April 10
1916: The Professional Golfers’ Association of America (PGA) was created in New York City.
1925: The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald was first published in New York City.
1953: Warner Bros. premiered the first 3-D film from a major American studio, entitled House of Wax.
1970: Paul McCartney announced that he was leaving The Beatles for personal and professional reasons.
April 11
1961: The trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann began in Jerusalem.
1963: Pope John XXIII issued Pacem in Terris, the first encyclical addressed to all persons instead of to Catholics alone. Jennifer and June Gibbons, “The Silent Twins,” were born in Wales.
1965: Fifty-one tornadoes struck the American Midwest.
1968: President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1968, prohibiting discrimination in the sale, rental and financing of housing.
1976: The Apple I computer was created in Palo Alto, Calif.
2006: Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announces Iran’s claim to have successfully enriched uranium.
April 12
1928: The Bremen, a German Junkers W 33 type aircraft, took off for the first successful transatlantic airplane flight from east to west.
1934: The strongest surface wind gust in the world, 231 mph, was measured on the summit of Mount Washington, New Hampshire.
1945: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 33rd president (1933-1945), died at age 63 of a brain aneurysm at Warm Springs, Ga.
1947: Born this day: TV host David Letterman.
1955: The polio vaccine, developed by Dr. Jonas Salk, was declared safe and effective.
1961: Russian Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human to travel into outer space and perform the first manned orbital flight, in Vostok 3KA-2 (Vostok 1).
1999: U.S. President Bill Clinton was cited for contempt of court for giving “intentionally false statements” in a sexual harassment civil lawsuit.
2009: Zimbabwe officially abandons the Zimbabwean dollar as its official currency.
April 13
1953: CIA director Allen Dulles launched the top-secret brainwashing program MKULTRA.
1964: At the Academy Awards, Sidney Poitier became the first African-American man to win the Best Actor award for the 1963 film Lilies of the Field.
1970: Apollo 13, four-fifths of the way to the moon, was crippled when a liquid oxygen tank exploded. The astronauts were able to return safely 2009: Andrew Hussie publishes the first page of the web comic Home stuck.
April 14
1902: James Cash Penney (JCPenney) opened his first store, called “The Golden Rule,” in Kemmerer, Wyo.
1912: The ocean liner Titanic struck an iceberg at 11:40 p.m. and sank at 2:20 a.m. on April 15, on its maiden voyage from England to New York.
1927: The first Volvo car premiered in Gothenburg, Sweden.
1935: The “Black Sunday Storm,” the worst dust storm of the U.S. Dust Bowl, struck Oklahoma and Texas. It inflicted immense economic and agricultural damage and caused hundreds of thousands of people to relocate, most to California.
1956: Videotape was first demonstrated in Chicago.
1969: At the U.S. Academy Awards, there was a tie for the Academy Award for Best Actress between Katharine Hepburn and Barbra Streisand.
1999: A severe hailstorm struck Sydney, Australia, causing $2.3 billion in insured damages, the most costly natural disaster in Australian history.
April 15
1923: Insulin became generally available for use by people with diabetes.
1924: Rand McNally published its first road atlas.
1927: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, the most destructive river flood in U.S. history, began.
1941: The Belfast Blitz occurred when two-hundred bombers of the German Luftwaffe attacked Belfast, Northern Ireland.
1955: McDonald’s first franchised restaurant was opened by Ray Kroc in Des Plaines, Ill.
1965: The first Ford Mustang rolled off the showroom floor, two days before it was set to go on sale nationwide.
1986: The United States launched Operation El Dorado Canyon, its bombing raids against Libyan targets in response to a bombing in West Germany.
April 16
1941: Bob Feller of the Cleveland Indians threw the only opening day no-hitter in Major League Baseball history, beating the Chicago White Sox 1-0.
1947: Bernard Baruch coined the term “Cold War” to describe the relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union.