Back in Time – This Day in History – April 18

1912: The survivors from the Titanic

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

1480: Birth of Lucretia Borgia, daughter of Pope Alexander VI.

1506: The cornerstone of the current St. Peter’s Basilica is laid in the Vatican by Pope Julius II.

1775: Paul Revere began his famous ride from Charlestown to Lexington, Massachusetts, warning colonists that British Regular troops were approaching.

1783: Fighting ceases in the American Revolution, eight years to the day when it began.

1809: First run of 2,000 guineas horse race at Newmarket.

1835: Lord Melbourne becomes Prime Minister after Robert Peel resigns out of frustration.

1861: Col Robert E Lee turns down offer to command Union armies in the American Civil War.

1903: Bury beat Derby County 6-0 in the FA Cup Final played at Crystal Palace.

1906: An earthquake estimated at magnitude-7.8 struck San Francisco, collapsing buildings and igniting fires that destroyed much of what remained of the city. Researchers and historians concluded that about 3,000 people died in the quake and its aftermath, and roughly 250,000 were left homeless.

1908: Tommy Burns KOs Jewy Smith in Round 5 for the heavyweight boxing title.

1912: At 9:25 on the evening RMS Carpathia arrived in a wet and rainy New York with survivors from the Titanic. Captain Rostron bypassed Carpathia’s Cunard Line Pier, 54, and sailed up the Hudson to Pier 59, the White Star berth, where Titanic should have arrived.

(From keatsie@keatsie777)

1923: Poland annexes Central Lithuania.

1923: The first game was played at the original Yankee Stadium in New York; the Yankees defeated the Boston Red Sox 4-1.

1924: The first crossword puzzle book is published by Simon & Schuster.

1927: Chiang Kai-shek forms anti-government in China.

1930: A BBC news announcer announces “there is no news” and plays music instead.

1934: The first washateria (laundromat) opens in Fort Worth, Texas. On the same day, Adolf Hitler appoints Joachom von Robbentrop Ambassador for Disarmament.

1935: Gene Sarazen’s double eagle on 15th, wins him his second US Masters.

1938: Superman, AKA “The Man of Steel,” made his debut as the first issue of Action Comics (bearing a cover date of June) went on sale for 10 cents a copy. (In 2014, a nearly flawless original copy was sold on eBay for $3.2 million.)

1942: Lt. Col. James Doolittle led a squadron of B-25 bombers in a surprise raid against Tokyo in response to the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.

1943: US Army Air Force P-38G fighter aircraft ambush and shoot down the transport bomber aircraft of Isokoru Yamamoto, commander-in-chief of the Imperial Japanese Navy and mastermind behind the Pearl Harbour attack.

1945:  Famed American war correspondent Ernie Pyle, 44, was killed by Japanese gunfire on the Pacific island of Ie Shima, off Okinawa.

1948: International Court of Justice opens at The Hague Netherlands.

1949: The Republic of Ireland formally declared itself independent from Britain.

1954: Colonel Gamal Abdal Nasser seizes power and becomes Prime Minister of Egypt.

1955: Scientist Albert Einstein dies aged 76 from an abdominal aortic aneurysm.

1956: American actress Grace Kelly married Prince Rainier (ren-YAY’) of Monaco in a civil ceremony. (A church wedding took place the next day.)

1958: A US federal court rules that poet Ezra Pound can be released from an insane asylum.

1960: 60,000 demonstrators gather in Trafalgar Square to mark the end of the Aldermaston to London “ban the bomb” march.

1963: Dr James Campbell performs the world’s first human nerve transplant in the US.

1964: The Beatles appeared on the UK TV comedy program The Morecambe and Wise Show, playing ‘This Boy’, ‘All My Loving’, and ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’ and also participate in comedy sketches with Eric Morecambe and Ernie Wise. The Beatles also held the UK and US No.1 position on this day with 'Can't Buy Me Love'.

1966: The Spencer Davis Group were at No.1 on the UK singles chart with their version of the Jackie Edwards song 'Somebody Help Me', (as with their previous hit 'Keep on Running' which was also composed by Edwards).

1968: McCulloch Oil Corp. paid $2.24 million to buy London Bridge, which was sinking into the Thames under the weight of 20th century traffic. The oil company rebuilt the bridge bloc by block over Lake Havasu in Arizona.

1970: US TOP 20: Album chart:

1. Simon & Garfunkel - Bridge Over Troubled Water

2. The Beatles - Hey Jude

3. Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young - Deja Vu

4. Santana - Santana

5. Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin II

6. The Jackson 5 - Diana Ross Presents The Jackson 5

7. The Doors - Morrison Hotel/Hard Rock Cafe

8. The Beatles - Abbey Road

9. Chicago - Chicago II

10. The Temptations - Psychedelic Shack

11. Frijid Pink - Frijid Pink

12. Johnny Cash - Hello, I'm Johnny Cash

13. Creedence Clearwater Revival - Willy And The Poorboys

14. Soundtrack - Easy Rider

15. B.J. Thomas - Raindrops Keep Fallin' On My Head

16. Grand Funk Railroad - Grand Funk

17. The Guess Who - American Woman

18. Tom Jones - Tom Jones Live In Las Vegas

19. Aretha Franklin - This Girl's In Love With You

20. Rare Earth - Get Ready

***

1972: The Widgery Report on ‘Bloody Sunday’ in Northern Ireland is published, causing outrage among the people of Derry who call it the “Widgery Whitewash”.

1974: The Red Brigade kidnaps Italian attorney general Mario Sossi.

1975: Four Bay City Rollers fans are taken to hospital and 35 others require on site treatment after they attempt to swim across a lake to get to their heroes at a BBC Radio 1 fun day at Mallory Park.

1977: Alex Haley, author of “Roots” is awarded the Pulitzer Prize.

1978: The Senate approved the Panama Canal Treaty, providing for the complete turnover of control of the waterway to Panama on the last day of 1999.

1980: Zimbabwe declares independence from the UK.

1982: The Zimbabwean capital Salisbury is renamed Harare.

1982: UK TOP 20 : Singles chart:

1. Paul McCartney And Stevie Wonder - Ebony And Ivory

2. Bucks Fizz - My Camera Never Lies

3. Pigbag - Papa's Got A Brand New Pigbag

4. Dollar - Give Me Back My Heart

5. Chas And Dave - Ain't No Pleasing You

6. Bardo - One Step Further

7. Roxy Music - More Than This

8. Elton John - Blue Eyes

9. Shakatak - Night Birds

10. Shalamar - I Can Make You Feel Good

11. England World Cup Squad - This Time (We'll Get It Right)

12. Haircut 100 - Fantastic Day

13. Goombay Dance Band - Seven Tears

14. Japan - Ghosts

15. Imagination - Just An Illusion

16. Status Quo - Dear John

17. Bananarama With Fun Boy Three - Really Saying Something

18. Monsoon - Ever So Lonely

19. Altered Images - See Those Eyes

20. The Nolans - Don't Love Me Too Hard

***

1983: The U.S. Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, was severely damaged by a car-bomb explosion that killed 63 people, including 17 Americans.

1984: Michael Jackson undergoes surgery in a Los Angeles hospital to repair damage done after his hair caught fire during the filming of a Pepsi commercial.

1987: Aretha Franklin and George Michael started a two week run at No.1 on the US singles chart with 'I Knew You Were Waiting' also a No.1 in the UK. Aretha Franklin set a record for the artist with the longest gap between US No.1 singles, it had been 19 years, 10 months from her last hit 'Respect' in June 1967.

1988: Three Israeli judges rule that retired US car worker John Demjanjuk was a guard known as “Ivan the Terrible” who operated the gas chambers at the Treblinka death camp in Poland during the Second World War. The conviction was quashed in 1993.

1992: Annie Lennox went to No.1 on the UK album chart with her debut solo release 'Diva.' The album won the Brit Award for British Album of the Year at the 1993 Brit Awards and received nominations for Album of the Year, Best Female Pop Vocal Performance and Best Long Form Music Video, winning the latter award at the Grammy Awards the same year.

1994: Ethnic violence spreads throughout Rwanda. On the same day, cricketer Brian Lara hits 375 runs in one day for the West Indies vs England to beat Gary Sobers’ world record and former US President Richard Nixon suffers a stroke.

1995: Quarterback Joe Montana retired from professional football. The Houston Post closed after more than a century.

1995: Oasis drummer Tony McCarrol is told by phone that he is being sacked from the group.

1996: Seventeen Greek tourists and an Egyptian guide are killed by gunmen in Cairo. On the same day, Bernard Edwards bass guitarist and producer from Chic, dies of pneumonia in a Tokyo hotel room and 106 civilians are killed when the Israel Defense Forces accidentally shell the UN compound at Quana in Lebanon.

1998: The Full Monty wins best film at the BAFTAS.

2002: Explorer and anthropologist Thor Heyerdahl dies aged 87.

2002: Former U.S. Sen. Bob Kerrey, D-Neb., revealed that at least 13 civilians were killed by his U.S. Navy unit in a Vietnamese village in 1969.

2012: An original and extremely rare 1963 mono copy of The Beatles ‘Please Please Me’ album, signed by the Fab Four, sold on an eBay auction for nearly $25,000. Paul McCartney and John Lennon both signed their names with “love” in royal blue ink whereas George Harrison and Ringo Starr signed their names in midnight blue ink. The autographs were signed in May of 1963.

2013: The FBI released surveillance camera images of two suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing and asked for the public’s help in identifying them, hours after President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama attended an interfaith service at a Roman Catholic cathedral.

2013: Storm Thorgerson, whose album cover artwork include Pink Floyd’s albums Atom Heart Mother, Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here, died aged 69.

2014: An avalanche swept down a climbing route on Mount Everest, killing 16 Sherpa guides in the deadliest disaster on the world’s highest peak.

2017 Prime Minister Teresa May announces she will seek a “snap” election.

2018: The first movie theaters in Saudi Arabia opened with a public screening of Black Panther. Amid a blackout that affected much of the rest of Puerto Rico, generators helped keep the lights on at a stadium in San Juan for the second of two games between the Cleveland Indians and the Minnesota Twins. Bruno Sammartino, who had once been one of the longest-reigning champions in professional wrestling, died at the age of 82.

2019: Journalist Lyra McKee is shot and killed while covering riots in Derry, Northern Ireland.

2020: A two-day shooting spree over two days in Nova Scotia, Canada, left 22 people dead and three people injured. The shooter, Gabriel Wortman, was shot and killed by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police on April 19.

BIRTHDAYS: 

Mike Vickers, guitarist/flautist (Manfred Mann) 79; 

Hayley Mills, actress, 75; 

James Woods, actor, 74; 

Rick Moranis, actor, 68; 

Eric Roberts, actor, 65; 

Jane Leeves, actress, 60; 

Shirlie Kemp (Holliman), singer, 59; 

Conan O’Brian, TV chatshow host, 58; 

Eric McCormack, actor, 58; 

Bez (Mark Berry), dancer (Happy Mondays) 57; 

Maria Bello, actress, 54; 

David Tennant (McDonald), actor, 50; 

Eli Roth, director/screenwriter/actor, 49; 

Mark Tremonti, guitarist (Creed) 47; 

Edgar Wright, director, 47; 

Madeleine Peyroux, singer, 47; 

Melissa Joan Hart, actress, 45; 

Kourtney Kardashian, media personality, 42; 

Matthew Upson, footballer, 42; 

America Ferrera, actress, 37; 

Lukasz Fabianski, Polish goalkeeper, 36; 

Rosie Huntingdon-Whiteley, model/actress, 34; 

Vanessa Kirby, actress, 33; 

Wojciech Szczęsny, Polish goalkeeper, 31; 

Chloe Bennet (Wang), actress, 29; 

Divock Origi, footballer, 26; 

Donny van de Beek, footballer, 24.