On April 25, 1961, Robert Noyce, MIT graduate and cofounder of Fairchild Semiconductor, is granted a patent for the integrated circuit, or microchip, an essential computer building block. Noyce will later found Intel and be nicknamed "the Mayor of Silicon Valley." On April 25, 1945, eight Russian armies completely encircle Berlin, linking up with the U.S. First Army patrol, first on the western bank of the Elbe, then later at Torgau. Germany is, for all intents and purposes, Allied territory. On April 25, 1719, Daniel Defoe’s fictional work The Life and Strange Adventures of Robinson Crusoe is published. The book, about a shipwrecked sailor who spends 28 years on a deserted island, is based on the experiences of shipwreck victims and of Alexander Selkirk, a Scottish sailor who spent four years on a small island off the coast of South America in the early 1700s.
On April 26, 1954, the Salk polio vaccine field trials begin at the Franklin Sherman Elementary School in McLean, Virginia. Over the next year, about 1.8 million children in the United States, Canada and Finland receive either the actual vaccine or a placebo in a procedure that is now the standard method for testing a new drug called the double-blind method, whereby neither the patient nor attending doctor knew if the inoculation was the vaccine or a placebo. One year later, on April 12, 1955, researchers announced the vaccine was safe and effective and it quickly became a standard part of childhood immunizations in America. In the ensuing decades, polio vaccines would all but wipe out the highly contagious disease in the Western Hemisphere. On April 26, 1986, a chemical explosion occurs at the Chernobyl nuclear power station, about 65 miles north of Kiev in the Ukraine. The explosion is the result of a series of mistakes revolving around an experiment with alternative methods of running the reactor's water pumps that began a day earlier. Engineers are successful in preventing a full-scale core meltdown, but an estimated 50 tons of radioactive material is released into the atmosphere. Thirty-two people died and dozens more suffered radiation burns in the opening days of the crisis, but only after Swedish authorities reported the fallout did Soviet authorities reluctantly admit that an accident had occurred. The radiation that escaped into the atmosphere, which was several times that produced by the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, was spread by the wind over Northern and Eastern Europe, contaminating millions of acres of forest and farmland. An estimated 5,000 Soviet citizens eventually died from cancer and other radiation-induced illnesses caused by their exposure to the Chernobyl radiation, and millions more had their health adversely affected. The plant was officially shut down in 2000, and today, the damaged reactor is encased in a concrete and steel sarcophagus.
I remember getting both polio vaccines. One was in a sugar cube the other was a shot. Those vaccines relieved a huge fear among people of the time. Polio was in ways worse than a killing disease. I know several people in my schools who suffered from its effects one way or another.
I remember being given a small paper cup about half full of a clear liquid. I don't remember a shot but I remember being glad a had the liquid and didn't have to get a shot.
On April 27, 1773, Parliament passes the Tea Act, allowing the East India Company to pay substantially lower taxes on its tea imports. Meant to save the company from bankrputcy, the bill allows the East India Company to sell tea cheaper in the American colonies than even smugglers bringing in untaxed Dutch tea. British Prime Minister, Frederick, Lord North, who initiated the legislation, thought it impossible that the colonists would protest cheap tea. But many colonists viewed the act as yet another example of taxation tyranny, precisely because it left an earlier duty on tea entering the colonies in place, while removing the duty on tea entering England. On April 27, 1805, a small force of U.S. Marines and Berber mercenaries enter the port city of Derna, Tripoli, intending to depose the ruling pash, Yusuf Karamanli. The U.S. has been at war against the Barbary States - Morocco, Algeria, Tunis and Tripoli - for 4 years, over repeated acts of piracy by the states against U.S. shipping in the Mediterranean. The Marines successfully depose Yusuf and install his brother Hamet - who has always been friendly to the U.S. - in his place. Hamet would later present Lt. Presley O’ Bannon, commanding the Marines, with an elaborately designed sword that now serves as the pattern for the swords carried by Marine officers. The phrase “to the shores of Tripoli,” from the Marine Corps Hymn, commemorates the Derna campaign. On April 27, 1521, after traveling three-quarters of the way around the globe, Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan is killed during a tribal skirmish on Mactan Island in the Philippines. On April 27, 1956, world heavyweight champ Rocky Marciano retires from boxing at age 31, saying he wants to spend more time with his family. Marciano ended his career as the only heavyweight champion with a perfect record–49 wins in 49 professional bouts, with 43 knockouts. On April 27, 4977 B.C., the universe is created, according to German mathematician and astronomer Johannes Kepler, considered a founder of modern science. Kepler, best known for his theories explaining the motion of planets, offered his theory in the early 17th century. 20th century scientists would show - with the the development of the Big Bang Theory - that Kepler was off by about 13.7 billion years.
On April 28, 1945, “Il Duce,” Benito Mussolini, and his mistress, Clara Petacci, are shot by Italian partisans who had captured the couple as they attempted to flee to Switzerland. After their execution, the bodies of Mussolini and Petacci are transported by truck to Milan, where they are hung upside down and displayed publicly for revilement by the masses. On April 28, 1789, three weeks into a journey from Tahiti to the West Indies, the HMS Bounty is seized in a mutiny led by Fletcher Christian, the master’s mate. The Bounty's mission had been to collect breadfruit plants in Tahiti for transport to colonies in the West Indies, but Fletcher and the other muntineers fell in love with the lifestyle in Tahiti and didn't want to leave. Captain William Bligh and 18 of his loyal supporters were set adrift in a small, open boat. In a remarkable feat of seamanship, Bligh - who was subjected to three mutinies in his careeer - and his men steered the longboat to Timor in the East Indies, completing the 3,600 mile journey in mid-June. Christian and the other mutineers returned to Tahiti, but failed to establish a colony there. Fearing capture and retribution from the British, the mutineers, along with about a dozen Tahitian women, sailed the Bounty to the isolated Pitcairn Island a thousand miles to the east. Their descendants migrated to and from England and a few nearby islands over the decades (the British government offered them amnesty in 1825). About a thousand residents of Norfolk Island in the South Pacific can today trace their lineage to Christian and the others, while a few dozen still live on Pitcairn. On April 28, 1967, boxing's world champion Muhammad Ali refuses to be inducted into the U.S. Army and is immediately stripped of his heavyweight title. Ali, born Cassius Clay, converted to Islam and changed his name in 1964, and cited religious reasons for his decision to forgo military service. He would be convicted of draft evasion the following June, but never served prison time. He endured a 3-year ban from boxing, returning to the ring on October 26, 1970. In June of 1971, the Supreme Court overturned his conviction. Ali would finally reclaim the world title by beating George Foreman in October, 1974.
On April 29, 1992, a jury in the Los Angeles suburb of Simi Valley acquits four police officers who had been charged with using excessive force in arresting black motorist Rodney King a year earlier. Protesters quickly take to the streets and its not long before the anger turns to violence. A news helicopter hovering over one of the protests is recording as a truck is stopped in the street and its driver, later identified as Reginald Denny, is nearly beaten to death by 3 African American men. Governor Pete Wilson quickly deploys the National Guard, but by morning of the 30th, hundreds of fires are burning throughout the city. On May 1, President George Bush orders military troops and riot-trained federal officers to Los Angeles and by the end of the next day the city is under control. The three days of disorder killed more than 60 people, injured almost 2,000, led to 7,000 arrests, and caused nearly $1 billion in property damage, including the burnings of more than 3,000 buildings. On April 29, 1429, French forces led by a 17-year-old French peasant girl known as Joan of Arc, relieve the city of Orleans from a 7-month seige by the English during the Hundred Years War. On the same date, 1862, a crowd of New Orleans residents curse and jeer as Union troops lower the Confederate flag flying over City Hall and raise the Stars and Stripes. The capture of New Orleans gives the north control of all the Mississippi below Vicksburg. On April 29, 1961, ABC TV debuts a new program "Wide World of Sports," with coverage of the Penn Relays track and field meet from Philadelphia. With Jim McKay as host, the program will carve out its place in the American conscience by giving viewers a taste of sports not normally seen on TV, from cliff diving to soap box derby. The program's opening sequence includes McKay's voiceover extolling "the thrill of victory.....the agony of defeat." While updated with new footage over the show's 37-year run, a clip that appears in 1970 of Yugoslavian ski jumper Vinko Bogataj tumbling off a ski jump will become an iconic image, and "the agony of defeat" is now part of the American sports lexicon.
