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April 28, 2014 – Segment 1
Marc shares some of the events that happened on this day in history, including Maryland’s ratification of the US Constitution, the Mutiny on the Bounty, the killing of deposed Italian dictator Benito Mussolini and his mistress, Clara Petacci and the overthrow and assassination of Afghan president Mohammed Daoud Khan.
On this day in history:
1788 – Maryland becomes the seventh state to ratify the Constitution of the United States.
1789 – Mutiny on the Bounty: Lieutenant William Bligh and 18 sailors are set adrift and the rebel crew returns to Tahiti briefly and then sets sail for Pitcairn Island.
1871: Either convinced that Eskiminzin’s APACHE are responsible for raids near Tucson, or just looking for an excuse to attack the ARAVAIPAs, William Oury sets out with 140 armed whites and Indians for the APACHE camp near Camp Grant.
1882: Remnants of Loco’s CHIRICAHUA APAPCHEs who fought in the battles south of Stein’s Pass, and in Horseshoe Canyon, on April 23, 1882, are attacked today by Captain Tullius Tupper, Troops G, and M, 6th Cavalry, and a company of Indian scouts, 25 miles south of Cloverdale, Arizona. Six APACHEs are killed, and 72 head of livestock are seized, according to Army reports. The surviving Indians head toward Mexico.
1924 – Don Redman, musical prodigy, multi-instrumentalist, composer, arranger, vocalist and bandleader, was the first musician to use the oboe as a jazz instrument in a solo he performed in a recording of “After the Storm,” with Fletcher Henderson and His Orchestra. The piece was recorded by Pathe Actuelle in New York.
1931: Women’s track and field events approved for Olympics
1932 – A vaccine for yellow fever is announced for use on humans.
1935: Over 1,200,000 people face starvation in Illinois if the US Federal Government stops providing new deal funding, the reason is that the state must provide $3,000,000 of the $12,000,000 required each month to feed and house the unemployed indigents or the federal government withdraws it’s funding and the state does not have the money and is not providing that funding.
1941 – Supreme Court ruled in railroad Jim Crow case brought by Congressman Arthur Mitchell that separate facilities must be substantially equal.
1945: Italian partisans executed deposed dictator Benito Mussolini and his mistress, Clara Petacci. Mussolini, who ruled Italy from 1922 to 1943
1947: A Norwegian expedition including 5 Norwegians and a Swede headed by Thor Heyerdahl set out on the raft The Kon-Tiki from Peru in South America to cross the 4000 miles of Pacific Ocean to prove that the Polynesian Islands were settled in a similar way thousands of years ago, the raft is equipped with a square sail and paddles.
1957 – W. Robert Ming, Chicago lawyer, elected chairman of American Veterans Committee. He was the first Black to head a major national veterans organization.
1967 – Mrs. Robert W. Claytor elected president of the YWCA, the first Black president of the organization.
1967: Heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali appears for his scheduled induction into the U.S. Armed Forces in Houston, he refused three times to step forward at the call of his name. He is then warned by an officer that failing to answer to his name was a felony punishable by five years in prison and a fine of $10,000. He still refused to budge when his name was called. On the same day, the New York State Athletic Commission suspended his boxing license and stripped him of his title. In 1964 he had failed the U.S. Armed Forces qualifying test because his writing and spelling skills were sub par. However, in early 1966, the tests were revised and Ali was reclassified as 1A. (When notified of this status, he declared that he would refuse to serve in the United States Army).
1971 – Samuel L. Gravely, Jr. became the first African American Admiral in the United States Navy.
1973: Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side Of The Moon went to No.1 in the US. The album went on to enjoy a record-breaking 741 discontinuous weeks on the Billboard chart, and has now sold over 45 million copies world-wide. After moving to the Billboard Top Pop Catalog Chart, the album notched up a further 759 weeks there, and had reached a total of over 1,500 weeks on the combined charts by May 2006.
1975: US Involvement in Vietnam is now complete as helicopters and marines bring out the last US Citizens and parents of thousands of South Vietnamese children are begging the US to save the children as US Marines are using pistol and rifle butts to smash the fingers of Vietnamese trying to climb over the walls and enter the US Embassy compound
1978 – President of Afghanistan, Mohammed Daoud Khan, is overthrown and assassinated in a coup led by pro-communist rebels.
1983 – Two African American women, Alice Walker and Gloria Naylor win American Book Awards for fiction
1986: Two days after monitoring stations in Sweden, Finland and Norway began reporting sudden high discharges of radioactivity in the atmosphere. The Soviet Union via the official news agency, Tass, said there has been an accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine.
1987 – American engineer Ben Linder is killed in an ambush by U.S.-funded Contras in northern Nicaragua.
1994: A CIA double agent Aldrich Ames is jailed for life after admitted selling secrets to the Soviet Union and then Russia.
2004: The first photos of the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal were shown on CBS’ “60 Minutes II.” . The US army has already instituted and was already acting on these photographs prior to the 60 Minutes Showing and those involved are all in Iraq, awaiting court martial. The abuses were committed by some personnel of the 372nd Military Police Company of the United States together with additional American governmental agencies
Born on this day in history:
1758 – James Monroe, American soldier, lawyer, and politician, 5th President of the United States (d. 1831)
1882: Frances Elliott Davis born
1926 – Harper Lee, American author
1932 – Brownie Ledbetter, American activist (d. 2010)
1937 – Saddam Hussein, Iraqi politician, 5th President of Iraq (d. 2006)
1938 – Madge Sinclair, Jamaican-American actress (d. 1995)
1950 – Willie Colón, Puerto Rican trombonist and producer
1950 – Jay Leno, American comedian, talk show host, and producer
1973 – Jorge Garcia, American actor
1974 – Penélope Cruz, Spanish-American actress
On this day in history, we lost:
1934 – Charley Patton, American guitarist (b. 1887)
1987 – Ben Linder, American engineer (b. 1959)
1997 – Ann Petry, American author (b. 1908)
2005 – Percy Heath, American bassist (Modern Jazz Quartet) (b. 1923)
Sources: The People History; This Day in Labor History; Wikipedia List of Historical Anniversaries; This Day in Women’s History; This Day in African History;History.com; History Orb; Yenoba; Selected Black Facts; Phil Konstantin’s North American Indian History; and This Day in Music
