This Week in History

April 21

 

753 BC: Romulus and Remus founded Rome.

1910: American
author Samuel “Mark Twain” Clemens died in Redding, Conn., at age 74.

“The report of my
death was an
exaggeration.”
– Mark Twain

1926: Britain’s Queen
Elizabeth II was born in London.

1962: The Seattle World’s Fair (Century 21 Exposition) opened. It was the first World’s Fair in the United States since World War II.

 

 

April 22

1970: The first Earth Day was celebrated.

1977: Optical fiber was first used to carry live telephone
traffic.

1993: Version 1.0 of the Mosaic web browser was released.

 

 

1994: Richard Milhous Nixon, 37th U.S. president, died at age 81 In New York.

 

April 23

 

     1564: William Shakespeare is believed to have been born on this date. (He died 52 years later, also on April 23.)

     1914: The first baseball game was played at Wrigley Field, then known a Weeghman Park, in Chicago.

1985: Coca-Cola changed its formula and released New Coke. The response was overwhelmingly negative and the original formula was back on the market in less than three months as “Classic Coke.”

2005: The First YouTube video was uploaded, titled “Me at the zoo.”

April 24

 

     1704: The first newspaper in the United States, the News-Letter, began publishing in Boston.

1800: The U.S. Library of Congress was established when President John Adams signed legislation to appropriate $5,000 to purchase “such books as may be necessary for the use of Congress.”

1967: Cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov became the first person to die during a space mission after the parachute of his capsule failed to deploy following re-entry.

 

April 25

 

1901: New York
became the first U.S. state to require automobile license plates.

 

1945: Fifty nations gathered in San Francisco, Calif., to begin the United Nations Conference
on International
Organizations.

 

1974: Workers for the Dowling Construction Co. of Indianapolis left a five-ton steel wrecking ball hanging from a crane 200 feet above the ground. When they returned the next morning, the ball was gone. Police had no explanation and the ball was never found.

 

April 26

 

1965: A Rolling Stones concert in London, Ontario, was shut down by police after 15 minutes due to rioting.

 

 

 

1982: Fifty-seven people were killed by former police officer Woo Bum-kon in a shooting spree in Gyeongsangnam-do, South Korea, a country with strict gun control laws.

1989: The deadliest tornado in recorded history struck Central Bangladesh, killing 1,300 people, injuring 12,000, and leaving as many as 80,000 homeless.

April 27

1861: U.S. President Abraham Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus.

1981: Xerox PARC (Palo Alto Research Center Inc.) introduced the first computer mouse.

2006: Construction began on the Freedom Tower for the new World Trade Center in New York City. (The name was changed on March 30, 2009, to 1 World Trade Center.)

Fuel for Thought, 1980

PRESERVATION:

Reusing America’s Energy

Preservation Week May 11-17, 1980

 

It takes energy to construct a new building.

It saves energy to preserve an old one.

 

It takes the energy equivalent of one gallon of gasoline to make, deliver and install eight bricks. Preserving eight old bricks instead of throwing them away and making new ones means the energy of a gallon of gasoline can be used to meet other needs. Reusing old buildings saves the energy required to demolish and replace them with new buildings. And properly rehabileated old buildings use no more energy, on the average, than brand new buildings for operation.

Save energy—save a building! Join the National Trust for Historic Preservation and the U.S. Department of Energy in observing Preservation Week 1980. For details, write to Preservation Week, National Trust, 1785 Massachusetts Ave., N.W., Washington, D.C., 200..[zipcome illegible]. Or contact your local preservation organization.

 

NATIONAL TRUST FOR HISTORIC PRESERVATION

Chief Rocky Boy