Back in Time – This Day in History – April 7
1978: Jimmy Carter
By Mick Ferris, Press Association, AP, UPI, calendar.songfacts.com, classicbands.com and thisdayinmusic.com
1724: Bach’s “St John Passion” premieres in Leipzig.
1739: Highwayman Dick Turpin is executed for horse theft.
1770: Birth of poet William Wordsworth in Cockermouth, Cumbria.
1798: The Mississippi Territory was created by an act of Congress, with Natchez as the capital.
1805: Premiere of Beethoven’s “Eroica”, conducted by the composer himself.
1827: Chemist John Walker invents wooden matches.
1862: Union forces led by Gen. Ulysses S. Grant defeated the Confederates at the Battle of Shiloh in Tennessee.
1891: Circus promoter and showman P T Barnum dies aged 80.
1896: Australian Teddy Flack wins Gold in the first Olympic 1500m final at the Olympics in Athens.
1906: Mount Vesuvius erupts and devastates Naples.
1915: Born on this day: American jazz musician and singer-songwriter Billie Holiday, (Elinore Harris), the greatest female jazz singer of all time. Holiday released over 100 records and worked with Count Basie and Duke Ellington. During her troubled life she was arrested numerous times for drug possession. Lady Sings the Blues, a film about her life, starring Diana Ross, was released in 1972. Holiday died on 17th July 1959 from liver failure, aged 44.
1921: Revolutionary Sun Yat-sen is elected President of China.
1922: Under the direction Secretary of the Interior Albert Bacon Fall, petroleum reserves at Wyoming's Teapot Dome Oil Field were leased without competitive bidding to private companies. A Senate investigation ensued, leading to a bribery case that would become known as the Teapot Dome scandal.
1923: The first brain tumour operation under local anesthetic performed in New York.
1926: Benito Mussolini is shot at three times by Violet Gibson in Rome. He is hit once, in the nose.
1933: Less than a month after President Franklin Roosevelt asked Congress to permit the manufacture and sale of beer, the Volstead Act was modified to allow for this request.
1939: Italy invades Albania.
1947: Auto pioneer Henry Ford died in Detroit at the age of 83. In 1896, he built his first self-propelled, gas-engine vehicle, and in 1903 incorporated the Ford Motor Company. He is credited for developing the first affordable, mass-produced car, the Model T, and pioneering the assembly line.
1948: The World Health Organization formed by the United Nations.
1951: Golfer Ben Hogan wins the US Masters. On the same day, only three of 36 runners finish the Grand National, which is won by John Bullock on 40/1 ride Nickel Coin.
1953: The U.N. General Assembly ratified Dag Hammarskjold of Sweden as the new secretary-general, succeeding Trygve Lie of Norway.
1954: President Dwight D. Eisenhower held a news conference in which he spoke of the importance of containing the spread of communism in Indochina, saying, “You have a row of dominoes set up, you knock over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is the certainty that it will go over very quickly.” (This became known as the “domino theory,” although Eisenhower did not use that term.)
1956: Network TV premiere: Rock & Roll Dance Party with Alan Freed, on CBS.
1956: Little Richard's "Long Tall Sally" enters the US Pop chart, where it would climb to #6. The record would top the R&B chart and became the first of his three US Top 10 hits. A cover version by Pat Boone appeared on the Pop chart simultaneously and reached #8.
1959: A referendum in Oklahoma repealed the state’s ban on alcoholic beverages.
1959: As the snow melts in Mason City, Iowa, Buddy Holly's glasses are found from the plane crash that killed him two months earlier. They are turned in to police, where they stay until 1980, when a sheriff finds them and returns them to Holly's widow.
1962: Nearly 1,200 Cuban exiles tried by Cuba for their roles in the failed Bay of Pigs invasion were convicted of treason.
1962: The Beatles played at the Casbah Coffee Club, Liverpool without George Harrison who was ill. This was the group's last performance before leaving for their third extended engagement in Hamburg, West Germany.
1963: Jack Nicklaus wins the first of his record six Green Jackets at the US Masters in Augusta, Georgia.
1963: UK TOP 20: Album chart:
1. Cliff Richard - Summer Holiday
2. Buddy Holly - Reminiscing
3. The Beatles - Please Please Me
4. Various Artists - All Star Festival
5. Elvis Presley - Girls Girls Girls
6. Frank Sinatra And Count Basie - Sinatra - Basie
7. Original Soundtrack - West Side Story
8. Frank Ifield - I'll Remember You
9. The Shadows - Out Of The Shadows
10. Original Soundtrack - South Pacific
11. Richard Chamberlain - Richard Chamberlain Sings
12. Various Artists - That Was The Week That Was
13. George Mitchell Minstrels - The Black And White Minstrel Show
14. Buddy Holly And The Crickets - The Buddy Holly Story
15. Brenda Lee - Brenda - That's All
16. Stan Getz And Charlie Byrd - Jazz Samba
17. Wilfred Brambell And Harry H Corbett - Steptoe And Son
18. Brenda Lee - All Alone Am I
19. Sammy Davis Jr - Sammy Davis Jr At The Coconut Grove
20. Bobby Vee And The Crickets - Bobby Vee Meets The Crickets
***
1966: The U.S. Navy recovered a hydrogen bomb that the U.S. Air Force had lost in the Mediterranean Sea off Spain following a B-52 crash.
1968: Formula 1 driver Jim Clark is killed in a race accident at Hockenheim, Germany.
1970: John Wayne wins best actor Oscar for his role as Rooster Cogburn in True Grit. Maggie Smith wins for best actress in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.
1971: President Richard Nixon orders that Lt William Calley be released from prison and subject to house arrest.
1972: Three members of the IRA die in a premature bomb explosion in Belfast.
1973: US TOP 20 : Singles chart:
1. Vicki Lawrence - The Night The Lights Went Out In Georgia
2. Gladys Knight And The Pips - Neither One Of Us (Wants To Be The First To Say Goodbye)
3. Roberta Flack - Killing Me Softly With His Song
4. Four Tops - Ain't No Woman (Like The One I've Got)
5. The Stylistics - Break Up To Make Up
6. Dawn Featuring Tony Orlando - Tie A Yellow Ribbon Round The Ole Oak Tree
7. Carpenters - Sing
8. Anne Murray - Danny's Song
9. Deodato - Also Sprach Zarathustra (2001)
10. War - The Cisco Kid
11. Al Green - Call Me (Come Back Home)
12. The O'Jays - Love Train
13. Edward Bear - Last Song
14. The Temptations - Masterpiece
15. David Bowie - Space Oddity
16. Johnny Nash - Stir It Up
17. Loudon Wainwright III - Dead Skunk
18. Donny Osmond - The Twelfth Of Never
19. Deliverance/Eric Weissberg & Steve Mandell - Dueling Banjos
20. The Sweet - Little Willy
***
1976: The Chinese Politburo fires vice-premier Deng Xiaoping.
1978: President Jimmy Carter announced he was deferring development of the neutron bomb, a high-radiation weapon.
1981: Former manager of The Who, Kit Lambert, died of a cerebral hemorrhage after falling down a flight of stairs at his mother’s home in London.
1983: Oldest human skeleton, aged 80,000 years, discovered in Egypt.
1983: Space shuttle astronauts Story Musgrave and Don Peterson went on the first U.S. spacewalk in almost a decade as they worked in the open cargo bay of Challenger for nearly four hours.
1985: Wham! became the first western pop group to perform live in China, when they played at the workers gymnasium in Beijing.
1988: Russia announces it will withdraw its troops from Afghanistan.
1990: Suspected arson fires aboard the ferry Scandinavian Star killed at least 75 people in Scandinavia's worst post-war maritime disaster.
1994: Lee Brilleaux singer, harmonica player and founding member of Dr Feelgood, died of throat cancer aged 41.
1998: George Michael was arrested at The Will Rogers Memorial Park, Beverly Hills, for committing a sex act in a public toilet.
2000: South African cricket captain Hansie Cronje is charged by Delhi police with fixing One Day International matches against India.
2000: Heinz, bass player and singer with The Tornadoes died aged 57. The group had the Joe Meek produced 1962 UK & US No.1 single 'Telstar', making them the first UK group to score a US No.1 single. Heinz had the 1963 solo hit 'Just Like Eddie', a tribute to Eddie Cochran, (which featured future Deep Purple guitarist Ritchie Blackmore).
2003: US troops capture Baghdad.
2009: North Korean leader Kim Jong Il was re-elected to a third five-year term despite failing health since a reported stroke in August 2008. He died in 2011.
2011: A 23-year-old former student returned to his public elementary school in Rio de Janeiro and opened fire with two revolvers, killing 12 children and injuring 12 others before shooting himself in the head as police closed in.
2012: Broadcast journalist Mike Wallace, the CBS 60 Minutes icon, died in New Canaan, Conn. He was 93.
2013: Veteran producer and engineer Andy Johns died aged 61.
2014: Pro-Russian activists barricaded inside government buildings in eastern Ukraine proclaimed their regions to be independent and called for a referendum on seceding from Ukraine, an echo of events that had led to Russia’s annexation of Crimea.
2014: Death of Peaches Geldof, daughter of Bob Geldof and Paula Yates aged 25 from a heroin overdose.
2015: The original manuscript of Don McLean's 'American Pie' sold for $1.2m (£806,000) at a New York auction. The 16-page draft had been expected to fetch as much as $1.5m (£1m) at the Christie's sale. McLean said writing the song was 'a mystical trip into his past'. The repeatedly mentioned phrase 'the day the music died' refers to the plane crash in 1959 which killed early rock and roll performers Buddy Holly, The Big Bopper, and Ritchie Valens.
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