,000 times, in an apparatus 10 feet high and weighing
half a ton. The inventor was Dr. Vladimir Zworykin at the RCA laboratories, Camden, New Jersey.
Under Dr. Zworykin'ssponsorship, James Hillier designed and oversaw the construction of the RCA EMB,
a transmission electron microscope.
Having developed the instrument in practical form, he then undertook the introduction of the electron microscope into general use as a new and powerful research tool, particularly for the biological and medical sciences. |
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| In response to the notorious "bean ball wars" of the 1940 season, the Brooklyn Dodgers inserted protective liners into their caps as a safety precaution. The rising aggressions between pitchers and batters had resulted in the serious injury and hospitalization of Joe Medwick, Billy Jurges, and others. Although the thin liners were hardly noticeable, many players around the league criticized them as a distraction. |
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| Allen was a radio comedian for nearly two decades who, as early as 1936, had a weekly radio
audience of about 20 million. When he visited The Jack Benny Show to continue their long running comedy feud,
they had the largest audience in the history of radio, only to be later outdone by President Franklin Roosevelt during
a Fireside Chat. Allen, of "Allen's Alley" fame, didn't find things so funny when censors cut him off the air during his radio broadcast. Allen was telling a joke about a mythical network vice-president when he was suddenly taken off the air. |
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| The 4-foot-11, 96-pound "Willie" Shoemaker had his first professional ride, on March 19, 1949.
A month later the 17-year-old Shoemaker registered his first win, aboard Shafter V in a six-furlong, $3,000 claiming race at Golden Gate Fields in Albany, Calif. |
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| As a joke, Skowron's grandfather called him Mussolini, but his family shortened the nickname to Moose. A kicker for Purdue, he signed to play baseball in 1951, and joined the Yankees in 1954. A powerful opposite-field hitter, he topped the .300 mark five times with New York and was TSN all-star first baseman in 1960. He once lamented, "I hit over .300 three straight years for the Yankees and they wouldn't give me a raise." |
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| "All Shook Up" is one of the many hit songs of Elvis Presley. It reached the top of all three U.S. charts (pop, country and r&b), staying there for eight weeks in 1957, from April 13 through May 27. In the U.S., it is regarded as the top song of 1957 |
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| Three tanks mounted on a form-fitting strapped fibreglas jacket or corset worn by the rocket belt
user. The middle tank contain the pressurizing gas (nitrogen) while the other two hold the fuel (hydrogen peroxide).
Jutting from the tanks and leading outward at each side of the operator are curved pipes with the small nozzles
protruding downwards on each end, while two other, smaller pipes protrude under each of the operator's arms and have
motorcycle-like handle grips for the throttle and directional control. For safety's sake, the operator has to wear
coveralls, a crash helmet, and boots. The propellant is 90% hydrogen peroxide. Graham flew successfully at 7 to 10-mph for 13 seconds over a distance of 112 feet. Other milestones were soon reached, including a flight over a 30 ft. hill and a flight over a stream and circular flights over obstacles like trucks. |
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| Armstrong was testing a self-adjusting control system. He first rocketed to a height of 207,500 feet (63.2 km). As he descended, he kept the nose of the craft up too long and literally bounced off the atmosphere back up to 140,000 feet (42.7 km). He flew past the landing field at Mach 3 and over 100,000 feet in the air. He ended up 45 miles south of Edwards. Descending enough he turned and headed back to the dry lake beds, just managing to land without crashing into Joshua trees at the south end. It was the longest X-15 flight in both time and distance of the ground track. |
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| 'He's So Fine' didn't open with 'Doo-lang, doo-lang at first. It was just in the background.
But the staff engineer at Capitol, a guy named Johnny Cue said, 'Why don't you start the song like that?' So we put
'Doo-lang' in front of the song. We thought it was a terrific record and brought it to Capitol. They turned it down as
did 10 other companies. The eleventh company we went to was a little company called Laurie Records. They loved it and released the record in February 1963. About two months later, it was #1 in America. |
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| Surveyor III bounced and skidded to a halt in a broad crater in eastern Oceanus Procellarum.
Apollo astronauts should collect "sharp angular fragments" and "layered rocks" imaged by Surveyor III's camera,
and should examine for signs of erosion the trenches it dug using rough landing. Equipment on board included a television camera and auxiliary mirrors, a soil mechanics surface sampler, strain gauges on the spacecraft landing legs, and numerous engineering sensors. Two-and-a-half years later, Apollo 12 astronauts Pete Conrad and Alan Bean landed 156 meters (512 feet) away from Surveyor 3 and removed parts of the spacecraft for analysis back on Earth. |
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| During the early 1960s, Goldsboro played guitar in Roy Orbison's backing band, mounting a solo career in early 1964 and soon scoring a Top Ten hit with the self-penned "See the Funny Little Clown." His vocal style yielded Top 40 entries throughout the middle of the decade, among them "Whenever He Holds You," "Little Things," "Voodoo Woman," "It's Too Late," and "Blue Autumn." "Honey," a maudlin tale about the tragic death of a young bride, remained at number one for five weeks in the spring of 1968. |
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| Barbra Streisand has recorded more than 60 albums, almost all with the Columbia Records label. Her early works in the 1960s (her debut, The Second Barbra Streisand Album, The Third Album, My Name Is Barbra, etc.) are considered classic renditions of theatre and nightclub standards, including her famously ironic version of "Happy Days Are Here Again." |
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| The Anik A satellites represent the first generation of a series of synchronous orbit communications satellites developed by Hughes Aircraft Company for individual nations to use within their territorial boundaries. Each Anik A was equipped with 12 transponders and had a capacity of 7000 telephone circuits or 12 color television channels. |
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| McCartney revealed that a key phrase on the song "Band On The Run" -- "if we ever get out of here"
-- was a remark George Harrison had made during one of those interminable Apple board meetings before the group broke
up. Band On the Run did not really catch fire until two more of its numbers hit the big time as singles: the supersonic "Jet" and the five-minute, five-part title song. Finally, four months after its release, the album reached Number One; three years later and five million copies later, it was still on the charts, making Band On the Run the most popular of any of the Beatles' solo LP's and one of the Seventies' biggest and most consistent sellers. |
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| The song is essentially an instrumental piece, featuring an lush blend of strings and horns in the Philadelphia soul style. There are only two vocal parts to the song: a passage close to the beginning during which The Three Degrees sing "People all over the world!", and the chorus over the fade out: "Let's get it on/it's time to get down". |
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| President Jimmy Carter was attacked by a rabbit during a fishing trip in Plains, Georgia. The rabbit, which may have been fleeing a predator, swam toward his boat, "hissing menacingly, its teeth flashing and nostrils flared." President Carter was forced to swat at the vicious beast with a canoe paddle, which apparently scared it off. |
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| The stories centered around two-relating family's; the wealthy Tates, and blue-collor Cambells. Chester Tate was a pompous businessman with an affinity for extramarital affairs; no wonder, since his wife, Jessica, was a spaced-out, fluttery idiot. Of their children, sexy Corrine was always putting her best atttributes forward; Eunice was quieter and more conservative; and Billy, 14, was a wisecracking brat. Living with the Tates were Jessica's father, "the Major," who crawled around the floor in his old army uniform, still fighting World War II; and Benson, the insolent and obnoxious black servant and cook, who commented on the proceedings. |
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| President Reagan signs a bill intended to restore the solvency of the Social Security system. The bill mandates raising the retirement age with full benefits from 65 to 66 by the year 2009 and to 67 by the year 2027. |
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| "We Are the World" united 45 of the biggest names in American popular music to raise awareness and moneyfor the fight against poverty and the AIDS epidemic in Africa. |
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| Mark Lenzi, who won the springboard diving gold medal in the 1992 Barcelona Olympics and a bronze in Atlanta in 1996, didn't start diving until 1984 when he was 17 (though he had been a top high school wrestler). He set the record at the 1991 U.S. Indoor National Championships in Minneapolis. |
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| A female vocal trio consisting of Carnie and Wendy Wilson (daughters of Beach Boy Brian Wilson) and Chynna Phillips (daughter of John and Michelle Phillips of the Mamas the Papas). They broke through to enormous pop success with their debut album, which sold four million copies. |
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| Mark McGwire, is 4th to homerun on Detroit Tiger left field roof The others are Frank Howard, Harmon Killibrew, and Cecil Fielder. |
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0295 8th recorded perihelion passage of Halley's
Comet
More ...
1702 Comet C/1702 H1 approaches within 0.0437
astronomical units (AUs) of Earth
1770 Captain James Cook 1st sees Australia
More ...
1777 New York adopts new constitution as an independent
state
More ...
1841 First detective story (Poe's "Murders
in the Rue Morgue") published
More ...
1853 Harriet Tubman starts Underground Railroad
More ...
1861 Robert E Lee resigns from Union army
More ...
1865 Safety matches were first advertised this
day.
More ...
1879 Horse drawn Gypsy van used in a
journey from London & Cyprus
More ...
1896 "El Capitán", premieres in NYC
More ...
1897 Simon Lake was granted a patent for an even
keel submarine.
More ...
1898 US Assay Office in Deadwood SD opens
1902 Marie & Pierre Curie isolate radioactive
element radium
More ...
1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition opens in St
Louis
More ...
1910 Halley's Comet passes 29th recorded perihelion
at 87.9 million km
More ...
1912 Fenway Park officially opens
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1912 Tiger Stadium in Detroit opens
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1916 First National League game at Weeghman Park
(Wrigley Field) in Chicago
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1925 First regular-season Cubs game to be broadcast
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1926 First check sent by radio facsimile transmission
across the Atlantic
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1931 Louis Armstrong records
"When It’s Sleepy Time Down South."
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1935 "Your Hit Parade"premieres
on radio.
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1940 First electron microscope demonstrated (RCA)
More ...
1941 Dodgers start to wear liners in their caps
More ...
1944 NFL legalizes coaching from the bench
1947 Fred Allen censored during his radio broadcast
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1949 Willie Shoemaker wins his first race as a
jockey
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1957 Yankee Bill Skowron becomes 3rd player to
hit a ball out of Fenway Park
More ...
1957 "All Shook Up" by Elvis Presley
topped the charts
More ...
1961 American Harold Graham makes first rocket
belt flight
More ...
1962 NASA civilian pilot Neil A Armstrong takes
X-15 to an altitude of 207,500 feet
More ...
1963 "He's So Fine" by the Chiffons
topped the charts
More ...
1967 US Surveyor III lands on Moon
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1968 "Honey" by Bobby Goldsboro topped
the charts
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1971 Barbra Streisand records "We've Only
Just Begun"
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1973 Canadian ANIK A2 becomes first commercial
satellite in orbit
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1974 Paul McCartney releases "Band on the
Run"
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1974 TSOP by MFSB featuring the Three Degrees topped the charts
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1979 President Carter attacked by a rabbit on a canoe trip in Plains, GA
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1981 Final performance of TV show "Soap"
airs
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1983 President Ronald Reagan signs a $165 billion
bail-out for Social Security
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1985 "We Are the World" by USA for Africa
topped the charts
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1991 Mark Lenzi is 1st diver to score 100 points
on a dive (101.85)
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1991 "You're in Love" by Wilson Phillips
topped the charts
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1993 Uranus passes Neptune (this occurs once every
171 years)
1997 Mark McGwire blasts a homerun out of Tiger Stadium
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