This day in history
Today is Thursday, April 11, the 102nd day of 2024. There are 264 days left in the year.
Birthdays: Ethel Kennedy is 96. Actor Joel Grey is 92. Actor Louise Lasser is 85. Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Ellen Goodman is 83. Movie writerdirector John Milius is 80. Actor Peter Riegert is 77. Movie director Carl Franklin is 75. Actor Bill Irwin is 74. Country singersongwriter Jim Lauderdale is 67. Songwriter-producer Daryl Simmons is 67. Rock musician Nigel Pulsford (Bush) is 63. Actor Lucky Vanous is 63. Country singer Steve Azar is 60. Singer Lisa Stansfield is 58. Actor Johnny Messner is 55. Rock musician Dylan Keefe (Marcy Playground) is 54. Actor Vicellous Shannon is 53. Rapper David Banner is 50. Actor Tricia Helfer is 50. Rock musician Chris Gaylor of The All-American Rejects is 45. Actor Kelli Garner is 40. Singer Joss Stone is 37. Actor-dancer Kaitlyn Jenkins is 32.
ºIn 1814, Napoleon Bonaparte was abdicated as emperor of the French and banished to the island of Elba. (Napoleon later escaped from Elba and returned to power in March 1815, until his downfall in the Battle of Waterloo in June 1815.)
ºIn 1865, President Lincoln spoke to a crowd outside the White House, saying, “We meet this evening, not in sorrow, but in gladness of heart.” (It was the last public address Lincoln would deliver.)
ºIn 1899, the treaty ending the Spanish-American War was declared in effect.
ºIn 1913, Postmaster General Albert S. Burleson, during a meeting of President Woodrow Wilson’s Cabinet, proposed gradually segregating whites and Blacks who worked for the Railway Mail Service, a policy that went into effect and spread to other agencies.
ºIn 1945, during World War II, American soldiers liberated the Nazi concentration camp Buchenwald in Germany.
ºIn 1947, Jackie Robinson of the Brooklyn Dodgers played in an exhibition against the New York Yankees at Ebbets Field, four days before his regular-season debut that broke baseball’s color line.
ºIn 1961, former SS officer Adolf Eichmann went on trial in Israel, charged with crimes against humanity for his role in the Nazi Holocaust. (Eichmann was convicted and executed.)
ºIn 1968, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law the Civil Rights Act of 1968, which included the Fair Housing Act, a week after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.
ºIn 1970, Apollo 13, with astronauts James A. Lovell, Fred W. Haise, and Jack Swigert, blasted off on its ill-fated mission to the moon. (The mission was aborted when an oxygen tank exploded April 13. The crew splashed down safely four days after the explosion.)
ºIn 1980, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission issued regulations specifically prohibiting sexual harassment of workers by supervisors.
ºIn 1996, 7-year-old Jessica Dubroff, who hoped to become the youngest person to fly cross-country, was killed along with her father and flight instructor when their plane crashed after takeoff from Cheyenne, Wyo.
ºIn 2012, George Zimmerman, the Florida neighborhood watch volunteer who fatally shot 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, was arrested and charged with second-degree murder. (He was acquitted at trial.)
ºIn 2018, Pope Francis admitted he made “grave errors” in judgment in Chile’s sex abuse scandal; during a January visit to Chile, Francis had strongly defended Bishop Juan Barros despite accusations by victims that Barros had witnessed and ignored their abuse.
ºIn 2020, the number of US deaths from the coronavirus eclipsed Italy’s for the highest in the world, topping 20,000.