EVENTS
- 1902 – James C. Penney opens his first store.
- 1919 – British troops massacre around 400 unarmed civilians in India. Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer ordered his men to shoot into the crowd, in his own words “to punish the Indians for disobedience.” The Indian independence movement grew considerably after the Amritsar massacre.
- 1960 – The world’s first satellite navigation system is launched. Transit 1B was primarily used by the U.S. Navy to update the navigation systems aboard their Polaris submarines.
- 1970 – Mikis Theodorakis is freed. The Greek composer and politician was interned in the concentration camp of Oropos by the right-wing military junta. The solidarity movement demanding his release included Dmitri Shostakovich, Leonard Bernstein, and Harry Belafonte.
- 1970 – An oxygen tank explodes on Apollo 13, leaving the spacecraft crippled. The emergency prompted Jack Swigert’s famous quote “Houston, we’ve had a problem”. The crew managed to return to Earth safely.
Apollo 13 Astronauts - 1984 – Pete Rose gets his 4000th hit.
- 1986 – Jack Nicklaus wins his sixth Masters Tournament.
- 1997 – Tiger Woods becomes the youngest golfer to win golf’s Masters Tournament
BIRTHDAYS
- 1743 – Thomas Jefferson (US President #3)
- 1866 – Butch Cassidy (Outlaw)
- 1906 – Samuel Beckett (Irish/French author, playwright, director, Nobel Prize laureate)
- 1924 – Stanley Donen (American director, choreographer)
- 1926 – Don Adams (Maxwell Smart on Get Smart)
- 1939 – Paul Sorvino (Actor)
- 1949 – Christopher Hitchens (English/American journalist, author)
- 1963 – Garry Kasparov (Chess champion)
Garry Kasparov - 1964 – Davis Love III (Professional Golfer)
- 1970 – Ricky Schroder (Actor)
DEATHS
- 1868 – Tewodros II (of Ethiopia)
- 1882 – Bruno Bauer (German historian, philosopher)
- 1938 – Grey Owl (English/Canadian environmentalist, author)
- 1954 – Angus Lewis Macdonald (Canadian politician)
Angus Lewis Macdonald - 2009 – Harry Kalas (American sportscaster)
