THIS DATE IN HISTORY
Today is April 5. On this date in:
1614: Pocahontas, daughter of the chief Powhatan, married English tobacco farmer John Rolfe. The marriage created peace between Jamestown and the Powhatan tribe that lasted for several years.
1722: Dutch navigator Jacob Roggeveen made the first European discovery of Easter Island, also known as Rapa Nui. The island is located 2,300 miles west of Chile in the South Pacific Ocean and is renowned for its ominous statues.
1792: George Washington exercised his first presidential veto of a bill proposing how to divide seats in the House of Representatives. The seats would have favored the Northern states.
1818: South American rebels and Spanish royalists fought the Battle of Maipú for Chilean independence. It was a decisive win over Spain but left 2,000 Spaniards and 1,000 Chilean patriots dead.
1839: Robert Smalls, a Civil War hero, businessman and five-term Congressman, was born in Beaufort, South Carolina. He was born into slavery, escaped bondage during the Civil War, returned to Beaufort and became a politician, representing South Carolina in the U.S. House of Representative.
1856: Booker T. Washington, an American educator and reformer, was born in Franklin County, Virginia. He was one of the most influential leaders of Black Americans during the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th.
1862: The Battle of Yorktown began as General George McClellan directed his union army to establish siege lines in Yorktown, Virginia.
1879: The War of the Pacific began when Chile declared war on Bolivia and Peru over control of the mineral rich area of the Atacama Desert. It last for five years with Chile being the victor.
1923: Firestone Tire and Rubber Co. started production of the first lowpressure inflatable balloon tires.
1933: The Civilian Conservation Corps established by President Franklin D. Roosevelt via executive order. A work relief program, it employed millions of young men on environmental projects during the Great Depression. It was the most popular of Roosevelt’s “New Deal” initiative.
1984: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar set the NBA’s all-time score record previously held by Wilt Chamberlain. Abdul-Jabbar’s scored the 31,420th point of his career against the Utah Jazz. The record was broken by LeBron James almost 39 years later.
1994: Grunge rock icon Kurt Cobain, 27, died by suicide. Cobain and his band, Nirvana, helped reshape rock.
2008: Academy award winning actor Charlton Heston, who was known for his iconic roles in “Ben-Hur” and “Planet of the Apes,” died at age 84 due to complications from pneumonia.