April 23
April 23, 2008 by: admin
Holidays
Feast day of St. George, St. Gerard of Toul, St. Ibar, St. Adalbert of Prague, and Saints Felix, Fortunatus, and Achilleus.
Bermuda: Peppercorn Day.
England: St. George’s Day.
Germany: Biertag.
Turkey: National Sovereignty and Children’s Day.
Events
1348 – English King Edward III founded the Order of the Garter, the first order of knighthood.
1635 – The Boston Latin School opened — America’s oldest public school.
1789 – President-elect George Washington and his wife moved into the first executive mansion, the Franklin House, in New York.
1896 – The Vitascope system for projecting movies onto a screen was demonstrated in New York City, inaugurating the first movie theater at Koster and Bials Music Hall.
1968 – The Methodist Church and the Evangelical United Brethren Church merged to form the United Methodist Church.
1969 – Sirhan Sirhan was sentenced to death for assassinating Senator Robert F. Kennedy; a sentence later reduced to life imprisonment.
1988 – A federal ban on smoking during domestic airline flights of two hours or less went into effect.
1994 – Physicists at the Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory found evidence of the top quark.
2003 – Beijing closes all schools for two weeks due to the SARS virus.
Births
1564 – William Shakespeare, English dramatist and poet (generally accepted date).
1791 – James Buchanan, 15th President of the United States of America (1857-1861).
1813 – Stephen A. Douglas, American politician.
1858 – Max Planck, German physicist who developed quantum theory.
1873 – Sergei Rachmaninoff, Russian-born American musician, pianist, composer.
1928 – Shirley Temple Black, American child actress, U.S. United Nations diplomat and Chief of Protocol.
1932 – Halston (Roy Halston Frowick), American fashion designer.
1936 – Roy Orbison, American singer and musician.
1961 – George Lopez, American actor and comedian.
1968 – Timothy McVeigh, American terrorist.
Deaths
1616 – William Shakespeare (photo), English actor, poet, and playwright.
1993 – César Chávez, Mexican-American labor activist.
1995 – Howard Cosell (born Howard William Cohen), American sportscaster.
2007 – American Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author David Halberstam.
2007 – Former Russian President Boris Yeltsin.
