TODAY IN HISTORY

Today is Saturday, April 23, the 113th day of 2022. There are 252 days left in the year. On this date in:

1616 (Old Style calendar): English poet and dramatist William Shakespeare died in Stratford-upon-avon on what has traditionally been regarded as the 52nd anniversary of his birth in 1564. 1898: Spain declared war on the United States, which responded in kind two days later.

1940: About 200 people died in the Rhythm Night Club Fire in Natchez, Mississippi.

1954: Hank Aaron of the Milwaukee Braves hit the first of his 755 majorleague home runs in a game against the St. Louis Cardinals. (The Braves won, 7-5.)

1969: Sirhan Sirhan was sentenced to death for assassinating New York Sen. Robert F. Kennedy. (The sentence was later reduced to life imprisonment.) 1971: Hundreds of Vietnam War veterans opposed to the conflict protested by tossing their medals and ribbons over a wire fence in front of the U.S. Capitol.

1988: A federal ban on smoking during domestic airline flights of two hours or less went into effect.

1992: Mcdonald’s opened its first fastfood restaurant in the Chinese capital of Beijing.

1993: Labor leader Cesar Chavez died in San Luis, Arizona, at age 66.

1998: James Earl Ray, who confessed to assassinating the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and then insisted he’d been framed, died at a Nashville, Tennessee, hospital at age 70.

2005: The recently created video-sharing website Youtube uploaded its first clip, “Me at the Zoo,” which showed Youtube co-founder Jawed Karim standing in front of an elephant enclosure at the San Diego Zoo.

2007: Boris Yeltsin, Russia’s first freely elected president, died in Moscow at age 76.