Today in history

On April 1, 1918, Britain’s Royal Air Force came into being toward the end of World War I as the Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Naval Air Service were merged into a single, independent entity.

In 1789, the U.S. House of Representatives held its first full meeting in New York; Frederick Muhlenberg of Pennsylvania was elected the first House speaker.

In 1933, Nazi Germany staged a daylong national boycott of Jewish-owned businesses.

In 1945, American forces launched the amphibious invasion of Okinawa during World War II. (U.S. forces succeeded in capturing the Japanese island on June 22.)

In 1954, the United States Air Force Academy was established by President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

In 1962, the Katherine Anne Porter novel “Ship of Fools,” an allegory about the rise of Nazism in Germany, was published by Little, Brown & Co.

In 1972, the first Major League Baseball players’ strike began; it lasted 12 days.

In 1983, tens of thousands of anti-nuclear demonstrators linked arms in a 14-mile human chain spanning three defense installations in rural England, including the Greenham Common U.S. Air Base.

In 1984, recording star Marvin Gaye was shot to death by his father, Marvin Gay Sr. in Los Angeles, the day before his 45th birthday. (The elder Gay pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter, and received probation.)

In 1988, the scientific bestseller “A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes” by British physicist Stephen Hawking was first published in the United Kingdom and the United States by Bantam Books.

In 1992, the National Hockey League Players’ Association went on its first-ever strike, which lasted 10 days.

In 2003, American troops entered a hospital in Nasiriyah Iraq, and rescued Army Pfc. Jessica Lynch, who had been held prisoner since her unit was ambushed on March 23.

Ten years ago: Top executives of the country’s five biggest oil companies told a skeptical Congress they knew record fuel prices were hurting people, but argued it wasn’t their fault and that their huge profits were in line with other industries.