This Day In History

Apr 30 1945
Newlyweds Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun kill themselves in the charming and romantic Fuhrerbunker, ending all hope for a ten-thousand-year Reich.

Apr 30 1961
Lee Harvey Oswald, during his stay in the Soviet Union, marries hospital employee Marina Prusakova. Oswald later becomes disenchanted with Soviet life, and the couple emigrates to the United States. Even so, he never permits his wife to learn English.

This Day In History

Apr 26 1865
Discovered hiding in a farmer's tobacco shed, John Wilkes Booth is shot in the neck. Dying and paralyzed from the neck down, he whispers: "Tell my mother I did it for my country." As his hands are held up to his face, Booth mutters "useless... useless..." They are his last words.

Apr 26 1986
44 seconds into a late-night experiment at the Chernobyl nuclear power station, reactor number four sustains two large explosions. A plume of dangerous radioactivity looms three kilometers high, making it the worst catastrophe in the history of nuclear power. The Soviet news agency TASS holds off reporting the incident for almost 48 hours.

This Day In History

Apr 25 1974
Jim Morrison's widow Pamela dies of a heroin overdose.

This Day In History

Apr 24 1967
Cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov soon becomes the world's first space mission fatality after his Soyuz parachutes become entangled four miles above the Earth.

Apr 24 1995
The Unabomber strikes, killing a timber industry lobbyist. Gilbert Murray is killed in his Sacramento office, opening mail addressed to the man he replaced.

Apr 24 1997
A petri dish arrives in an 8x10 manila envelope at the Washington, D.C. offices of B'nai B'rith International. The dish, labeled "anthracks," drips a liquidy red gel which is later determined to contain a relatively harmless strain of Bacillus cereus.

This Day In History

Apr 23 1969
Sirhan Sirhan sentenced to death for assassinating Robert Kennedy.

Apr 23 1975
Peter Ham of Badfinger suicides at age 27, by hanging himself. Another bandmate, Tom Evans, suicides later in 1983.


Apr 23 1983
The West German magazine Stern announces a major historical find: the discovery of 60 volumes of personal diaries purported to have been handwritten by Adolf Hitler.

Apr 23 1985
The Coca-Cola Bottling Company announces that it has irrevocably changed the formula for its flagship beverage, unveiling "New Coke." The company stands firm on its decision until public pressure finally forces them to reintroduce the original drink, exactly 79 days later.

This Day In History

Apr 22 1923
Kinky centerfold model Bettie Mae Page born in Nashville, Tennessee. As she describes herself, "I was never the girl next door."

Apr 22 1954
Porn star and onetime Ivory Snow model Marilyn Chambers is born in Westport, Connecticut.

Apr 22 1994
Richard M. Nixon suffers a fatal stroke. His body is laid to rest on the grounds of his Presidential Library.

This Day In History

Apr 21 1847
Lewis Keseberg, the final member of the Donner Party still stranded in the mountains, is escorted to safety by a fourth rescue party. Later accounts hold that Keseberg was discovered "seated, like a ghoul, in the midst of dead bodies, with his face and hands smeared with blood, and a kettle of human flesh boiling over the fire."

Apr 21 1910
American original Mark Twain dies of heart failure in Redding, CT.

Apr 21 1930
320 inmates are left to burn alive during a fire in the Ohio State Penitentiary. Locked into their cells, the men could not escape the smoke and flames.

Apr 21 1992
Convicted murderer Robert Alton Harris consumes two large pizzas, a bucket of fried chicken, and some ice cream on the eve of his execution. Later, before the gas chamber is activated, Harris propounds: "You can be a king or a street sweeper, but everyone dances with the grim reaper."

This Day In History

Apr 20 1889
In Braunau, Austria, Klara Hitler gives birth to a bouncing baby boy named Adolf.

Apr 20 1979
President Jimmy Carter is attacked by a Killer Swamp Rabbit, while on vacation in Plains GA. The rabbit swam menacingly towards him, and he had to repel the ferocious creature with a paddle. There were no injuries. Press Secretary Jody Powell leaked the story to the press, and the White House had a lot of explaining to do.

Apr 20 1992
Alone in his apartment watching TV, British comedic legend Benny Hill suffers a fatal heart attack. His body goes undiscovered for four days.

Apr 20 1999
After their homemade timebombs fail to detonate in the school cafeteria, the heavily-armed duo of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold decide to prowl through Columbine High School, indiscriminately gunning down classmates. A total of 15 are killed in their shooting spree. Contrary to news reports, their selection of victims is apparently random; they aren't hunting for jocks or blacks. Nor do they execute that Christian girl -- Valeen Schnurr in fact manages to crawl away and live to tell her story. They are not goths, they aren't gay, nor were they ever members of that dorky clique calling themselves the "Trenchcoat Mafia." They don't even listen to Marilyn Manson. Harris and Klebold are just a couple of extremely pissed-off kids with an arsenal.

This Day In History

Apr 19 1993
More than 80 Branch Davidians burn to death in Waco, Texas as the FBI stages a disastrous final assault on their compound. This brings a sudden end to the 51-day siege.

Apr 19 1995
Timothy McVeigh kills 168 Oklahomans when his truck bomb detonates in front of the Alfred P. Murrah federal building.

This Day In History

Apr 18 1906
A devastating earthquake strikes San Francisco at 5:13 a.m., followed by a major aftershock three hours later. More than 3,000 people are killed from either collapsing structures or any of the 59 separate fires which burn over the next three days. In the downtown area, the U.S. Army is forced to dynamite whole city blocks in order to contain the flames, due to the lack of water pressure.

This Day In History

Apr 17 1969
A Los Angeles jury convicts Sirhan Sirhan of assassinating Senator Robert F. Kennedy. Sirhan receives a death sentence, but it is later reduced to life in prison.

This Day In History

Apr 13 1970
56 hours and 205,000 miles from planet Earth, the crew aboard Apollo 13 hears "a pretty loud bang" when oxygen tank number two spontaneously explodes. Astronaut Jack Swigert informs Mission Control in Houston: "Hey, we've got a problem here." Miraculously, the crew manages to return home in their crippled spacecraft.

Apr 13 1982

David Crosby of Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young is arrested while freebasing cocaine and for illegal possession of a .45 handgun. Sentence: 5 years.

This Day In History

Apr 14 1865
President Abraham Lincoln receives a cranial gunshot wound from the nation's most famous actor, John Wilkes Booth. Lincoln dies the following day, primarily from ill-advised attempts to extract the bullet lodged in his brain.

Apr 14 1989
California winery worker Ramon Salcido picks up a butcher knife and kills his wife, mother-in-law, two sisters-in-law, and two of his own daughters. Then he goes to work and kills his supervisor.

This Day In History

Apr 11 1890
Death of Joseph Merrick, the Elephant Man.

This Day In History

Apr 10 1992
Comedian Sam Kinison killed in a car accident.

This Day In History

Apr 7 1998
Wendy O. Williams, former porn star and singer for the Plasmatics, kills herself with a gun near her Connecticut home.

This Day In History

Apr 5 1887
In Tuscumbia, Ala., teacher Anne Sullivan taught her blind and deaf pupil, Helen Keller, the meaning of the word "water" as spelled out in the manual alphabet.

Apr 5 1951
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg are sentenced to death for acts of treason, which in this case means giving atomic bomb secrets to the Soviet Union.

Apr 5 1994
Kurt Cobain commits suicide by handgun to the head.

R.I.P.

This Day In History

April 4 1958
Lana Turner's 14 year old daughter stabs her mother's boyfriend. A coroner's jury finds she committed justifiable homicide.

April 4 1968
Martin Luther King, Jr. is shot dead by a sniper in Memphis, Tennessee.

April 4 2006
Brian J. Doyle, a Department of Homeland Security official, is arrested and charged with using a computer to seduce a child as well as 16 counts of transmitting harmful material to a minor. Doyle had arranged a meeting with what he thought was a 14-year-old girl but turned out to be police. In chat, he bragged about working for DHS and sent her pornographic movies.

This Day In History

Apr 3 1882
Notorious outlaw Jesse James is shot and killed in his own home for a $5,000 reward. The assailants are Charles and Robert Ford, both members of the James gang.

Apr 3 1924
Brilliant actor and total loon Marlon Brando is born.

Apr 3 1936
Bruno Hauptmann executed via Electric Chair, for the kidnap and murder of the Lindbergh baby. (See April 2nd)

Apr 3 1996
US Commerce Secretary Ron Brown's plane goes down in Dubrovnik (Croatia), killing 35. Although many who view Brown's body comment that he appeared to have been shot in the head, this is never fully investigated.

Apr 3 1996
The Unabomber, Theodore Kaczynski is arrested in his Lincoln, Montana cabin. It takes the FBI months to search the tiny 8 x 10 foot dwelling.

This Day In History

Apr 2 1932
World-famous aviator Charles Lindbergh and Dr. John F. Condon turn over $50,000 in ransom money to an unidentified man in a Bronx cemetery. Lindbergh's kidnapped infant, however, is never returned -- his corpse is discovered the following month.


Apr 2 1974
A streaker interrupts actor David Niven during his presentation at the Academy Awards. Niven's off-the-cuff remark -- "probably the only laugh that man will ever get in his life is by stripping and showing off his shortcomings" -- was actually prepared in advance.