Today in History

Thousands of Chinese students strike in Beijing for more democratic reforms.

The IBM Personal Computer is introduced.

A rescue attempt of the U.S. hostages held in Iran fails when a plane collides with a helicopter in the Iranian desert.

Leftist students take over Columbia University in protest over the Vietnam War.

President John Kennedy accepts “sole responsibility” for the failed invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs.

Winston Churchill is knighted by Queen Elizabeth II.

The Berlin airlift begins to relieve the surrounded city.

The first B-29 arrives in China, over the Hump of the Himalayas.

Irish nationalists launch the Easter Uprising against British occupation.

Turks of the Ottoman Empire begin massacring the Armenian minority in their country.

William Joyce, ‘Lord Haw-Haw,’ British traitor, Nazi propagandist.

Robert Penn Warren, novelist, America’s first poet laureate.

Willem de Kooning, abstract impressionist painter.

Elizabeth Goudge, English author.

Spain declares war on United States, rejecting an ultimatum to withdraw from Cuba.

Otto von Bismarck cables Cape Town, South Africa that it is now a German colony.

Russia declares war on the Ottoman Empire.

Henri Philippe Pétain, French Marshall, WWI hero, Nazi collaborator.

A patent is granted for the first soda fountain.

Anthony Trollope, British novelist.

U.S. Marines attack and capture the town of Derna in Tripoli from the Barbary pirates.

The Library of Congress is established in Washington, D.C. with a $5,000 allocation.

Claude-Joseph Rouget de Lisle composes “La Marseillaise”. It will become France’s national anthem.

Arthur Wellesley, general during the Napoleonic Wars, Duke of Wellington.

Robert Bailey Thomas, founder of the Farmer’s Almanac.

Edmund Cartwright, English parson who invented the power loom.

John Graunt, statistician, founder of demography.

Mary, Queen of Scotland, marries the French dauphin, Francis.

Charles V’s troops defeat the Protestant League of Schmalkalden at the Battle of Muhlberg.

Envoys of Montezuma II attend the first Easter mass in Central America.

St. Nicholas I begins his reign as Catholic Pope.