Back in Time – This Day in History – April 25
1719: Robinson Crusoe
By Mick Ferris, Press Association, AP, UPI, calendar.songfacts.com, classicbands.com and thisdayinmusic.com
1284: Birth of Edward II at Caernarfon Castle, Wales.
1507: German geographer and mapmaker Martin Waldseemuller published a book in which he named the newly discovered continent of the New World "America" after the man he mistakenly thought had discovered it, Italian navigator Amerigo Vespucci.
1607: The Dutch fleet beats the Spanish Portuguese fleet at the Battle f Gibraltar.
1644: The last Ming emperor, Chongzhen hangs himself from a tree on Jing Mountain, Peking, rather than be captured by forces of Li Zicheng.
1660: English Convention Parliament meets and votes to restore Charles II.
1684: Patent granted for the thimble.
1719: The popular novel “Robinson Crusoe” by Daniel Defoe was first published. It examines the life of a man trapped on a desert island. (From Prof. Frank McDonough@FXMC1957)
1742: Elizabeth of Russia crowns herself Empress in the Dormition Cathedral, Moscow.
1792: The guillotine is first used in France – executes highwayman Nicolas Pelletier.On the same day, “La Marseillaise”, later the national anthem of France, is composed by Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle.
1829: Charles Fremantle arrives in HMS Challenger off the coast of modern-day Western Australia prior to declaring the Swan River Colony for Britain.
1846: Open conflict begins over the disputed border of Texas, triggering the Mexican-American War.
1859: Ground broken for the building of the Suez Canal.
1867: Tokyo opens for foreign trade.
1875: Trinley Gyatso, 12th Dalai Lama, dies at 18.
1881: 250,000 Germans petition to bar foreign Jews from entering Germany.
1898: The United States Congress declared war on Spain; the 10-week conflict resulted in an American victory.
1901: New York became the first state to require license plates on automobiles.
1915: During World War I, Allied soldiers invaded the Gallipoli Peninsula in an unsuccessful attempt to take the Ottoman Empire out of the war.
1918: Born on this day: American jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald With Verve Records she recorded some of her more widely noted works, particularly her interpretation of the Great American Songbook. Fitzgerald died from a stroke on 15th June 1996 at the age of 79.
1925: Paul von Hindenburg is elected President of Germany.
1926: Giacomo Puccini’s opera “Turandot” premieres in Milan. On the same day, Persian Cossack officer Reza Chan crowns himself Shah Palawi.
1933: Born on this day: Jerry Leiber, (& Stoller), songwriter and producer for Elvis Presley, Buddy Holly, The Monkees, Cliff Richard. Among their hit songs: Hound Dog, Jailhouse Rock, King Creole, Don't, There Goes My Baby, Searchin', Yakety Yak and Kansas City. Leiber died on August 22, 2011 in Los Angeles at the age of 78 from cardio-pulmonary failure.
1942: Beginning of a three-night bombing blitz on Bath by the German Luftwaffe.
1945: During World War II, U.S. and Soviet forces linked up on the Elbe River, a meeting that dramatized the collapse of Nazi Germany’s defenses. Delegates from some 50 countries gathered in San Francisco to organize the United Nations.
1953: Jack Charlton makes his League debut against Doncaster Rovers at Elland Road in Leeds’ last Division 2 match of the 1952/53 season – the first of what would be a club record 629 League appearances for the club. As he left the dressing room he asked manager Raich Carter what he should be doing and was told: “See how fast their centre forward can limp.” On the same day, Cambridge University scientists Francis Crick and James D Watson publish their discovery of DNA.
1954: Bell Labs announces the first solar battery made from silicon. It has about 6 per cent efficiency. On the same day, the British raid Nairobi, Kenya and 25,000 Mau Mau suspects are arrested.
1954: Johnnie Ray was at No.1 on the UK singles chart with 'Such A Night.' The singer's first of three UK No.1's. He became deaf in his right ear aged 13 after an accident and would later perform wearing a hearing aid. Dexys Midnight Runners' 1982 music video for 'Come On Eileen', used footage of Ray from 1954. The lyrics of the song say, "Poor old Johnnie Ray sounded sad upon the radio / he moved a million hearts in mono".
1956: Noel Coward’s musical “South Sea Bubble” premieres in London.
1959: The St. Lawrence Seaway opened to shipping.
1960: Eddie Cochran is laid to rest at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Cypress, California, six days after his untimely death in a car accident.
1961: Robert Noyce patents the integrated circuit. On the same day, an unmanned Mercury test rocket explodes on the launch pad.
1962: The US Ranger spacecraft crash lands on the dark side of the Moon.
1964: Vandals sawed off the head of the “Little Mermaid” statue in Copenhagen, Denmark.
1967: The first law legalizing abortion in the United States was signed into law by Colorado Gov. John Arthur Love.
1971: About 200,000 anti-Vietnam War protesters march on Washington, D.C.
1972: Polaroid Corp. introduced its SX-70 folding camera, which ejected self-developing photographs.
1974: Günter Guillaume, an aide to West German Chancellor Willy Brandt, is exposed as a Stasi spy. On the same day, Portuguese Prime Minister Marcello Caetano is overthrown by army rebels in the Carnation revolution, bringing the authoritarian Estado Novo government to an end.
1975: Mario Soares’ Socialist Party wins Portugal’s first free election since 1925.
1977: Elvis Presley made the last recordings of his life during a concert at the Saginaw, Michigan Civic Centre. Three songs from the show appeared on the posthumously released Presley album, 'Moody Blue'.
1979: The peace treaty between Israel and Egypt goes into effect.
1980: A top-secret attempt by the United States to free American hostages held in Iran ends in catastrophic failure with the deaths of eight soldiers.
1981: US TOP 20 : Singles chart:
1. Daryl Hall And John Oates - Kiss On My List
2. Sheena Easton - Morning Train (Nine To Five)
3. Smokey Robinson - Being With You
4. Grover Washington, Jr. With Bill Withers - Just The Two Of Us
5. Juice Newton - Angel Of The Morning
6. Blondie - Rapture
7. Steve Winwood - While You See A Chance
8. John Lennon - Woman
9. Styx - The Best Of Times
10. The Police - Don't Stand So Close To Me
11. Eric Clapton And His Band - I Can't Stand It
12. James Taylor & J.D. Souther - Her Town Too
13. Terri Gibbs - Somebody's Knockin'
14. REO Speedwagon - Keep On Loving You
15. Don McLean - Crying
16. Gino Vannelli - Living Inside Myself
17. REO Speedwagon - Take It On The Run
18. Kim Carnes - Bette Davis Eyes
19. Styx - Too Much Time On My Hands
20. John Cougar - Ain't Even Done With The Night
***
1982: Britain re-establishes its presence in the Falkland Islands after a two-hour assault by Royal Marines against Argentinian forces on the remote island of South Georgia.
1982: Israel turned over the final third of the occupied Sinai Peninsula to Egypt under the Camp David peace agreement.
1982: Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder were at No.1 on the UK singles chart with 'Ebony And Ivory.' This was McCartney's 24th No.1 hit single as a songwriter. The title was inspired by McCartney hearing Spike Milligan say "black notes, white notes, and you need to play the two to make harmony folks!". It was later named as the tenth worst song of all time by Blender magazine and in 2007 was named the worst duet in history by BBC 6 Music listeners.
1982: UK TOP 20: Album chart:
1. Barry Manilow - Barry Live In Britain
2. Madness - Complete Madness
3. Status Quo - 1982
4. Haircut 100 - Pelican West
5. Iron Maiden - The Number Of The Beast
6. Barbra Streisand - Love Songs
7. Vangelis - Chariots Of Fire
8. Rainbow - Straight Between The Eyes
9. Sky - Sky 4-Forthcoming
10. Angela Rippon - Shape Up And Dance (Volume 2)
11. Various Artists - Disco UK And Disco USA
12. Barbara Dickson - All For A Song
13. Elton John - Jump Up
14. The Nolans - Portrait
15. Japan - Tin Drum
16. Motorhead - Iron Fist
17. Asia - Asia
18. Ry Cooder - The Slide Area
19. Various Artists - James Bond's Greatest Hits
20. Eric Clapton - Time Pieces - The Best Of Eric Clapton
***
1983: 10-year-old Samantha Smith of Manchester, Maine, received a reply from Soviet leader Yuri V. Andropov to a letter she’d written expressing her concerns about nuclear war; Andropov gave assurances that the Soviet Union did not want war, and invited Samantha to visit his country, a trip she made in July.
1983: The German magazine, Stern, publishes the first instalment of the controversial “Hitler Diaries”, said to be written by the Führer himself but later exposed as fake. On the sme day, NASA space probe Pioneer 10 travels beyond Pluto’s orbit.
1985: The West German Parliament rules it is illegal to deny the Holocaust.
1985: The musical Big River, based on Mark Twain's work and featuring a score by Roger Miller, opens on Broadway. Miller would go on to win a Tony Award for the music.
1986: Bobby Moore resigns as manager of Southend – the only League club he managed.
1987: U2 started a five-week run at No.1 on the US album chart with their fifth studio album The Joshua Tree. Inspired by American tour experiences, literature, and politics, the album topped the charts in over 20 countries, and is one of the world's all-time best-selling albums, with over 25 million copies sold. The album which won a Grammy Award for Album of the Year produced the hit singles 'With or Without You', 'I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For', and 'Where the Streets Have No Name'.
1987: Madonna went to No.1 on the UK singles chart with 'La Isla Bonita.' The fifth and final single from her third studio album, True Blue, made her the only female artist to score four UK No.1 singles. The song had been offered to Michael Jackson for his Bad album.
1990: The Hubble Space Telescope was deployed in orbit from the space shuttle Discovery. (It was later discovered that the telescope’s primary mirror was flawed, requiring the installation of corrective components to achieve optimal focus.)
1993: Russia elects Boris Yeltsin as leader.
1993: Hundreds of thousands of gay rights activists and their supporters marched in Washington, D.C., demanding equal rights and freedom from discrimination.
1994: A jury rules that Michael Bolton's 1991 hit "Love Is a Wonderful Thing" plagiarizes The Isley Brothers 1966 song of the same name and awards $5.4 million in damages, the largest ever in a music plagiarism case.
1995: Death of Hollywood legend Ginger Rogers aged 83.
2000: Vermont approved a measure legalizing "civil unions" among same-sex couples, becoming the first U.S. state to give same-sex couples the same legal status as traditional married couples.
2008: Death of jazz trumpeter and broadcaster Humphrey Lyttleton, aged 86.
2009: In her first trip to Iraq as America’s top diplomat, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton tried to reassure nervous Iraqis that the U.S. wouldn’t abandon them, even as she said the American troop withdrawal would stay on schedule. Finance ministers meeting in Washington said they saw signs the global economy was stabilizing but cautioned it would take until the middle of the next year for the world to emerge from the worst recession in decades. Actress Beatrice Arthur died in Los Angeles at age 86.
2011: Nearly 800 classified U.S. military documents released by WikiLeaks revealed details about the alleged terrorist activities of al-Qaida operatives held at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.
2013: The George W. Bush Presidential Library was dedicated on the Southern Methodist University campus in Dallas.
2015: A 7.9-magnitude earthquake struck Kathmandu, Nepal, killing nearly 9,000 people and leaving millions homeless.
2015: Protests -- some violent -- broke out in Baltimore following the death of Freddie Gray, a 25-year old black man, while in police custody.
2018: Ford Motor Co. said it would get rid of most of its North American car lineup as part of a broad plan to save money and make the company more competitive; the Mustang sports car and a compact Focus crossover vehicle would be the only cars sold in the U.S., Canada and Mexico. Danish engineer Peter Madsen was convicted of murder for luring a Swedish journalist onto his homemade submarine before torturing and killing her; Madsen was later sentenced to life in prison.
William Roach, actor, 89;
Al (Alfredo) Pacino, actor/director 81;
Tony Christie (Fitzgerald), singer, 78;
Charlie Harper, singer (UK Subs) 77;
Len Goodman, TV personality/ballroom judge, 77;
Bjorn Ulvaeus, singer-songwriter/guitarist (ABBA) 76;
Stu Cook, bassist (Credence Clearwater Revival), 76;
Talia Shire, actress, 75;
Steve Ferrone, drummer, 71;
Linda Womack (Zeriiya Zekkariyas) singer-songwriter, 68;
Fish, (Derek Dick), singer, 63;
David Moyes, football manager, 58;
Andy Bell, singer (Erasure), 57;
Hank Azaria, actor, 57;
Eric Avery, bassist (Jane’s Addiction) 56;
Simon Fowler, singer-songwriter (Ocean Colour Scene) 56;
Renée Zellweger, actress, 52;
Jason Lee, actor, 51;
Felipe Massa, racing driver, 40;
Monty Panesar, cricketer, 39;
Leander Dendoncker, footballer, 26.
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