This day in history...

On April 11, 1899 under the terms of the Treaty of Paris, Spain cedes Puerto Rico, the Philippine Islands and Guam to the United States. Puerto Rico would become a commonwealth of the U.S., and in 1917 Congress grants U.S. citizenship to all Puerto Ricans born since the treaty signing. Residents of Guam receive citizenship in 1950, thought the island itself remains an unincorporated territory. The Philippines (the U.S. would compensate Spain for its transfer with $20 million) would remain a protectorate until 1946, when it is recognized as an independent nation by the U.S.


On April 11, 1968, President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the second Civil Rights Act of his administration. This includes the Fair Housing Act, a supplement to the original Civil Rights Act of 1964. It also includes (in Title I) stipulations that would later be codified into the first so-called "hate crimes" legislation. Other portions guaranteed Native Americans with many (but not all) of the rights afforded in the Bill of Rights, and also (a late addition to the bill in reaction to the riots following the assassination of Martin Luther King just days earlier) made it a crime to cross state lines for the purpose of participating in or inciting a riot.


On April 11, 1689, William III and Mary II are crowned the only co-monarchs in the history of Great Britain. William's father died of smallpox days before his birth, and he became the sovereign Prince of Orange (Netherlands) at birth. Mary was eldest daughter of the Duke of York. They were joined in an arranged marriage in 1677. In 1688 William led what has become known as the Glorious Revolution, driving the unpopular King James II from the throne. Though Mary was in line for the throne, she insisted on a co-regency with her husband. Parliament agreed, but with the stipulation that they sign a Bill of Rights for the English people. William and Mary would also agree to cede the power to pass laws or levy taxes without Parliament's consent.

 

On April 12, 1945, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, convalescing at his Warm Springs, Georgia retreat, complains of a sudden severe head pain and collapses. Within 2 hours he is declared dead of a cerebral hemorrhage. Roosevelt had campaigned for and won a fourth term in office the previous year despite medical opinions that he could not survive another 4-year term; he was suffering from hypertension, reduced lung capacity, bronchitis and congestive heart failure. But its believed he ran because he saw it as his duty to see World War II through to its finish. HIs one concession to his failing health was in dropping his long time VP - Henry Wallace, who many saw as too eccentric and liberal - in favor of Missouri Senator Harry Truman, a more moderate potential successor.


On April 12, 1770, the British government repeals most of the Townshend Acts, a series of unpopular taxes on its American colonists. Named for chancellor of the Exchequer (Treasury) Charles Townshend, who saw the colonists as ripe pickings for the treasury, the taxes had been the spark for riots throughout the colonies since their passage in 1767, with rioters often invoking the phrase "no taxation without representation."


On April 12 , 1954, Bill Haley and His Comets take to the Decca Records studio to record a song called "Thirteen Women (And Only One Man in Town)." They take more than two of the three hours they had booked to get a cut they liked. Now with only about 40 minutes left to cut a second song for the "B" side, the band swings into a number they had been playing live for a few weeks to great response, "(We're Gonna) Rock Around the Clock." They get in two takes which will be beautifully spliced together by Decca's engineers. "Thirteen Women" sells only about 75,000 copies and is headed for the bargain shelves later in the year when a 10-year old in LA named Peter Ford hears "Rock Around the Clock" and plays it for his father, actor Glenn Ford. He is about to film a teen delinquency movie call Blackboard Jungle, and convinces the producers to include the song in the film. In a single month of 1955, "Rock Around the Clock" will sell a million copies. Today it is considered one of - if not the - pioneering song of the rock and roll era.
Bill Haley & His Comets - Rock Around The Clock (1955) HD - YouTube

 

On April 13, 1861 after enduring nearly 34 hours of continuous bombardment, Major Robert Anderson waves the white flag and surrenders Fort Sumter to Confederate forces. The fortress on an island in Charleston Harbor of South Carolina had been the Union's last foothold in the state since SC's secession on December 20, 1860. The fort had been cut off from resupply since then, and though there were only a few minor injuries during the bombardment, Anderson saw no relief coming and felt the rebel gunners were improving their accuracy; he surrendered to prevent what he saw as an impending bloodbath. The Confederates gave the Union soldiers safe passage off the island; ironically, the only fatalities of the exchange came when the Yanks fired a blank volley in salute to the victors. A gun misfired, killing two.


On April 13, 1360, Mother Nature fights back for the French against the English. It is the first phase of the Hundred Years' War, and the French have been mostly avoiding contact with English King Edward III's forces as they have pillaged the countryside. Now, as the English prepare to move on the city of Chartres, a freak hailstorm rises up and pelts the invaders, killing an estimated 1,000 troops. The English dub the event "Black Monday;" Edward sees it as a sign from God and negotiates a truce that will last for nine years. The Hundred Years' War will go on until 1453.


On April 13, 1997, Eldrick "Tiger" Woods wins his first "major" golf tournament when he smokes the field at The Masters, winning by 12 strokes. It is the largest margin of victory in Masters history, and largest in a major since the 1862 British Open. To become the world's dominant golfer seemed to be Woods' destiny almost from birth; he made two national TV appearances to show off his skill before the age of 5. He won his first world junior championship at age 8, the first of his three U.S. Junior Amateur titles at age 15, and as a college student at Stanford, became the youngest U.S. Amateur champ when he won the first of three straight championships at age 18. His first (of 5) Masters wins earns him the number 1 ranking in the world.

 

On April 14, 1988, the U.S., U.S.S.R., Afghanistan and Pakistan sign an agreement that calls for, among other things, Soviet troops to be withdrawn from Afghanistan. The agreement ended 10 years of Soviet occupation and violent resistance from Afghan freedom fighters. The last Soviet troops would be withdrawn in February, 1989.


On April 14, 1775, the Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage is founded in Philadelphia. It is the first American organization dedicated to the cause of abolition. Quaker educator and abolitionist Anthony Benezet formed the society two years after he persuaded the Quakers to create the Negro School at Philadelphia. Benezet counted Benjamin Franklin and John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, among his sympathetic correspondents.


On April 14, 1969, the Academy Awards are televised to a worldwide audience for the first time. Viewers in 37 nations get another first, a tie in a major category, as Katherine Hepburn (The Lion In Winter) and Barbara Streisand (Funny Girl) share the Oscar for Best Actress. Oscar voting rules at the time call for a tie if more than one nominee comes within 3 votes of first place, but in this case its an exact tie; Hepburn and Streisand receive 3,030 votes each.

 

On April 15, 1920 the paymaster and a security guard for a South Braintree, Massachusetts shoe company are murdered during a daylight armed robbery, setting off one of the most spectacular court cases in U.S. history. Police eventually pin the crime on Niccolo Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, a pair of Italian-born anarchists. A third suspect, Mario Buda, escaped and fled to Italy, never to return. Sacco and Vanzetti claimed they were targeted for their politics, touching off a literal world-wide round of protests (the American embassies in Paris and Lisbon were bombed) and donations from radical leftists. Their defense would produce about 100 witnesses on their behalf at trial, but no eyewitness accounts could transcend the fact that forensics identified the murder weapon as one found on Sacco at his arrest. Sacco and Vanzetti were convicted and finally executed in 1927, but as recently as 1988, investigators using updated technologies have revisited the case. No new evidence has ever turned up that could have reversed their conviction.


On April 15, 1923, medical insulin is first made available to the public. Before today, a diagnosis of diabetes was a virtual death sentence for the patient, doctors had no treatment but dietary restrictions so severe, some patients died of malnutrition before the diabetes took them. German researchers first began to suspect a link between the pancreas and blood sugar control in the late 1880's, eventually discovering diabetes sufferers lacked a certain chemical secreted from the pancreas, which they called insulin. Canadian surgeon Frederick Banting did the first successful transfusion of natural insulin with dogs in 1921. Two years of development into a form that could be injected into humans followed, and was first successfully used on a 14-year old patient in early 1923. Banting would win a Nobel Prize in Medicine for his work.

 

On April 16, 1947, Bernard Baruch, a South Carolina multimillionaire and advisor to Presidents on financial and foreign affairs since the Wilson Administration, is honored with a portrait in his home state's capitol building. Its expected he will give a short speech of gratitude, but Baruch instead launches into a tirade about the dangers of the growing split between labor and management in the U.S. industrial sector. He then utters a phrase that immediately finds it way into the U.S. lexicon for generations: “Let us not be deceived—we are today in the midst of a cold war. Our enemies are to be found abroad and at home. Let us never forget this: Our unrest is the heart of their success." (Baruch, flanked by Winston Churchill and President Dwight Eisenhower in a 1953 photo)


On April 16, 1943, Swiss chemist Albert Hoffman, who has been studying the medicinal potential of lysergic acid compounds for 5 years, accidentally absorbs a small amount of lysergic acid diethylamide through his fingertips. Feeling woozy, he goes home and lies down, and later records in his diary the hallucinogenic experience that followed. He wrote of "a not unpleasant, intoxicated-like condition characterized by an extremely stimulated imagination. In a dreamlike state, with eyes closed (I found the daylight to be unpleasantly glaring), I perceived an uninterrupted stream of fantastic pictures, extraordinary shapes with intense, kaleidoscopic play of colors." After intentionally exposing himself to the compound again to confirm the experience, Hoffman publishes his findings about the compound he labels LSD-25.


On April 16, 1881, Bartholomew "Bat" Masterson steps off a train in Dodge City, KS. Word had reached him in Tombstone, AZ that his younger brother Jim had become involved in a feud with two business partners, A.J. Peacock and Al Updegraff, that had become violent, and Masterson rode in to defend his brother. He immediately encounters Peacock and Updegraff and a furious exchange of gunfire erupts, with a few bystanders joining in. Updegraff and one of the bystanders are wounded (not seriously), and Masterson would be fined $8 for starting the ruckus. It is the last time the storied lawman and gunfighter pulls a trigger in anger. Masterson continued to work in law enforcement and later tried his hand at journalism before dying of a heart attack in 1921. (Masterson was working as a faro dealer in Wyatt Earp's Tombstone saloon when he left for the events described. Had he stayed, he could very well have been involved in the O.K. Corral gunfight months later.)

 

On April 19, 1861 in Baltimore, a secessionist mob attacks Union troops traveling to Washington DC, killing four and losing 12 of their own. They are the first deaths inflicted in the Civil War. After the attack on Ft. Sumter the week before (the only deaths there occurred as the result of a cannon misfire), President Lincoln calls on the northern states to send 75,000 troops to put down the insurrection. Massachusetts is the first to respond, sending its 6th Regiment. But the rail line from Massachusetts to DC is incomplete; the troops must detrain in Baltimore and march to another rail line to complete the trip. Its during this march through the city that the secessionists attack.


On April 19, 1943, German troops ordered to clear the Jewish ghetto of Warsaw in preparation for Hitler's birthday celebration the following day are met by an armed force of resistance fighters. The Germans withdraw after suffering numerous casualties, but return in force 5 days later. By the time the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising ends a month later, about 7,000 Polish Jews and about 300 German soldiers are dead. The Nazis continue the liquidation of the ghetto; some 50,000 Jews are transported to the Treblinka extermination camp. Few survive the war.


On April 19. 1897, New York City amateur runner John J. McDermott wins the inaugural Boston Marathon. Inspired by the Marathon at the inaugural modern Olympics in Greece the year before, John Graham, manager of the U.S. Olympic Team and member of the Boston Athletic Association, proposes that Boston host its own marathon. The date is chosen to coincide with Patriots Day, a regional holiday commemorating the start of the American Revolution. 15 runners start the first event, which is actually 24 and a half miles. Race officials would adopt the Olympic standard of a 26 mile, 385 yard long race in 1908. The Boston Marathon is the world's oldest annual marathon and second oldest annual distance race (the Buffalo Turkey Trot beat it by a few months), although the race was cancelled last year and rescheduled to October this year due to Covid. Its annual field of 30-40,000 runners must qualify by completing another World Athletics-sanctioned marathon in the previous 18 months.