history at a glance
TODAY is Sunday April 9 the 99th day of the year. There are 266 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date:
1940 – World War II: Operation Weserübung: Germany invades Denmark and Norway. 1942 – World War II: The Battle of Bataan/Bataan Death March: United States forces surrender on the Bataan Peninsula. The Japanese Navy launches an air raid on Trincomalee in Ceylon (Sri Lanka); Royal Navy aircraft carrier HMS Hermes and Royal Australian Navy Destroyer HMAS Vampire are sunk off the island’s east coast. 1945 – World War II: The German pocket battleship Admiral Scheer is sunk by the Royal Air
Force 1947 – The Journey of Reconciliation, the first interracial Freedom Ride begins through the upper South in violation of Jim Crow laws. The riders wanted enforcement of the United States Supreme Court’s 1946 Irene Morgan decision that banned racial segregation in interstate travel. 1948 – Jorge Eliécer Gaitán’s assassination provokes a violent riot in Bogotá (the Bogotazo),
and a further ten years of violence in Colombia known as La violencia. 1948 – Fighters from the Irgun and Lehi Zionist paramilitary groups attacked Deir Yassin near
Jerusalem, killing over 100. 1957 – The Suez Canal in Egypt is cleared and opens to shipping. 1959 – Project Mercury: NASA announces the selection of the United States’ first seven astronauts, whom the news media quickly dub the “Mercury Seven”. 1960 – Dr. Hendrik Verwoerd, Prime Minister of South Africa and architect of apartheid, narrowly survives an assassination attempt by a white farmer called David Pratt in Johannesburg. 1965 – Astrodome opens. First indoor baseball game is played. 1967 – The first Boeing 737 (a 100 series) makes its maiden flight. 1975 – Eight people in South Korea, who are involved in People’s Revolutionary Party Incident, are hanged. 1980 – The Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein kills philosopher Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr and
his sister Bint al-Huda after three days of torture. 1981 – The US Navy nuclear submarine USS George Washington accidentally collides with the
Nissho Maru, a Japanese cargo ship, sinking it. 1989 – The April 9 tragedy in Tbilisi, Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic, an anti-Soviet peaceful demonstration and hunger strikes, demanding restoration of Georgian independence is dispersed by the Soviet army, resulting in 20 deaths and hundreds of injuries. 1991 – Georgia declares independence from the Soviet Union 1992 – A US Federal Court finds former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega guilty of drug
and racketeering charges. He is sentenced to 30 years in prison. 1999 – Kosovo War: The Battle of Košare begins. 2003 – Iraq War: Baghdad falls to American forces; Iraqis turn on symbols of their former
leader Saddam Hussein, pulling down a grand statue of him and tearing it to pieces. 2005 – Charles, Prince of Wales marries Camilla Parker Bowles in a civil ceremony at Windsor’s Guildhall. 2009 – In Tbilisi, Georgia, up to 60,000 people protest against the government of Mikheil
Saakashvili. 2013 – A 6.1–magnitude earthquake strikes Iran killing 32 people and injuring over 850
people. 2013 – At least 13 people are killed and another three injured after a man goes on a spree
shooting in the Serbian village of Velika Ivanca. 2014 – A student stabs 20 people at Franklin Regional High School in Murrysville, Pennsylvania