Today in Your History — April
A look at the people, events and popular culture that shaped our lives
AARP Members Only Access, April 2022
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PHOTO BY: ABC Photo Archives/Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty Images
April 30: Ellen comes out on her ABC sitcom (1997)
Rumors had been swirling for months that standup comedian–turned–sitcom star Ellen DeGeneres was about to come out as a lesbian. On April 14, DeGeneres officially came out in Time magazine, with the matter-of-fact cover line “Yep, I’m Gay.” Two weeks later, it was her character’s turn. In front of an estimated audience of 42 million, bookstore manager Ellen Morgan came out as a lesbian in the hour-long special, called “The Puppy Episode,” which made Ellen the first TV series with an openly LGBT lead character. Why the title? DeGeneres told People, “It was called ‘The Puppy Episode’ because we wanted to keep it a secret until it aired and because ‘Ellen Throws Her Career Away’ seemed too on the nose.” The episode featured notable guest stars, including Laura Dern as the woman Ellen was attracted to and Oprah Winfrey as Ellen’s therapist, plus k.d. lang, Melissa Etheridge, Gina Gershon, Kathy Najimy, Billy Bob Thornton and Dwight Yoakam. Despite backlash from advertisers, the episode went on to win an Emmy for outstanding writing and a Peabody Award, but ratings dipped, and Ellen was canceled one season later. —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: CBS/Courtesy Everett Collection
April 29: ‘Rent’ opens on Broadway (1996)
Loosely based on Giacomo Puccini’s opera La Bohème, Jonathan Larson’s generation-redefining musical told the tune-filled tale of a group of young artists and activists living in New York City’s East Village as HIV/AIDS ravaged their community. Following a workshop presentation at off-Broadway’s New York Theatre Workshop, the show was set to open at the same venue in January 1996 when tragedy struck: Larson died of an aortic aneurysm on the very day Rent was to begin performances. He unfortunately wouldn’t get to see the show win the Pulitzer Prize for drama that April, the same month Rent officially opened on Broadway, on the 29th. “Anyone who loved Rent in its first incarnation is not going to feel like the victim of a Champagne hangover who wakes up next to a creepy stranger,” Ben Brantley wrote in his review for The New York Times. “The vibrant 15 cast members are actually even better, as if they had found fresh reserves of energy in the glow of mainstream starlight.” The production would go on to win four Tony Awards, including best musical, and run for more than 12 years, making it the 11th-longest-running show in Broadway history. Rent would also go on to spawn a 2005 cinematic adaptation, and last year, Lin-Manuel Miranda directed a film version of Larson’s semi-autobiographical musical called Tick, Tick … Boom!, which earned two Oscar nominations. —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: Kim Kulish/Corbis via Getty Images
April 28: Apple opens the iTunes store (2003)
On April 28, 2003, Apple launched its iTunes Music Store. It might be hard to remember how unruly the world of downloading music was before this groundbreaking retail experience debuted, but we’re talking mislabeled songs, a messy user interface and, perhaps most daunting of all, the fear of legal troubles for piracy and copyright infringement. Apple’s innovative approach standardized download prices at 99 cents a song and guaranteed personal usage rights, and iTunes launched with a library of more than 200,000 songs. “The iTunes Music Store offers the revolutionary rights to burn an unlimited number of CDs for personal use and to put music on an unlimited number of iPods for on-the-go listening,” Apple CEO Steve Jobs said. “Consumers don’t want to be treated like criminals and artists don’t want their valuable work stolen. The iTunes Music Store offers a groundbreaking solution for both.” In June 2019, Apple sent iTunes packing when it announced that future macOS updates wouldn’t include the app and would instead replace it with three stand-alone experiences for music, TV and podcasts. —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
April 27: Xerox debuts first mouse for a PC (1981)
April 27, 1981, marked the birth of perhaps the most important mouse in American history — no, not Mickey, but the personal computer mouse. On that date, Xerox introduced the first commercially available mouse as part of its Xerox 8010 Star Information System, which retailed for an eye-watering $16,595. In addition to its accessory, the computer was the first on which users clicked icons instead of typing commands, and it debuted such digital age mainstays as folders and email. While Xerox is responsible for the invention, it’s more often associated with Apple, and that’s for good reason. Steve Jobs traded Xerox shares of Apple stock in exchange for access to the Xerox PARC (Palo Alto Research Center), and he reportedly returned to industrial designer Dean Hovey with marching orders. As Hovey recalled to The New Yorker, Jobs said, “You know, [the Xerox mouse] is a mouse that cost three hundred dollars to build and it breaks within two weeks. Here’s your design spec: Our mouse needs to be manufacturable for less than fifteen bucks. It needs to not fail for a couple of years, and I want to be able to use it on Formica and my blue jeans.” —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: Ron Galella/Ron Galella Collection via Getty Images
April 26: Studio 54 opens in New York City (1977)
The space now known as Studio 54 had an illustrious history before it became America’s most famously decadent disco hot spot: It was born in 1927 as the Gallo Opera House and later became a CBS television studio in the 1940s. On April 26, 1977, the building on Manhattan’s West 54th Street entered its infamous next chapter when Ian Schrager and Steve Rubell — two former college roommates who had previously tried (unsuccessfully) to establish a steakhouse chain — threw open the doors to Studio 54. According to reports at the time, there was a crowd of more than 5,000 fighting to get inside, but only about 720 made the cut, including such celebrities as Cher, Liza Minnelli, Salvador Dalí and an 11-year-old Brooke Shields. Those who didn’t make it inside included Frank Sinatra and Warren Beatty, who reportedly got tired of waiting and left. Future Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous host Robin Leach described the evening to writer Anthony Haden-Guest as follows: “All of us knew that night that we weren’t at the opening of a discotheque but the opening of something historical, that was going to change the shape of the way people lived or played. ... There were no rules.” —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: NASA/AFP via Getty Images
April 25: Hubble Space Telescope deployed (1990)
The Hubble Space Telescope answered a fundamental question about our observation of the heavens: What if we could get a front-row view of outer space without any of that pesky atmosphere or cloud cover or light pollution getting in the way? On April 24, 1990, NASA launched the world’s first space-based optical telescope aboard the shuttle Discovery, and the following day, it was deployed into low Earth orbit, at an altitude of about 340 miles. The HST, which is 43.5 feet wide and weighed 24,000 pounds at launch, cost about $1.5 billion to get up and running, and things didn’t go off without a hitch: A manufacturing error left a teeny-tiny flaw on the main mirror, 1/50th the thickness of a piece of paper, but it caused the earliest images to come back to Earth so blurry that they were essentially useless. In December 1993, a crew of seven astronauts fixed the telescope, and the resulting images were dramatically improved. These days, the HST sends back about 120 gigabytes of data every week — or, as Space.com puts it, the equivalent of 3,600 feet of books on a shelf! Since launching in 1990, the telescope, which zips around the Earth at about 17,000 miles per hour, has traveled more than 4 billion miles. —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: AP Photo/Charles Kelly
April 24: Georgia adopts 'Georgia on My Mind' (1979)
Before 1979, the Peach State had a perfectly lovely state song: the aptly named “Georgia,” by Robert Loveman and Lollie Belle Wylie. But everyone knew there was an even more popular, “old sweet song” waiting in the wings. Written by Hoagy Carmichael in 1930, the same year that Ray Charles was born in Albany, Georgia, “Georgia on My Mind” reached its height of popularity three decades later when the soul legend recorded a version for his 1960 album The Genius Hits the Road. In 1979, the Georgia state legislature voted to officially adopt the sentimental tune — specifically the Ray Charles cover — as their state song. On March 7, in front of a crowd of 400 legislators and their families, Charles took to the piano to play his biggest hit in the Georgia House of Representatives, and then-Lieutenant Governor Zell Miller made the resolution seem like a no-brainer: “It was the best promotional tool that anyone could ever come up with,” he later told the Associated Press. On April 24, Governor George Busbee signed the legislation to make the song official, and the song has since been used in tourism ads and to sell lottery tickets — it even appears on Georgia state license plates. Rolling Stone later ranked the song number 44 on its list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: AP Photo/Marty Lederhandler
April 23: Coca-Cola releases 'New Coke' (1985)
At the ripe old age of 99, the Coca-Cola company made a shocking announcement on April 23, 1985, that would go down in history as one of the biggest corporate blunders of all time: The beloved soft drink brand would be changing its formula! At a New York City news conference, Coke Chairman and CEO Roberto Goizueta announced that New Coke would be “smoother, rounder, yet bolder — a more harmonious flavor,” though most journalists said it simply tasted more like Pepsi. Time food critic Mimi Sheraton wrote at the time, “It is sweeter than the original formula and also has a body that could best be described as lighter. It tastes a little like classic Coca-Cola that has been diluted by melting ice.” From purely a taste perspective, New Coke was actually a success, with consumers often ranking it higher than Pepsi or original Coke in blind taste tests. But they failed to account for how much nostalgia and loyalty Americans had built up for the Coke brand; a new formula felt like a betrayal. Coca-Cola lovers began stockpiling bottles of the original stuff, and executives at HQ received more than 1,500 calls a day and 40,000 letters. A man in Seattle even created an association called the Old Cola Drinkers of America. All that grassroots bullying paid off, and Coca-Cola eventually decided to return to the traditional recipe three months later, with Peter Jennings breaking into daytime television to make the announcement. Reinstated, sales soared, with New Coke being rebranded as “Coke II” before it slowly faded away. As Time wrote later. “Depending on who you ask, it was one of the greatest marketing blunders in history (as most would say) or an unlikely stroke of corporate genius (as a diehard few still maintain)” — either way, the magazine listed it on its 2010 list of the 50 worst inventions. —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: Santi Visalli/Getty Images
April 22: The first Earth Day is celebrated (1970)
Before 1970, there were no laws or regulations in place to protect the environment in the United States. Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin — an environmentalist who had helped pass legislation to ban the use of the pesticide DDT — teamed up with Harvard graduate student Denis Hayes to come up with a plan to raise consciousness about the issue, hoping to capture the momentum of such grassroots activist efforts as the anti-war movement. Their solution was the first Earth Day, a “national teach-in on the environment,” and, as Nelson described it, “Earth Day worked because of the spontaneous response at the grassroots level. We had neither the time nor resources to organize 20 million demonstrators and the thousands of schools and local communities that participated. That was the remarkable thing about Earth Day. It organized itself.” On that first Earth Day in 1970, rallies were held across the country: In Washington D.C., 10,000 people gathered at the Washington Monument and listened to performances by the likes of Pete Seeger, while Paul Newman and Ali McGraw gave speeches at a rally in New York City. Amazingly, Nelson’s efforts really worked. In December of that year, Congress established the Environmental Protection Agency, and soon they were passing such legislation as the Clean Air Act, the Water Quality Improvement Act and the Endangered Species Act. And the EPA found that the number of Americans who thought protecting the environment was important increased by 2,500 percent between 1969 and 1971! —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: AP Photo/John Swart
April 21: Geraldo opens Al Capone’s vault (1986)
A 1972 Peabody Award winner for his report on the abuses at the Willowbrook State School, Geraldo Rivera was fired from ABC in 1985 after criticizing the network president for refusing to air his colleague’s report on the relationship between JFK and Marilyn Monroe. The following year, he made his comeback with the two-hour syndicated special The Mystery of Al Capone’s Vault, in which he opened a sealed underground room at Chicago’s Lexington Hotel, the gangster’s former headquarters. What would they find inside? Dead bodies? Untold riches? Rivera hyped up the drama as he shouted, “This mystery is going to be resolved!” before blowing down the wall with a Tommy gun and dynamite — no one ever said Geraldo was subtle. Instead of piles of cash and corpses, they found nothing but debris and a few cheap liquor bottles from the 1940s. Nearly 30 million viewers tuned in for the big reveal, making it the most-watched syndicated special in TV history to that point, and Rivera later said that he drowned his sorrows with tequila after the live broadcast ended. In his 1991 autobiography, Exposing Myself, he wrote, “My career was not over, I knew, but had just begun. And all because of a silly, high-concept stunt that failed to deliver on its titillating promise.” —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: AP Photo/Shuji Kajiyama
April 20: Danica Patrick wins IndyCar event (2008)
Twenty-six-year-old driver Danica Patrick made history when she became the first female winner in the history of IndyCar racing, with a victory at Indy Japan 300. In a sport of split seconds, Patrick finished the 200-lap race 5.8594 seconds ahead of Helio Castroneves, who had already won two Indy 500s. “It’s a long time coming — finally,” she said. “It was a fuel strategy race, but my team called it perfectly for me. I knew I was on the same strategy as Helio and when I passed him for the lead, I couldn’t believe it. This is fabulous.” At 5 foot 2 and 100 pounds, she looked almost as big as the giant trophy she hoisted after the race. ESPN reporter John Oreovicz called her win “arguably the most significant motorsports achievement to date for a female driver,” but Patrick remained humble throughout her media victory lap: “It wasn’t even a matter of doing anything different,” she said. “It was everything coming together with a bit of luck and good pit strategy.” At the following year’s Indy 500, she came in third, and she retired from racing in 2018. —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call
April 19: Senator brings baby to Senate floor (2018)
Tammy Duckworth, the junior senator from Illinois, is, to put it mildly, a trailblazer: She was the first female double amputee in the Iraq War, the first Thai American congresswoman, the first person born in Thailand elected to Congress, the first disabled woman in the House of Representatives and the first female double amputee in the Senate. In 2018, she added another first to the list when she became the first senator to give birth while in office, and she helped secure a groundbreaking rule change that allowed senators to bring their infants onto the Senate floor in order to vote. On April 19, Duckworth brought her newborn Maile Pearl Bowlsbey — who was just over a week old — to the floor for the first time, and she tweeted a photo of her infant ensemble earlier that day, with the caption: “I may have to vote today, so Maile’s outfit is prepped. I made sure she has a jacket so she doesn’t violate the Senate floor dress code (which requires blazers). I’m not sure what the policy is on duckling onesies, but I think we’re ready.” Duckworth later thanked her fellow senators, especially those on the Rules Committee, saying, “By ensuring that no senator will be prevented from performing their constitutional responsibilities simply because they have a young child, the Senate is leading by example and sending the important message that working parents everywhere deserve family-friendly workplace policies. These policies aren’t just a women’s issue, they are a commonsense economic issue.” —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: Jim Gray/Keystone/Getty Images
April 18: An American buys London Bridge (1968)
In the 1960s, London Bridge, which had been built in 1831 to replace a medieval structure, was beginning to buckle under the weight of modern automobile traffic. It needed to be replaced by a more structurally sound span, but before consigning the bridge to the scrap heap of history (and the literal junkyard), city councilor Ivan Luckin had an idea: What if they could sell it to an American? At a press conference in New York, he said, “London Bridge is not just a bridge. It is the heir to 2,000 years of history going back to the first century A.D., to the time of the Roman Londinium.” His sales pitch worked, and oil magnate Robert P. McCulloch decided to pursue the bridge with the goal of installing it as a tourist attraction in Lake Havasu City, Arizona, a desert city he’d founded. McCulloch’s winning bid was $2,460,000, an amount he arrived at by doubling the estimate for the cost it would take to dismantle the bridge ($1.2 million) and then adding on an extra $60,000 — $1,000 for every year of his life at the age when he thought the bridge would be reconstructed. The bridge also came with lamp posts made from Napoleon’s cannons, which were captured at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 and then melted down. The Guinness Book of World Records listed the bridge as the largest antique ever sold, and then 10,276 exterior granite blocks were disassembled and shipped across the Atlantic and through the Panama Canal, before being trucked from California to Arizona. The shipping and reassembly took over three years and cost about $7 million, and London Bridge finally reopened to the public on October 10, 1971. —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: Courtesy HBO
April 17: ‘Game of Thrones’ debuts on HBO (2011)
On this date in 2011, HBO aired “Winter is Coming,” the first episode of its soon-to-be-world-dominating fantasy epic Game of Thrones, which was based on the books of George R.R. Martin. It was huge, it was immersive and it featured so many plot lines and characters that it was almost like reading a classic Russian novel. The episode was seen by 2.2 million viewers, which Deadline reporter Nellie Andreeva described as “solid, not great,” and while reviews tended to be positive, no one could have predicted that it would become a megahit. Ginia Bellafante wrote in The New York Times, for example, comparing the series unfavorably to previous HBO dramas like The Sopranos, The Wire and Deadwood: “Game of Thrones serves up a lot of confusion in the name of no larger or really relevant idea beyond sketchily fleshed-out notions that war is ugly, families are insidious and power is hot. If you are not averse to the Dungeons & Dragons aesthetic, the series might be worth the effort. If you are nearly anyone else, you will hunger for HBO to get back to the business of languages for which we already have a dictionary.” Little did they know, Game of Thrones would eventually go on to win 59 Emmys (out of 160 nominations) — the most for any drama series in TV history. —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: Jesse D. Garrabrant/NBAE via Getty Images
April 16: Michael Jordan plays his last game (2003)
Among the many accomplishments His Airness racked up during his illustrious NBA career, Michael Jordan just may hold the record for the most retirements: He left behind basketball in 1993 to pursue a baseball career, returned in 1995, quit again after the 1997-98 season, returned again to play with the Washington Wizards in 2001 and finally retired for the third and final time on April 16, 2003. At that last game, at the First Union Center in Philadelphia, Teddy Pendergrass sang the national anthem, and when Jordan was called to the court by the announcer, the crowd erupted into applause for three full minutes. After the first quarter, Boyz II Men sang “It’s So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday,” as a Jordan highlight reel played, and in the third quarter, the Sixers jumped to an 82-59 lead. Jordan retreated to the benches, but when the crowd began chanting “We want Mike! We want Mike!” he eventually hit the court again for the last time. After the game, Sixers guard Allen Iverson said, “There’s not any perfect people in the world — but he’s close.” And MJ confirmed that, once and for all, he really, truly, believe-him-this-time, wasn’t coming back to the NBA: “I guess now it hits me that I’m not going to be in a uniform anymore. And that’s not a terrible feeling. It’s not terrible. It’s time.” —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: Hubert Hitier / AFP via Getty Images
April 15: Notre-Dame catches fire (2019)
On April 15, 2019, shocked Parisians looked on as disaster struck the City of Light’s most iconic building, Notre-Dame de Paris: During renovations, fire broke out in the attic, setting the Gothic cathedral ablaze for 15 hours, as firefighters fought to save it from total destruction. By the time the fire was contained, it had incinerated much of the wooden roof structure and melted 300 tons of lead, causing the collapse of Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc’s 19th-century spire. But, amazingly, the 850-plus-year-old legend would live on to see another day — albeit after years of repairs. “We’ll rebuild Notre-Dame even more beautifully, and I want it to be completed in five years, we can do it,” said President Emmanuel Macron in a televised address. “It is up to us to convert this disaster into an opportunity to come together, having deeply reflected on what we have been and what we have to be and become better than we are. It is up to us to find the thread of our national project.” Within a few days, nearly $1 billion in donations poured in, and while the day was marked by unimaginable loss, there were also stories of heroism: The fire chaplain, Reverend Jean-Marc Fournier — who had previously helped the victims of the 2015 Bataclan terror attack — joined the human chain that salvaged such irreplaceable relics as the Crown of Thorns and a tunic worn by Saint Louis in the 13th century as the cathedral was under construction. —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: Lilja Kristjansdo /NordicPhotos/Getty Images
April 14: Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull erupts (2010)
For a brief moment in 2010, people around the world tried to master tricky Icelandic pronunciations as they struggled their way through the word “Eyjafjallajökull” — the name of a subglacial volcano on the southern side of the island. Rising to 5,466 feet above sea level, the volcano had erupted many times before, in 920, 1612 (or 1613) and then from 1821 to 1823. In January 2010, a series of small earthquakes kicked off a monthslong eruption that resulted in lava fountains in late March, and then, on April 14, things took a turn: While not a particularly severe or dangerous volcano, it began to put on a temporarily world-altering show that day. As lava rose beneath the glacier, it caused the ice to melt rapidly, and expanding gasses set off explosions that resulted in a massive cloud of steam and fine ash that shot more than 5 miles into the sky. As the ash plume began drifting toward Europe, the eruption led to a weeklong shutdown of air traffic in the region, which stranded some 10 million passengers and cost up to 2.5 billion euros (approximately $3.4 billion). It was the largest disruption of its kind since World War II, but as Susan Stipp, a geochemist at the University of Copenhagen, explained to Science magazine, it was a crucial step. Particles of ash can sandblast windows, blocking a pilot’s view, and they can even stick to engines and block airflow. “It was a matter of losing big bucks,” Stipp said, “versus losing people.” —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: AP Photo/ Dave Martin
April 13: Tiger Woods wins the Masters (1997)
On April 13, 1997, at the age of 21 years, 3 months and 14 days, Tiger Woods became the youngest golfer to ever win the Masters, but that wasn’t the only record he broke that day; Woods, whose mother is Thai and father is African American, became the first player of either Asian or Black descent to win the tournament. Amazingly, Augusta National had admitted its first Black club member only seven years before Woods’ victory, and the tournament’s cofounder Clifford Roberts had once said, “As long as I’m alive, all the golfers will be white, and all the caddies will be Black.” Woods got the last laugh in particularly spectacular fashion, winning by 12 strokes, which was the largest margin of victory in any major since 1899! After the tournament, he addressed a crowd of spectators, saying, “Between every green and tee, I got loud ovations. I never dreamt of it being like this. All of you helped me. Thank you for getting me through this.” Jack Nicklaus predicted great things for the young player, telling The New York Times, “Arnold [Palmer] and I both agreed that you could take his Masters and my Masters, and add them together, and this kid should win more than that.” —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: HUM Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
April 12: NASA launches shuttle, Columbia (1981)
Exactly 20 years to the day after Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human to travel in space, NASA launched its inaugural space shuttle mission, STS-1, aboard the Columbia. Led by commander John W. Young and pilot Robert L. Crippen, the mission ushered in a new era for space exploration, marked by reusable spacecraft that could launch into space and then safely return to Earth, ready to fly again another day. Before the shuttle took off, launch director George F. Page read a message from President Reagan: “You go forward this morning in a daring enterprise and you take the hopes and prayers of all Americans with you.” And then Page added, “We wish you an awful lot of luck. We are with you one thousand percent and we are awful proud to have been a part of it.” Columbia successfully orbited the planet 36 times over the span of 54 hours, before landing back at Edwards Air Force Base in California on April 14. Sadly, the history of the Columbia ended in tragedy, when the shuttle disintegrated upon reentering the atmosphere on its 28th mission, on Feb. 1, 2003. —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: AP Photo/Susan Ragan
April 11: ‘Miss Saigon’ opens on Broadway (1991)
Just a few short years after their blockbuster Les Misérables stormed the barricades of Broadway, Claude-Michel Schönberg and Alain Boublil brought another epic musical across the pond from the West End: On this date in 1991, the bombastic Vietnam War musical Miss Saigon officially opened on Broadway. Loosely based on the 1904 Puccini opera Madama Butterfly, Miss Saigon centers on a tragic romance between a South Vietnamese bargirl and an American Marine, and it carried with it loads of baggage — most notably, it costarred white British actor Jonathan Pryce as a half-Asian pimp, who was even done up in “yellowface” prosthetics and makeup during the show’s London run. “If spectators can clear their minds of the hoopla about the record $37 million advance sales, the $10 million production cost, the $100 top ticket price, the ethnic controversies over stereotypes and casting, and the residual political furor over the Vietnam War — in other words, of all the things that make Miss Saigon an event rather than simply an entertainment,” wrote William A. Henry III in Time, “they may find that the musical that opened on Broadway last week is a cracking good show.” Best remembered for the helicopter that lands onstage in Act II, the musical went on to win three Tonys, including best actor (Pryce) and best actress (Lea Salonga), and Miss Saigon would run for almost a decade. Today it ranks 13th on the list of the longest-running Broadway shows of all time. —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: Dan Chung/PA/Press Association via AP Images
April 10: Good Friday Agreement signed (1998)
For nearly 30 years, the so-called Troubles had plagued Northern Ireland, with bombings, death and destruction. Following a tentative cease-fire in 1994, peace talks finally began in earnest in 1996, with representatives from the British and Irish governments and various political parties from Northern Ireland. On Good Friday of 1998, there was a breakthrough, and the delegates officially signed the Belfast (or Good Friday) Agreement, which created three “strands” of political structures: Strand One established the Northern Ireland Assembly and Executive, an elected body that made decisions on local matters; Strand Two normalized relations between Northern Ireland and the rest of the island; and Strand Three focused on cooperation between Ireland and the United Kingdom. Following the announcement, Ireland and Northern Ireland held a joint referendum in May, and the agreement was approved by 94 percent of voters in Ireland and 71 percent in Northern Ireland. Sporadic violence continued the following year, and then in December 1999, the Republic of Ireland changed the language in its constitution to remove its territorial claims to the north, and the United Kingdom ceased direct control of Northern Ireland. “The Good Friday Agreement is a work of genius that’s applicable if you care at all about preserving democracy,” President Bill Clinton reminisced in 2018. “It called for real democracy — majority rule, minority rights, individual rights, the rule of law, the end of violence, shared political decision-making, shared economic benefits.” —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: ROTA/Tim Graham Picture Library/Getty Images
April 9: Charles and Camilla get married (2005)
Britain’s Prince Charles met Camilla Parker Bowles (then Camilla Shand) at a polo match in 1970, kicking off a decades-long, soap-operatic relationship that involved marriages to other people, kids, adultery, divorces and enough tabloid fodder to fill the Encyclopedia Britannica. In February 2005, the couple announced their engagement, and they officially tied the knot on April 9 in a low-key private civil ceremony, attended by only 28 guests, at the Windsor Guildhall. Not one of those 28 guests? Queen Elizabeth II, who later attended a blessing service at St. George’s chapel in Windsor Castle, alongside 800 other guests, including Prime Minister Tony Blair. About 20,000 royal watchers peppered the streets of Windsor — a far cry from the 600,000 who showed up to see Charles and Diana Spencer’s wedding. Parker Bowles technically married into the title of princess of Wales, but not wanting to thumb her nose at public sentiment, she instead chose to be referred to as the duchess of Cornwall; if and when Charles finally becomes king, she will technically be queen, but she has stated that she’d prefer to be called princess consort. In her “minute by minute” column for The Guardian, Anna Pickard summed up the day as follows: “Hats, hats and more hats.” —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: CBS via Getty Images
April 8: David Copperfield hides Liberty (1983)
Illusionist David Copperfield levitated over the Grand Canyon, walked through the Great Wall of China and escaped from Alcatraz, but none of his blockbuster magic tricks will ever compare to the time he made the Statue of Liberty disappear on live television, in front of an audience of more than 50 million Americans. With a cost of $500,000 and a crew of 300, Copperfield and his team erected scaffolding on either side of Lady Liberty and prepared for the big event. “My mother was the first one to tell me about the Statue of Liberty,” Copperfield said. “She saw it first from the deck of a ship that brought her to America. She was an immigrant. She impressed upon me how precious our liberty is and how easily it can be lost. And then, one day, it occurred to me that I could show with magic how we take our freedom for granted.” At the moment of truth, dressed in a silver bomber jacket, he got down on one knee and pretended to concentrate very deeply; as a giant sheet that had been raised in front of the statue fell from the scaffolding, the Statue of Liberty — all 151 feet and 1 inch of her — appeared to have completely vanished. The small crowd of in-person attendees was visibly shocked. It turns out that he pulled off the trick by placing the live audience on a rotating platform, which moved ever so slightly as he was putting on his grand show, and by the time the curtain dropped, audience members were unwittingly facing a slightly different direction, with Lady Liberty obscured from view. Simple, theatrical and genius! Need proof of what a massive undertaking the illusion was? Guinness World Records officially declared it “the largest illusion ever staged.” —Nicholas DeRenzo
Video: David Copperfield on History's Greatest Death-Defying Illusions
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PHOTO BY: Bettmann/Getty Images
April 7: 'Midnight Cowboy' wins best picture (1970)
When you watch Midnight Cowboy today, you might be shocked that this quintessential New York City film earned an X rating. Many cinema lovers believe that the Motion Picture Association of America hampered the film with its X rating as a way of condemning its gay content, but the story is a bit more complicated. The ratings board gave Midnight Cowboy an R rating, meaning children under 17 could see the movie if accompanied by a parent or guardian, and it was, in fact, United Artists studio head Arthur Krim who self-rated the film an X after consulting with psychiatrist Aaron Stern, who basically argued that the movie could turn young viewers toward homosexuality. As Glenn Frankel wrote in Vanity Fair last year, “The X rating damaged the film’s commercial prospects — newspapers and TV stations in many cities refused to accept advertising for an X-rated film, and half the country’s theaters even refused to book one.” Despite the challenges, Midnight Cowboy picked up three Oscars, for best picture, best director and best adapted screenplay, the first Oscars for an X-rated film. New York Times film critic Vincent Canby wrote of the win, “The victory of Midnight Cowboy (Best Picture) is likely to give prestige to X‐rated movies at just about the time everyone connected with the Code admits that Midnight Cowboy isn’t really dirty enough to deserve an X, at least by this week’s standards.” In an odd twist, UA later went back to the ratings board to ask it to reinstate its original R rating, and as member Stephen Farber told Vanity Fair, “There was no issue about it. We watched the movie again, and then everybody voted R. It was not controversial.” —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: Frank Barratt/Keystone/Getty Images
April 6: ABBA Wins Eurovision Song Contest (1974)
If you’re unfamiliar with the Eurovision Song Contest, it’s basically a cross between the Olympics and American Idol that has been going strong since 1956. There are some famous faces among the decades of one-hit-wonder winners — Céline Dion, for instance, won for Switzerland in 1988 — but no bigger hit has emerged from the contest in its nearly 70 years than ABBA’s “Waterloo,” which helped Sweden secure its first title in 1974. Their performance was pure ’70s camp excess, complete with producer Sven-Olof Walldoff conducting in a Napoleon costume as a reference to the track’s namesake 1815 battle. “At that time, [Eurovision] was the one and only vehicle to reach outside Sweden,” band member Björn Ulvaeus later told Billboard. “Because there was no way anyone in England or America would listen to anything coming out of this obscure country. You could send your tapes, knowing they would throw them away immediately.” The Eurovision win brought overnight success to the Swedish foursome, and “Waterloo” went on to become the first ABBA song to chart in the United States, peaking at No. 6 on the Billboard Hot 100. —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: AP Photo/Lennox McLendon
April 5: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar breaks record (1984)
On April 5, 1984, the L.A. Lakers were playing the Utah Jazz at an unusual venue, the Thomas & Mack Center at the University of Nevada–Las Vegas, when 7-foot-2 Kareem Abdul-Jabbar shot into the record books: By scoring his 31,420th point, he officially passed Wilt Chamberlain as the league’s all-time leading scorer. The crowd erupted, the Lakers swarmed their captain on the court, and Abdul-Jabbar was taken out of the game, with L.A. ultimately winning, 129-115. By the time he retired, at the end of the 1988-89 season, he had netted NBA scoring records for regular-season games (38,387 points), playoffs (5,762) and All-Star Games (251). If you combine regular-season and playoff points, there’s a new all-time scoring king as of this year: On Feb. 12, LeBron James scored his 44,150th, surpassing Abdul-Jabbar, though King James still trails Abdul-Jabbar and Karl Malone when you take into consideration only regular-season points. As James was approaching the record, Abdul-Jabbar said: “I’m excited to see it happen. I don’t see records as personal accomplishments but more as human achievements. If one person can do something that’s never been done, that means we all have a shot at doing it.” —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: Doug Wilson/Corbis via Getty Images
April 4: Gates and Allen found Microsoft (1975)
In January 1975, Paul Allen picked up a copy of Popular Electronics magazine from a newsstand in Harvard Square. It featured an article about the “world’s first minicomputer,” the Altair 8800, which you could buy as a kit for $397 from an Albuquerque-based model-rocket company. Allen shared the issue with his childhood friend Bill Gates, who was then a sophomore at Harvard; he wrote in his 2011 autobiography Idea Man, “As Bill read the story, he began rocking back and forth in his chair, a sign he was deep in concentration. I could tell he was impressed.” The two got to work adapting BASIC, a popular programming language for large computers, for this new personal Altair device. In April of that year, they founded a company called Micro-Soft, a portmanteau of the words “microprocessor” and “software,” with Gates as CEO — a role he’d hold for 25 years, until he took on the title of chief software architect in 2000. The personal computer revolution had officially begun. —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: Getty Images
April 3: MLK delivers 'mountaintop' speech (1968)
On the night of April 3, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. took to the stage at the Bishop Charles Mason Temple in Memphis to address a standing room only crowd of striking sanitation workers as a thunderstorm whipped up furiously outside. King spoke for more than 40 minutes, seemingly improvising as he went, touching on great moments in history, from ancient Egypt to the Roman Empire, from the Renaissance to the Civil War. Death threats against the civil rights leader had worsened after he spoke out against the Vietnam War, and a sense of darkness hung over the speech. At one point, King said he would be happy if God allowed him to live just a few more years in the second half of the 20th century. Then he ended the speech with one of the most famous (and prophetic) passages he ever delivered: “We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn’t matter with me now, because I’ve been to the mountaintop. … Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. … I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land! ... I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man! Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!” When he returned to his seat, fellow civil rights leader Benjamin Hooks saw tears streaming down his face, and James Jordan later recalled, “This time it just seemed like he was just saying, ‘Goodbye, I hate to leave.’ ” Less than 24 hours later, as King waited for a car to drive him to dinner at the Rev. Billy Kyles’ house, James Earl Ray shot him on the balcony at the Lorraine Hotel, and he was officially pronounced dead at 7:05 that night. —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: AP photo
April 2: Man streaks at the Academy Awards (1974)
Streaking really hit its stride in the early 1970s — running around naked became such a cultural phenomenon that the pastime even made it onto the cover of Life magazine. And then, on April 2, 1974, it appeared at one of the biggest events in America, when 33-year-old San Francisco art gallery owner and gay-rights activist Robert Opel ran across the stage at the 46th Academy Awards, flashing a peace sign and wearing nothing but a mustache, just as co-host David Niven was about to bring Elizabeth Taylor to the stage to announce best picture. “Well, ladies and gentlemen, that was almost bound to happen,” Niven quipped to laughter from the audience. “But isn’t it fascinating to think that probably the only laugh that man will ever get in his life is by stripping off and showing his shortcomings?” Opel had reportedly gained entry with fake press credentials, though there have been persistent rumors that the whole thing had been planned and that Niven’s one-liner was pre-written. After the show, Opel was interviewed in the backstage press room, where he said, “People shouldn’t be ashamed of being nude in public. Besides, it’s a hell of a way to launch a career.” He did end up enjoying a few years of notoriety. He appeared on The Mike Douglas Show to announce that he was running for president as a nudist, and Hollywood producer Allan Carr even hired him to streak at a party for Rudolf Nureyev. Sadly, Opel was killed during a burglary at his gallery in 1979. His nephew Robert Oppel (his uncle had removed the second “p”) later released a documentary about him called Uncle Bob. —Nicholas DeRenzo
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PHOTO BY: Yomiuri Shimbun via AP Images
April 1: Bob Dylan accepts the Nobel Prize (2017)
In October 2016, the Swedish Academy shocked the culture world when it awarded Bob Dylan the Nobel Prize in Literature “for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition.” He was the first musician to win the honor, joining such literary luminaries as Ernest Hemingway, Toni Morrison and Samuel Beckett. The troubadour originally declined to attend the official banquet and awards ceremony in December (Patti Smith performed in his absence ), though he gave a statement to the U.S. ambassador to Sweden to read on his behalf: “If someone had ever told me that I had the slightest chance of winning the Nobel Prize, I would have to think that I’d have about the same odds as standing on the moon.” A few months later, Dylan used a tour stopover in Stockholm to finally accept the prize at a private ceremony, for which he showed up in a hoodie and a leather jacket. “Quite a bit of time was spent looking closely at the gold medal, in particular the beautifully crafted back, an image of a young man sitting under a laurel tree who listens to the Muse,” wrote the academy’s secretary, Sara Danius, in a blog post. “Spirits were high. Champagne was had.” Dylan then had until June 10 of that year to deliver his Nobel lecture, which was the only requirement for receiving the 8 million kronor prize (about $900,000) — and he waited until June 4 to record his remarks. His 27-minute speech is a rambling thing of Dylanesque beauty, more than 4,000 words delivered over piano music during which he discusses The Odyssey, Moby Dick and All Quiet on the Western Front. “When I first received this Nobel Prize for Literature, I got to wondering exactly how my songs related to literature,” he started. “I wanted to reflect on it and see where the connection was. I’m going to try to articulate that to you. And most likely it will go in a roundabout way, but I hope what I say will be worthwhile and purposeful.” —Nicholas DeRenzo
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