April 22
April 22, 2008 by: admin
Holidays
Feast day of St. Theodore of Sykeon, St. Opportuna, St. Agipatus I, pope, St. Leonides of Alexandria, and Saints Epipodius and Alexander.
Brazil: Discovery of Brazil Day.
Oklahoma Day.
United States: Earth Day.
Events
1500 – Portuguese explorer Pedro Cabral landed on the coast of Brazil and claimed it for Portugal.
1509 – Henry VIII ascended the throne of England following the death of his father, Henry VII.
1662 – King Charles II granted a charter to the Royal Society of London, which became an important scientific organization.
1838 – The first steamship to cross the Atlantic, the British ship Sirius, arrived at New York; it made the crossing in 18 days.
1864 – Congress authorized the use of the phrase “In God We Trust” on U.S. coins.
1889 – The Oklahoma Land Rush began at noon; thousands of homesteaders staked claims.
1898 – The first action of the Spanish-American War was the USS Nashville capturing a Spanish merchant ship off Key West, Florida.
1914 – Babe Ruth made his professional pitching debut, playing for the Baltimore Orioles.
1915 – In World War I, the Germans shocked the world with their use of lethal chlorine gas in combat against French troops in Belgium.
1954 – The televised Senate Army-McCarthy hearings began.
1970 – The first Earth Day was observed.
1976 – Barbara Walters became the first female nightly news anchor on network television.
1993 – The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum was dedicated in Washington, D.C. to honor the victims of Nazi extermination.
1994 – Norwegian explorer Borge Ousland became the first person to make the trip to the North Pole alone.
1999 – NATO warplanes struck directly against Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, destroying his luxurious mansion.
2000 – The Big Number Change takes place in the United Kingdom.
2005 – In a federal court, Zacarias Moussaoui pled guilty to conspiring with the Sept. 11 hijackers to kill Americans.
Births
1451 – Queen Isabella I, sponsor of Christopher Columbus’s journeys.
1707 – Henry Fielding, English novelist.
1724 – Immanuel Kant (photo), German philosopher.
1870 – Vladimir Ilich Lenin, Russian leader of the Bolshevik Revolution, first head of the Soviet State.
1899 – Vladimir Nabokov, Russian-born American novelist and critic.
1904 – J. Robert Oppenheimer, American physicist, inventor of atomic bomb.
1925 – Aaron Spelling, American Emmy Award-winning executive producer.
1937 – Jack Nicholson (Rose), American Academy Award-winning actor.
1944 – Steve Fossett, American investment banker, aviator, and adventurer.
1950 – Peter Frampton, English musician.
1964 – Chris Makepeace, Canadian film and television actor.
Deaths
1908 – Henry Campbell-Bannerman, British statesman who served as Prime Minister.
1984 – Ansel Adams, American photographer.
1994 – Richard Nixon, the only American president to have resigned.
1996 – Erma Bombeck, American humorist.
