Wednesday April 23, 2014

KALW

Published April 23, 2014 at 6:36 AM PDT

On This Day In …
1014 --- Brian Boru, the high king of Ireland, is assassinated by a group of retreating Norsemen shortly after his Irish forces defeated them. Irish forces under Brian's son Murchad had met and annihilated the Viking coalition at the Battle of Clontarf, near Dublin.

However after the battle, a small group of Norsemen, flying from their defeat, stumbled on Brian's tent, overcame his bodyguards, and murdered the elderly king. Victory at Clontarf broke Norse power in Ireland forever, but Ireland largely fell into anarchy after the death of Brian.

1348 --- The first English order of knighthood was founded. It was the Order of the Garter.

1500 --- Pedro Cabral claimed Brazil for Portugal.
1635 --- The Boston Public Latin School was established. It was the first public school building in the United States.

1778 --- John Paul Jones, with 30 volunteers from his ship, the USS Ranger, launches a surprise attack on the two harbor forts at Whitehaven, England. Jones' boat successfully took the southern fort, but a second boat, assigned to attack to the northern

fort, returned to the Ranger without having done so, claiming to have been scared off by a strange noise. To compensate, Jones decided to burn the southern fort; the blaze ultimately consumed the entire town. It was the only American raid on English shores during the American Revolution.

1865 --- Confederate President Jefferson Davis writes to his wife, Varina, of the desperate situating facing the Confederates. "Panic has seized the country," he wrote to his wife in Georgia. Davis was in Charlotte, North Carolina, on his flight away from Yankee troops. It was three weeks since Davis had fled the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia, as Union troops were overrunning the trenches nearby.

1900 --- The word, hillbilly, was first used in print in an article in the New York Journal. It was spelled a little differently, as the story said that a Hill-Billie was a “free and untrammelled white citizen of Alabama, who lives in the hills.” The article continued that “he has no means to speak of, dresses as he can, talks as he pleases, drinks whiskey when he gets it and fires off his revolver as the fancy takes him.”

1940 --- About 200 people died in a dance-hall fire in Natchez, Miss.
1948 --- Johnny Longden became the first race jockey to ride 3,000 career winners.

1954 --- Hank Aaron of the Milwaukee Braves hit the first of his 755 major-league home runs in a game against the St. Louis Cardinals.

1961 --- A raucous standing ovation that greeted Judy Garland when she took the stage that night at Carnegie Hall set the tone for the evening that followed. "They were on their feet even before the goddess grabbed the microphone," wrote Lewis Funke for the New

York Times. "And then she sang," wrote Judith Christ for the New York Herald, "And she sang, let it be reported, as she hasn't in years." She sang 27 numbers in front of the rapturous crowd that night and was frequently interrupted by extended ovations. Was it merely the quality of Garland's performance that night that earned her such an incredible reception? Perhaps it was, but it is also fair to note that the concert took place on the one night a week that Broadway performers have off—Sunday night—and that the audience was therefore, to say the least, a friendly one.

1964 --- Ken Johnson of the Houston Colts will certainly never forget this day. Johnson tossedthe first no-hit game -- for a loss -- in baseball history. Cincinnati’s Reds beat Johnson’s no hitter by a score of 1-0. The Reds capitalized on two costly Houston errors.
1967 --- Soviet cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov is killed when his parachute fails to deploy during his spacecraft's landing. Komarov was testing the spacecraft Soyuz I in the midst of the “space race” between the United States and the Soviet Union. Earlier in 1967, the U.S. space program had experienced its own tragedy. Gus Grissom, Edward White and Roger Chafee, NASA astronauts in the Apollo program, were killed in a fire during tests on the ground.

1968 --- 300 Columbia students barricaded the office of the college dean, charging the university with supporting the Vietnam War and violating Harlem residents’ civil rights.
1969 --- Sirhan Sirhan is sentenced to the death penalty after being convicted in the assassination of politician Robert F. Kennedy. In 1972, Sirhan's sentence was commuted to life in prison after California abolished the death penalty.

1971 --- The Rolling Stones album "Sticky Fingers" was released. It was the band's first release on the band's newly-formed label, Rolling Stones Records. The Rolling Stones album "Sticky Fingers" was released.
1975 --- At a speech at Tulane University, President Gerald Ford says the “Vietnam War” is finished as far as America is concerned. "Today, Americans can regain the sense of pride that

existed before Vietnam. But it cannot be achieved by re-fighting a war." This was devastating news to the South Vietnamese, who were desperately pleading for U.S. support as the North Vietnamese surrounded Saigon for the final assault on the capital city.

1982 --- The Conch Republic (Key West & the Florida Keys) seceded from the United States to protest an INS (Immigration & Naturalization Service) roadblock on the only road into the Keys.

1985 --- The Coca Cola Company announced that it was changing its 99-year-old secret formula. New Coke was not successful, which resulted in the resumption of selling the original version.
1985 --- This was a big day for the flamboyant Liberace. Lee, as he was called by those close to him, first appeared on the TV soap opera, Another World. The sequined and well-furred pianist appeared as a fan of Felicia Gallant, a romance novelist. Later in the day, Liberace was a guest video jockey on MTV!

1985 --- Studs Terkel earned his first Pulitzer for The Good War: An Oral History of World War II.

1988 --- Kanellos Kanelopoulos set three world records for human-powered flight when he stayed in the air for 74 miles and four hours in his pedal-powered "Daedalus".
1992 --- The first McDonald's in Beijing, China opened. It is the world's largest McDonald's, with 28,000 square feet, seating for 700 and 1,000 employees.
2003 --- U.S. President George W. Bush signed legislation that authorized the design change of the 5-cent coin (nickel) for release

in 2004. It was the first change to the coin in 65 years. The change, to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the Louisiana Purchase, was planned to run for only two years before returning to the previous design.

2010 --- Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer signed the nation's toughest illegal immigration measure into law.

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