Back in Time – This Day in History – April 5

 By Mick Ferris, Press Association, AP, UPI, calendar.songfacts.com, classicbands.com and thisdayinmusic.com

1973: Pioneer 11

456AD: Saint Patrick returns to Ireland as a missionary bishop.

1424: Scottish king James I returns to Scotland after 18 years of detention at the English court.

1588: Birth of British philosopher Thomas Hobbes.

1603: New English king James I (James VI of Scotland) departs Edinburgh for London.

1614: Pocahontas, daughter of a chief, married English tobacco planter John Rolfe in Jamestown, Va. It was a marriage that ensured peace between the settlers and the Powhatan Indians for several years.

1621: The Mayflower sails from Plymouth.

1722: Dutch navigator Jacob Roggeveen discovers Easter Island.

1762: The British take Grenada, West Indies, from the French.

1764: Parliament passes the Sugar Tax on the American colonies.

1768: The first U.S. Chamber of Commerce was founded in New York City.

1792: President George Washington exercised veto power, the first time it was done in the United States.

1803: First performance of Beethoven’s 2nd Symphony in D.

1806: Isaac Quintard patents apple cider.

1815: Mount Tambora in the Dutch East Indies, has its first violent eruption after several centuries of being dormant.

1827: Birth of Joseph Lister, pioneer of antiseptic surgery, in West Ham.

1874: Johann Strauss Jr’s opera “Die Fledermaus” premieres in Vienna.

1879: Chile declares war on Bolivia and Peru.

1895: Oscar Wilde loses a libel case against the Marquess of Queensberry, who accused him of homosexual practices.

1902: Maurice Ravel’s “Pavane pour une infante defunte” premieres in Paris. On the same day, at Ibrox football stadium, home of Glasgow Rangers, a section of a grandstand collapses killing 25 and injuring 517.

1904: The first international rugby league match is played between England and an Other Nationalities team (Welsh and Scottish players) in Central Park, Wigan.

1908: Prime Minister Henry Campbell-Bannerman resigns.

1915: Jess Willard knocked out Jack Johnson in the 26th round of their fight in Havana, Cuba, to claim boxing’s world heavyweight title.

1919: Eamon de Valera becomes President of Dail Eireann.

1928: Born on this day: Tony Williams, from American vocal group The Platters who had the 1959 UK & US No.1 single 'Smoke Gets In Your Eyes'. Williams died on 14th August 1992. The group had 40 charting singles on the Billboard Hot 100 chart between 1955 and 1967.

1929: Born on this day: Joe Meek, English record producer, sound engineer and songwriter who pioneered space age and experimental pop music. He produced 'Telstar' the 1962 UK and US No.1 single by The Tornadoes, the first British act to have a No.1 in the US. Meek also produced 'Johnny Remember Me (John Leyton, 1961), 'Just Like Eddie' (Heinz, 1963) and 'Have I the Right?' (the Honeycombs, 1964). On 3 February 1967 Meek killed his landlady Violet Shenton and then shot himself dead with a single-barrelled shotgun.

1933: Executive Order 6101 establishing the Civilian Conservation Corps was issued by President Franklin Roosevelt. The public work relief program would run from 1933 to 1942 and provide employment for unemployed and unmarried men as part of the New Deal.

1936: Tupelo, Mississippi, birthplace of Elvis Presley the previous year, is virtually annihilated by a tornado in which 216 die.

1939: Membership of Hitler Youth becomes obligatory.

1943: Chinese steward Poon Lim is found off the coast of Brazil by a Brazilian fisherman after being adrift for 133 days when British ship SS Benlomond was torpedoed by a German U-boat.

1944: 270 inhabitants of the Greek town of Kleisoura are executed by the Germans.

1954: Elvis Presley records his debut single, Arthur ‘Big Boy’ Cruddup’s “That’s All Right (Mama)” at Sun Studios in Memphis.

1955: Anthony Eden succeeds Winston Churchill as British prime minister.

1963: The Beatles receive their first silver disc for 250,000 sales of Please Please Me.

1964: Army Gen. Douglas MacArthur died in Washington, D.C., at age 84.

1964: Jerry Lee Lewis plays at The Star Club in Germany and records an LP called "Live At The Star Club", backed by The Nashville Teens (who were neither from Nashville or in their teens). Rolling Stone magazine gave it a positive review, saying "Live At The Star Club, Hamburg is not an album, it's a crime scene." Unfortunately, due to legal constraints, the album would only be available in Europe for several decades.

1964: The Searchers make their US television debut, singing "Needles And Pins" and "Ain't That Just Like Me" on The Ed Sullivan Show.

1965: Julie Andrews wins the best actress Oscar for Mary Poppins.

1965: 30 year old Sonny Bono and his 18 year old wife Cher are signed to Atco Records by Ahmet Ertegun. The duo had earlier made a handful of unsuccessful singles as Caesar And Cleo, but over the next seven years they would enjoy eleven Billboard Top 40 hits.

1971: Mount Etna erupts in Sicily. On the same day, Lt William Calley is sentenced to life imprisonment for murdering 22 unarmed South Vietnamese civilians in the My Lai Massacre.

1973: Pioneer 11 blasted off from Cape Canaveral for a risky mission that would take the small satellite dangerously close to Jupiter's surface and through Saturn's outer rings, paving the way even more ambitious explorations of the solar system. (From space.com)

1974: Stephen King’s first published novel, “Carrie,” was released by Doubleday.

1975: Nationalist Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek died in Taipei at age 87.

1975: Minnie Riperton went to No.1 on the US singles chart with the Stevie Wonder produced song 'Loving You' (a No.2 hit in the UK). It was the singers only US chart hit. Riperton died of cancer on 12th July 1979.

1975: US TOP 20 : Singles chart:

1. Minnie Riperton - Lovin' You

2. The Elton John Band - Philadelphia Freedom

3. Ringo Starr - No No Song/Snookeroo

4. B.T. Express - Express

5. Joe Cocker - You Are So Beautiful/It's A Sin When You Love Somebody

6. Phoebe Snow - Poetry Man

7. Labelle - Lady Marmalade

8. B.J. Thomas - (Hey Won't You Play) Another Somebody Done Somebody Wrong Song

9. Olivia Newton-John - Have You Never Been Mellow

10. Frankie Valli - My Eyes Adored You

11. Rufus Featuring Chaka Khan - Once You Get Started

12. Sammy Johns - Chevy Van

13. Chicago - Harry Truman

14. Barry White - What Am I Gonna Do With You

15. Hot Chocolate - Emma

16. Ben E. King - Supernatural Thing - Part I

17. Freddy Fender - Before The Next Teardrop Falls

18. The Blackbyrds - Walking In Rhythm

19. Al Green - L-O-V-E (Love)

20. Earth, Wind & Fire - Shining Star

***

1976: Reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes died of kidney failure during a flight from Acapulco, Mexico, to Houston. He was 71.

1981: Canned Heat singer Bob “The Bear” Hite died of a heart attack aged 36.

1981: UK TOP 20: Album chart:

1. Adam & The Ants - Kings Of The Wild Frontier

2. The Who - Face Dances

3. Stevie Wonder - Hotter Than July

4. Neil Diamond - The Jazz Singer

5. Sky - Sky 3

6. Status Quo - Never Too Late

7. Phil Collins - Face Value

8. Shakin' Stevens - This Ole House

9. Dire Straits - Makin' Movies

10. Barry Manilow - Manilow Magic

11. John Lennon - Double Fantasy

12. Linx - Intuition

13. Rita Coolidge - Very Best Of Rita Coolidge

14. Ultravox - Vienna

15. Spandau Ballet - Journeys To Glory

16. Visage - Visage

17. Barry Manilow - Barry

18. Christopher Cross - Christopher Cross

19. Various Artists - Roll On

20. Landscape - From The Tearooms

***

1982: Aircraft carriers Invincible and Hermes with escort vessels leave Portsmouth for the Falkland Islands. On the same day, Lord Carrington resigns as Foreign Secretary.

1983: Danny Rapp, leader of 50s group Danny and the Juniors committed suicide in a hotel in Arizona by shooting himself.

1986: Richard Dunwoody wins the Grand National on West Tip.

1988: A 15-day hijacking ordeal began as gunmen forced a Kuwait Airways jumbo jet to land in Iran.

1991: The US begins air drops to Kurdish refugees in Northern Iraq.

1991: Former Sen. John Tower, R-Texas, his daughter Marian and 21 other people were killed in a commuter plane crash near Brunswick, Georgia.

1992: Serbian troops besiege Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia, which would become the longest siege in modern warfare.

1992: Sam Moore Walton, founder of Walmart, died of cancer at 74.

1994: Nirvana leader Kurt Cobain committed suicide by shooting himself in the head at his home in Seattle. His body was discovered three days later by an electrician.

1995: Monika Dannerman, one time girlfriend of Jimi Hendrix, committed suicide two days after losing a court battle with another of the guitarist’s ex-lovers.

1997: Death of beat poet Allen Ginsberg aged 70.

1998: British drummer Cozy Powell (Colin Flooks) was killed when his car smashed into crash barriers on the M4 motorway near Bristol, England. Powell had worked with the Jeff Beck Group, Whitesnake, Black Sabbath, Rainbow, Brian May, Peter Green and the ELP spin-off Emerson, Lake, and Powell. Powell, known as one of the most driving drummers in rock, had also had hits as a solo artist, including Dance WithThe Devil and The Man In Black, and had fronted his own band, Cozy Powell's Hammer.

1999: Russell Henderson, one of two men charged in the October 1998 beating death of gay University of Wyoming student Matthew Shepard, pleaded guilty and was given two life prison sentences. The second man, Aaron McKinney, who delivered the fatal blows, also received two life terms.

2000: Lee Petty, the winner of the first Daytona 500 and a pioneer of a NASCAR racing family, died at a North Carolina hospital from complications of an abdominal aneurysm. He was 86.

2001: Wang Zhizhi became the first Chinese player to play in the NBA when he took the court for Dallas against Atlanta. (Wang scored six points and grabbed three rebounds as the Mavericks beat the Hawks 108-94.)

2002: Singer Layne Staley of Alice in Chains was found dead from a mixture of heroin and cocaine at his home. The body was badly decomposed and had to be identified from dental records.

2005: ABC News anchorman Peter Jennings revealed he had lung cancer (he died in August 2005 at age 67).

2005: Author Saul Bellow dies aged 89.

2006: Gene Pitney was found dead aged 65 in his bed in a Cardiff hotel. The American singer was on a UK tour and had shown no signs of illness. Pitney helped The Rolling Stones break the American market with his endorsement of the band. Jagger and Richards wrote his hit 'That Girl Belongs to Yesterday' which became the Stones duo's first composition to reach the American charts. He scored the 1962 US No.4 single 'Only Love Can Break A Heart'. and 1967 solo UK No.5 & 1989 UK No.1 single with Marc Almond 'Something's Gotten Hold Of My Heart', plus over 15 other US & UK Top 40 hits.

2008: Actor Charlton Heston, big-screen hero and later leader of the National Rifle Association, died in Beverly Hills, California, at age 84.

2010: An explosion in a coal mine near Montcoal, in West Virginia's Raleigh County, killed 29 workers.

2012: Jim Marshall, inventor of the Marshall amplifier died at a hospice in London, aged 88.

2016: San Francisco became the first U.S. city to mandate six weeks of fully paid leave for new parents.

2017: Pepsi pulled television personality and model Kendall Jenner's first soda ad after facing backlash for appearing to end police brutality with a soft drink.

2018: Darts champion Eric Bristow dies from a heart attack aged 60. On the same day, free jazz pianist Cecil Taylor dies aged 89.