This day in history
Today is Sunday, April 23, the 113th day of 2023. There are 252 days left in the year.
▶ Birthdays: Actor Alan Oppenheimer is 93. Actor Lee Majors is 84. Irish nationalist Bernadette Devlin McAliskey is 76. Actor Blair Brown is 76. Writerdirector Paul Brickman is 74. Actor Joyce DeWitt is 74. Actor James Russo is 70. Filmmaker-author Michael Moore is 69. Actor Judy Davis is 68. Actor Valerie Bertinelli is 63. Actor Craig Sheffer is 63. Actor-comedian-talk show host George Lopez is 62. US Olympic gold medal skier Donna Weinbrecht is 58. Actor Melina Kanakaredes is 56. Rock musician Stan Frazier (Sugar Ray) is 55. Actor Scott Bairstow is 53. Actorwriter John Lutz is 50. Actor Barry Watson is 49. Rock musicians Aaron and Bryce Dessner (the National) are 47. Professional wrestler/actor John Cena is 46. Actor-writer-comedian John Oliver is 46. Retired MLB All-Star Andruw Jones is 46. Pop singer Taio Cruz is 40. Actor Dev Patel is 33. Model Gigi Hadid is 28. Rock musicians Jake and Josh Kiszka (Greta Van Fleet) are 27. US Olympic gold medal snowboarder Chloe Kim is 23.
▶ In 1616 (Old Style calendar), William Shakespeare died in Stratford-upon-Avon on what has traditionally been regarded as the 52nd anniversary of his birth in 1564.
▶ In 1898, Spain declared war on the United States, which responded in kind two days later.
▶ In 1940, about 200 people died in the Rhythm Night Club Fire in Natchez, Miss.
▶ In 1954, Hank Aaron of the Milwaukee Braves hit the first of his 755 major-league home runs in a game against the St. Louis Cardinals. (The Braves won, 7-5.)
▶ In 1969, Sirhan Sirhan was sentenced to death for assassinating New York Senator Robert F. Kennedy. (The sentence was later reduced to life imprisonment.)
▶ In 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 US Capitol.
▶ In 1988, a federal ban on smoking during domestic airline flights of two hours or less went into effect.
▶ In 1992, McDonald’s opened its first fast-food restaurant in the Chinese capital of Beijing.
▶ In 1993, labor leader Cesar Chavez died in San Luis, Ariz., at age 66.
▶ In 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 hospital at age 70.
▶ In 2005, the recently created video-sharing website YouTube uploaded its first clip, “Me at the Zoo,” which showed YouTube cofounder Jawed Karim standing in front of an elephant enclosure at the San Diego Zoo.
▶ In 2007, Boris Yeltsin, Russia’s first freely elected president, died in Moscow at age 76.
▶ In 2013, France legalized same-sex marriage after a wrenching national debate that exposed deep conservatism in the nation’s heartland and triggered huge demonstrations. Mullah Omar, the reclusive leader of the Taliban in Afghanistan, died in a Pakistani hospital. (News of Omar’s death would not reach the United States for more than two years.) A car bomb exploded outside the French Embassy in Tripoli, wounding three people and partially setting the building on fire.
▶ In 2018, a man plowed a rental van into crowds of pedestrians in Toronto, killing 10 people and leaving 16 others hurt; police said the suspect, Alek Minassian, had posted a Facebook message indicating anger toward women. (Minassian was sentenced to life in prison in 2022.) French President Emmanuel Macron began a three-day state visit to Washington by visiting George Washington’s Mount Vernon estate with his host, President Trump, and their wives. The Duchess of Cambridge, formerly known as Kate Middleton, gave birth to a new prince who was fifth in line to the British throne; Louis Arthur Charles was the third child for the duchess and her husband, Prince William.
▶ In 2020, at a White House briefing, President Trump noted that researchers were looking at the effects of disinfectants on the coronavirus, and wondered aloud whether they could be injected into people.
▶ Last year, Russian forces in Ukraine tried to storm a steel plant housing soldiers and civilians in the southern city of Mariupol while attempting to crush the last corner of resistance in a location of high symbolic and strategic value to Moscow. More than 100 people were killed in southeast Nigeria in an explosion that rocked an illegal oil refinery. A California man who was part of a child exploitation ring in which members filmed themselves sexually abusing more than 20 children and then distributed the footage on the dark web was sentenced to life in prison.