Today’s highlight:
On April 13, 1861, Fort Sumter in South Carolina fell as the Union commander, Maj. Robert Anderson, agreed to surrender in the face of the Confederates’ relentless bombardment.
On this date:
In 1598, King Henry IV of France endorsed the Edict of Nantes, which
granted rights to the Protestant Huguenots. (The edict was abrogated in 1685 by King Louis XIV, who declared France entirely Catholic again.)
In 1742, Handel’s “Messiah” was first performed publicly, in Dublin, Ireland.
In 1743, the third president of the United States, Thomas Jefferson, was born in Shadwell in the Virginia Colony.
In 1860, the Pony Express completed its inaugural run from St. Joseph, Mo. to Sacramento, Calif. in 10 days.
In 1943, President Franklin D. Roosevelt dedicated the Jefferson Memorial.
In 1958, Van Cliburn of the United States won the first International Tchaikovsky Competition for piano in Moscow; Russian Valery Klimov won the violin competition.
In 1960, the U.S. Navy’s Transit 1B navigational satellite was successfully launched into orbit.
In 1970, Apollo 13, four-fifths of the way to the moon, was crippled when a tank containing liquid oxygen burst.
In 1981, Washington Post reporter Janet Cooke received a Pulitzer Prize for her feature about an 8-year-old heroin addict named “Jimmy”; however, Cooke relinquished the prize two days later, admitting she’d fabricated the story.
In 1986, Pope John Paul II visited the Great Synagogue of Rome in the first recorded papal visit of its kind to a Jewish house of worship.
Associated Press
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