TODAY IN HISTORY

Today is Thursday, April 7, the 97th day of 2022. There are 268 days left in the year. On this date in:

1862: Union forces led by Gen. Ulysses S. Grant and Maj. Gen. Don Carlos Buell defeated the Confederates at the Battle of Shiloh in Tennessee.

1915: Jazz singer-songwriter Billie Holiday, also known as “Lady Day,” was born in Philadelphia.

1922: The Teapot Dome scandal began as Interior Secretary Albert B. Fall signed a secret deal to lease U.S. Navy petroleum reserves in Wyoming and California to his friends, oilmen Harry F. Sinclair and Edward L. Doheny, in exchange for cash gifts.

1945: During World War II, American planes intercepted and effectively destroyed a Japanese fleet, which included the battleship Yamato, that was headed to Okinawa on a suicide mission.

1954: President Dwight D. Eisenhower held a news conference in which he spoke of the importance of containing the spread of communism in Indochina, saying, “You have a row of dominoes set up, you knock over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is the certainty that it will go over very quickly.” (This became known as the “domino theory,” although Eisenhower did not use that term.)

1957: Shortly after midnight, the last of New York’s electric trolleys completed its final run from Queens to Manhattan.

1959: A referendum in Oklahoma repealed

the state’s ban on alcoholic beverages.

1962: Nearly 1,200 Cuban exiles tried by Cuba for their roles in the failed Bay of Pigs invasion were convicted of treason.

1966: The U.S. Navy recovered a hydrogen bomb that the U.S. Air Force had lost in the Mediterranean Sea off Spain following a B-52 crash.

1984: The Census Bureau reported Los Angeles had overtaken Chicago as the nation’s “second city” in terms of population.

1994: Civil war erupted in Rwanda, a day after a mysterious plane crash killed the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi.