Today in History
Published 1:30 am Sunday, April 7, 2019
Today is Sunday, April 7, the 97th day of 2019. There are 268 days left in the year.
Today’s highlight: On April 7, 1927, the image and voice of Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover were transmitted live from Washington to New York in the first successful long-distance demonstration of television.
On this date:
In 1798, the Mississippi Territory was created by an act of Congress, with Natchez as the capital.
In 1862, Union forces led by Gen. Ulysses S. Grant defeated the Confederates at the Battle of Shiloh in Tennessee.
In 1915, jazz singer-songwriter Billie Holiday, also known as “Lady Day,” was born in Philadelphia.
In 1954, President Dwight D. Eisenhower held a news conference in which he spoke of the importance of containing the spread of communism in Indochina, saying, “You have a row of dominoes set up, you knock over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is the certainty that it will go over very quickly.” (This became known as the “domino theory,” although Eisenhower did not use that term.)
In 1959, a referendum in Oklahoma repealed the state’s ban on alcoholic beverages.
In 1978, President Jimmy Carter announced he was deferring development of the neutron bomb, a high-radiation weapon.
In 1983, space shuttle astronauts Story Musgrave and Don Peterson went on the first U.S. spacewalk in almost a decade as they worked in the open cargo bay of Challenger for nearly four hours.
In 1994, civil war erupted in Rwanda, a day after a mysterious plane crash claimed the lives of the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi; in the months that followed, hundreds of thousands of minority Tutsi and Hutu moderates were slaughtered by Hutu extremists.
Today’s Birthdays: Media commentator Hodding Carter III is 84. Country singer Bobby Bare is 84. Movie director Francis Ford Coppola is 80. Actress Roberta Shore is 76.
Former Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels is 70. Singer Janis Ian is 68. Country musician John Dittrich is 68. Actor Jackie Chan is 65. College and Pro Football Hall of Famer Tony Dorsett is 65. Actor Russell Crowe is 55.
Thought for Today: “Verba movent, exempla trahunt.” (Words move people, examples compel them.) — Latin proverb.
—Associated Press
