On This Date In 4977 BC The universe was
created, according to German mathematician and astronomer Johannes Kepler,
considered a founder of modern science. Kepler is best known for his theories
explaining the motion of planets.
On This Date In 1521 After traveling
three-quarters of the way around the globe, Portuguese navigator Ferdinand
Magellan was killed during a tribal skirmish on Mactan
Island in the Philippines.
Earlier in the month, his ships had dropped anchor at the Philippine island of Cebu,
and Magellan met with local chief Lapu-Lapu, who, after converting to Christianity,
persuaded the Europeans to assist him in conquering a rival tribe on the
neighboring island
of Mactan. In the
subsequent fighting in the Battle of Mactan, Magellan was hit by a poisoned
arrow and left to die by his retreating comrades.
On This Date In 1667 John Milton - English
poet, polemicist, scholarly man of letters, and a civil servant for the
Commonwealth (republic) of England under Oliver Cromwell - sold the publication
rights to “Paradise Lost” to publisher Samuel Simmons for £5, equivalent to
approximately £7,400 income in 2008, with a further £5 to be paid if and when
each print run of between 1,300 and 1,500 copies sold out. The first run, a
quarto edition priced at three shillings per copy, was published in August 1667
and sold out in eighteen months. Paradise
Lost, the magnum opus, blank-verse epic poem, composed by the blind and
impoverished Milton from 1658 to 1664 (first edition) with small but
significant revisions published in 1674 (second edition), would become his
best-known work, and is often considered one of the greatest literary works in
the English language.
On This Date In 1773 The British
Parliament passed the Tea Act, a bill designed to save the faltering East India
Company from bankruptcy by greatly lowering the tea tax it paid to the British
government and, thus, granting it a de facto monopoly on the American tea
trade. Because all legal tea entered the colonies through England, allowing the East India Company to pay
lower taxes in Britain
also allowed it to sell tea more cheaply in the colonies. Even untaxed Dutch
tea, which entered the colonies illegally through smuggling, was more expensive
the East India tea, after the act took effect.
On This Date In 1777 The Battle of
Ridgefield was a battle and a series of skirmishes between American and British
forces during the American Revolutionary War. The main battle was fought in the
village of Ridgefield,
Connecticut on April 27, 1777 and more
skirmishing occurred the next day between Ridgefield
and the coastline near modern Westport,
Connecticut. The resulting
tactical success for the British forces galvanized Patriot support in Connecticut.
On This Date In 1805 The Battle of Derne
was a decisive victory of a mercenary army led by a detachment of United States
Marines and soldiers over pirate forces along the Barbary coast nation of Tripoli during the First
Barbary War. It was the first recorded land battle of the United States fought overseas.
After marching 500 miles from Egypt,
U.S. agent William Eaton led
a small force of U.S. Marines and Berber mercenaries against the Tripolitan
port city of Derna.
The Marines and Berbers were on a mission to depose Yusuf Karamanli, the ruling
pasha of Tripoli, who had seized power from his
brother, Hamet Karamanli, a pasha who was sympathetic to the United States. Supported by the
heavy guns of the USS Argus and the USS Hornet, Marines and Arab mercenaries
under Eaton captured Derna and deposed Yusuf Karamanli. Lieutenant Presley O'
Bannon, commanding the Marines, performed so heroically in the battle that
Hamet Karamanli presented him with an elaborately designed sword that now
serves as the pattern for the swords carried by Marine officers. The phrase “to
the shores of Tripoli,”
from the official song of the U.S. Marine Corps, also has its origins in the
Derna campaign.
On This Date In 1813 The Battle of York
during the War of 1812 was fought at York, Upper Canada (present day Toronto). After surviving two dangerous
exploratory expeditions into uncharted areas of the West, Zebulon Pike, American
officer and explorer for whom Pikes Peak in Colorado is named, died in this battle.
Brigadier General Pike, victorious in this battle, was killed by flying rocks
and other debris when the retreating British garrison blew up its ammunition
without warning as the town's surrender negotiations were going on. The
explosion killed 38 American soldiers and wounded 222. Pike's body was brought
by ship back to Sackets
Harbor, where his remains
were buried at the military cemetery.
On This Date In 1822 Ulysses S. Grant
(April 27, 1822 – July 23, 1885), 18th President of the United States
(1869–1877) following his dominant role in the second half of the Civil War, was
born in Point Pleasant, Ohio. http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/today/apr27.html
On This Date In 1865 Mississippi River
steamboat paddlewheeler SS Sultana exploded in the greatest maritime disaster
in United States
history, more costly than even the April 14, 1912 sinking of the Titanic, when
1,517 people were lost. An estimated 1,600 of Sultana's 2,400 passengers were
killed when three of the ship's four boilers exploded and Sultana sank near Memphis, Tennessee.
This disaster was overshadowed in the press by other recent events: John Wilkes
Booth, President Abraham Lincoln's assassin, was killed the day before; and
during the previous week, the American Civil War ended.
On This Date In 1908 Through October 31,
the 1908 Summer Olympics, officially the Games of the IV Olympiad, were an
international multi-sport event held in London,
England. These
games were originally scheduled to be held in Rome. At the time they were the fifth modern
Olympic Games. However, the Athens Games of 1906 have since been downgraded by
the International Olympic Committee and the 1908 Games are seen as the start of
the Fourth Olympiad, in keeping with the now-accepted four-year cycle.
On This Date In 1914 “Caught in a Cabaret,”
a short film starring Charlie Chaplin and the film's writer/director Mabel
Normand, was released. Produced by Mack Sennett, the movie also features Harry
McCoy, Chester Conklin, and Edgar Kennedy. Chaplin plays a waiter who fakes
being a Greek Ambassador to impress a girl. He then is invited to a garden
party where he gets in trouble with the girl's jealous boyfriend. Mabel Normand
wrote and directed comedies before Chaplin and mentored her young co-star.
On This Date In 1916 During World War I,
three British officers, including the famous Captain T.E. Lawrence (known as
Lawrence of Arabia), attempted to engineer the escape of thousands of British
forces - commanded by Sir Charles Townshend, and under siege at the city of Kut-al-Amara in Mesopotamia
- through a secret negotiation with the Turkish command. The British offered £2
million and promised they would not fight the Ottomans again, in exchange for General
Townshend's troops. This offer was rejected, save for release of some of the
wounded, and around 13,000 Allied soldiers survived to be made prisoners after
the surrender of Kut on April 29.
On This Date In 1927 Coretta Scott King
(April 27, 1927 – January 30, 2006), American author, activist, and civil
rights leader, was born in Marion,
Alabama. The widow of Martin
Luther King, Jr., Coretta Scott King helped lead the African-American Civil
Rights Movement in the 1960s. Mrs. King's most prominent role may have been in
the years after her husband's 1968 assassination, when she took on the
leadership of the struggle for racial equality herself and became active in the
Women's Movement.
On This Date In 1940 “An Angel from Texas,” an American
comedy/romance film directed by Ray Enright, was released by Warner Bros.
Pictures. The movie stars Eddie Albert, Rosemary Lane, Wayne
Morris, and Ronald Reagan.
On This Date In 1941 During World War II,
the German army entered the Greek capital of Athens, signaling the end of Greek
resistance. All mainland Greece
and all the Greek Aegean islands except Crete
were under German occupation by May 11. In fending off the Axis invaders, the
Greeks suffered the loss of 15,700 men. Greece would not be liberated until
1944, by British troops from the Mediterranean theater.
On This Date In 1942 During World War II,
the Baedeker Blitz by the German air force in two periods between April and
June 1942.devastated a number of English cities. The Norwich raid occurred April 27 - 29.
On This Date In 1942 A tornado swept along
Pryor Creek's main street in Oklahoma
from the western edge of the business district to the eastern edge of the city,
destroying nearly every building and causing extensive damage to the
residential section. The storm killed 52 people, according to the U.S. Weather
Bureau, but The Associated Press set the total at 60 two days after the storm.
More than 400 were injured in the storm that caused damage estimated at $3
million. The Pryor tornado ranks as the fifth deadliest in Oklahoma history.
On This Date In 1956 World heavyweight
champ Rocky Marciano retired from boxing at age 31, saying he wanted to spend
more time with his family. Marciano ended his career as the only heavyweight
champion with a perfect record: 49 wins in 49 professional bouts, with 43
knockouts.
On This Date In 1963 Margaret Annemarie
Battavio's very first single, “I Will Follow Him,” reached #1 on the U.S.
pop charts. With her 15th birthday only six weeks behind her, and three more
years of high school ahead of her, the singer better known as Little Peggy
March became the youngest female performer ever to top the Billboard Hot 100.
On This Date In 1965 Edward Roscoe Murrow
(April 25, 1908 – April 27, 1965), an American broadcast journalist first
coming to prominence with a series of radio news broadcasts during World War
II, which were followed by millions of listeners in the United States and Canada, died at his home from lung
cancer two days after his 57th birthday. A chain smoker throughout his life,
Murrow developed lung cancer and lived for two years after an operation to
remove his left lung.
On This Date In 1972 During the Vietnam
War, the northern-most front of the North Vietnamese Nguyen Hue Offensive -
launched on March 30, when more than 120,000 North Vietnamese troops invaded South Vietnam
- shattered South Vietnamese defenses north of Quang Tri and moved to within
2.5 miles of the city. Using Russian-built tanks, they took Dong Ha, 7 miles
north of Quang Tri, the next day and continued to tighten their ring around
Quang Tri, shelling it heavily. South Vietnamese troops suffered their highest
casualties for any week in the war in the bitter fighting.
On This Date In 1977 “The Man Who Loved
Women,” a French comedy/drama film directed by François Truffaut and starring
Charles Denner, Brigitte Fossey and Nelly Borgeaud, was released. In 1983, it
was remade in Hollywood
under the same title. The film had a total of 955,262 admissions in France.
On This Date In 1978 The Saur Revolution
is the name given to the Communist People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan
(PDPA) takeover of political power from the government of Afghanistan on April 28, 1978. The
word 'Saur', i.e. Taurus, refers to the Dari name of the second month of the
Persian calendar, the month in which the uprising took place. According to an
eyewitness, the first signs of the impending coup in Kabul, about noon on April
27, were reports of a tank column headed toward the city, smoke of unknown
origin near the Ministry of Defense, and armed men, some in military uniform
and others not, guarding Pashtunistan Circle, a major intersection. Afghanistan
President Sardar Mohammed Daoud was overthrown and murdered in this coup led by
procommunist rebels. The brutal action marked the beginning of political
upheaval in Afghanistan
that resulted in intervention by Soviet troops less than two years later.
On This Date In 1978 The Willow Island
disaster was the collapse of a cooling tower under construction at a power
station at Willow Island, West Virginia. A crane cable hoisting
concrete went slack, causing the crane to fall toward the inside of the tower,
collapsing the scaffolding and the structure. 51 construction workers were
killed. It is thought to be the largest construction accident in American
history.
On This Date In 1987 “Never Let Me Down,”
an album by David Bowie, was released through EMI America. Written and recorded
in Switzerland, Bowie regarded the album
at the time as a “move back to rock 'n roll music. Very directly.” Bowie described the tracks
from Never Let Me Down as being
written for being performed on stage, and they formed the backbone of his
highly theatrical Glass Spider world
tour in 1987.
On This Date In 1994 More than 22 million
South Africans turned out to cast ballots in the country's first multiracial
parliamentary elections. An overwhelming majority chose anti-apartheid leader
Nelson Mandela to head a new coalition government that included his African
National Congress Party, former President F.W. de Klerk's National Party, and
Zulu leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi's Inkatha Freedom Party. In May, Mandela was
inaugurated as president, becoming South Africa's first black head of
state.
On This Date In 1998 “Nightfall in Middle-Earth,”
a concept album by Blind Guardian, was released through Virgin/Century Media.
It is Blind Guardian's sixth studio album. The album is based upon J. R. R.
Tolkien's The Silmarillion, a book of
tales from the First Age of Middle-earth, recounting the War of the Jewels. The album contains not only songs but also
spoken parts narrating parts of the story. Nightfall
in Middle-Earth was the first album by Blind Guardian to be released in the
U.S.
The sales encouraged Century Media to release their entire back catalog in the U.S.
In 2007, it was remastered and re-released, with one bonus track.
On This Date In 2004 “City of Heroes”
(CoH), a massively multiplayer online role-playing game based on the superhero
comic book genre, developed by Cryptic Studios and published by NCsoft, was
launched in North America, and in Europe (by NCsoft Europe) on February 4, 2005
with English, German and French language servers. Twenty-one free major updates
for City of Heroes
have been released since its launch. The newest update, “Convergence”, was
released on September 13, 2011.
On This Date In 2008 Taliban insurgents in
Afghanistan attacked a
military parade that President Hamid Karzai was attending in Kabul. During the national anthem, 3 Taliban
attackers opened fire. Live television coverage of the event was cut off
shortly afterward. Karzai was unhurt, but at least three people were killed,
including parliamentarian Fazel Rahman Samkanai, a ten-year-old girl, Nasir
Ahmad Latifi, minority leader, and ten injured. Others attending the event
included government ministers, former leaders, diplomats and the military top
brass, all of whom had gathered to mark the 16th anniversary of the fall of the
Afghan communist government to the mujahideen.
On This Date In 2009 The director of the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed the first official US
death of swine flu on April 28. Tests confirmed that a 23-month old toddler
from Mexico - the epicentre
of the outbreak, with 159 deaths at the time - who was probably infected there,
died on April 27 from the flu while visiting Texas.
On This Date In 2009 The White House
apologized for Air Force One's low flight over New York
and New Jersey.
The Air Force photographers exercise — conducted without any notification to the
public — caused momentary panic in some quarters and led to the evacuation of
several buildings in Lower Manhattan and Jersey
City.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Statement-from-Louis-Caldera-Director-White-House-Military-Office-on-Air-Force-One-flight-over-New-York/
- http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/air-force-one-backup-rattles-new-york-nerve/
On This Date In 2009 The struggling
American auto giant General Motors (GM) stated its plan to discontinue
production of its more than 80-year-old Pontiac
brand. Pontiac's origins date back to the
Oakland Motor Car, which was founded in 1907 in Pontiac, Michigan,
by Edward Murphy, a horse-drawn carriage manufacturer. In 1909, Oakland became part of
General Motors, a conglomerate formed the previous year by another former buggy
company executive, William Durant.
On This Date In 2010 A North Korean Party
cadre had announced his country was responsible for the sinking of an unnamed
South Korean vessel presumed to be the Cheonan. The ROKS Cheonan sinking
occurred on March 26, 2010, when the Cheonan, a Republic
of Korea Navy ship carrying 104
personnel, sank off the country's west coast near Baengnyeong
Island in the Yellow
Sea, killing 46 seamen. http://www.dailynk.com/english/read.php?cataId=nk01500&num=6286
Hat tip to any included contributing sources, along with: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
, http://www.-history.com/this-day-in-history
, http://timelines.com/
Happy Birthday Brigitte Auber (1928), Casey
Kasem (1932), Judy Carne (1939), Cuba Gooding Sr (1944), Kate Pierson (1948), Ace Frehley (1951), George
Gervin (1952), Kevin McNally (1956), Arielle Dombasle (1958), Sheena Easton
(1959), Anna Chancellor (1965), Maura West (1972), David Lascher (1972), Nigel
Barker (1972), Ari Graynor (1983), Dinara Safina (1986)
RIP Mary Wollstonecraft (1759 – 1797), Samuel
F. B. Morse (1791 – 1872), Herbert Spencer (1820 – 1903), Cecil Day-Lewis (1904
– 1972), Lim Bo Seng (1909 – 1944), Coretta Scott King (1927 – 2006), Sandy
Dennis (1937 – 1992), Earl Anthony (1938 – 2001), Keith Magnuson (1947 – 2003)
Quotes
The cost of freedom is always high, but Americans have
always paid it. And one path we shall never choose, and that is the path of
surrender, or submission. John Fitzgerald Kennedy
America's
abundance was not created by public sacrifices to "the common good",
but by the productive genius of free men who pursued their own personal
interests and the making of their own private fortunes. Ayn Rand
The day will come when, after harnessing space, the winds,
the tides and gravitation, we shall harness for God the energies of love. And
on that day, for the second time in the history of the world, we shall have discovered
fire. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Every hardship; every joy; every temptation is a challenge
of the spirit; that the human soul may prove itself. The great chain of
necessity wherewith we are bound has divine significance; and nothing happens
which has not some service in working out the sublime destiny of the human
soul. Elias A. Ford
Never tell a young person that anything cannot be done. God
may have been waiting centuries for someone ignorant enough of the impossible
to do that very thing. G. M. Trevelyan
All human actions have one or more of these seven causes:
chance, nature, compulsions, habit, reason, passion and desire. Aristotle
We are shaped by our thoughts; we become what we think. When
the mind is pure, joy follows like a shadow that never leaves. Buddha
Courtesy You Tube et al
I was excited to invite Grace Bawden on this journey with me
and my sister to remake a timeless rock classic originally done by the
Scorpions. We met through youtube a few years ago after we had discovered we
recorded the same Josh Groban song. When I had an opportunity to record in Nashville, 'Send Me An
Angel" I decided to do it as a duet and Grace was the first person I
thought of. I believe she and I along with my sister Abigail (Abby)
Stahlschmidt on violin/ harmony are the first to create a classical rock
orchestration by recording/filming/producing in 2 different countries and
bringing the music and footage together to make something outstanding. What
makes it more remarkable is we have never met one another YET in person. (The
music of the future) We hope you enjoy Please share and support us all by buying
a copy of the track. Thank You!
All necessary licensing have been acquired- Available now on
iTunes
http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/send-me-an-angel/id510752315?i=510752319&...
Unsigned Artists - For booking or inquiries contact www.digistarmgt.com
* All necessary licensing for music/video have been acquired
through Harry Fox, sinc BMG Cornerstone Global Productions/Gabrielle
Stahlschmidt
The Enterprise - the first US shuttle ever built - swept across the Manhattan skyline for a
historic final flyover. It left the Washington
DC atop a Boeing 747 jet and was
filmed flying past landmarks such as the Statue of Liberty.
Chief Musician Yolanda Pelzer sings "The Star-Spangled
Banner" at the 2012 Virginia International Tattoo in Norfolk, Va.
She's accompanied by the United States Navy Band, the Albanian Armed Forces
Band, the Royal Band of the Belgian Navy, the U.S. Army Training & Doctrine
Command Band, the U.S. Marine Corps Band (Quantico),
and the Virginia Symphony Orchestra Chorus.
Of Man's first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden Tree, whose mortal taste
Brought death into the world, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
Restore us, and regain the blissful seat,
Sing, Heavenly Muse. John Milton, from Paradise Lost
Of that forbidden Tree, whose mortal taste
Brought death into the world, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man
Restore us, and regain the blissful seat,
Sing, Heavenly Muse. John Milton, from Paradise Lost
I shall on all subjects have a policy to recommend, but none
to enforce against the will of the people. Laws are to govern all alike—those
opposed as well as those who favor them. I know no method to secure the repeal
of bad or obnoxious laws so effective as their stringent execution. Ulysses
S. Grant, First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1869.
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