This day in history
Today is Thursday, April 20, the 110th day of 2023. There are 255 days left in the year.
Birthdays: Former senator Pat Roberts, Republican of Kansas, is 87. Actor George Takei is 86. Singer Johnny Tillotson is 85. Actor Ryan O’Neal is 82. Bluegrass singermusician Doyle Lawson (Quicksilver) is 79. Actor Judith O’Dea is 78. Rock musician Craig Frost (Grand Funk Railroad, Bob Seger & the Silver Bullet Band) is 75. Actor Jessica Lange is 74. Actor Veronica Cartwright is 74. Actor Clint Howard is 64. Actor Crispin Glover is 59. Actor Andy Serkis is 59. Olympic silver medal figure skater Rosalynn Sumners is 59. Actor Carmen Electra is 51. Country musician Clay Cook (Zac Brown Band) is 45.
▶ In 1812, the fourth vice president of the United States, George Clinton, died in Washington at age 72, becoming the first vice president to die while in office.
▶ In 1861, Colonel Robert E. Lee resigned his commission in the United States Army. (Lee went on to command the Army of Northern Virginia, and eventually became general-in-chief of the Confederate forces.)
▶ In 1912, Boston’s Fenway Park hosted its first professional baseball game while Navin Field (Tiger Stadium) opened in Detroit, with Mayor John F. Fitzgerald throwing out the first pitch. (The Red Sox defeated the New York Highlanders 7-6 in 11 innings; the Tigers beat the Cleveland Naps 6-5 in 11 innings.)
▶ In 1916, the Chicago Cubs played their first game at Wrigley Field (then known as Weeghman Park); the Cubs defeated the Cincinnati Reds 7-6.
▶ In 1971, the Supreme Court unanimously upheld the use of busing to achieve racial desegregation in schools.
▶ In 1972, Apollo 16’s lunar module, carrying astronauts John W. Young and Charles M. Duke Jr., landed on the moon.
▶ In 1986, following an absence of six decades, Russianborn pianist Vladimir Horowitz performed in the Soviet Union to a packed audience at the Grand Hall of the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow.
▶ In 1999, the Columbine High School massacre took place in Colorado as two students shot and killed 12 classmates and one teacher before taking their own lives.
▶ In 2008, Pope Benedict XVI celebrated his final Mass in the United States before a full house in Yankee Stadium, blessing his enormous US flock and telling Americans to use their freedoms wisely.
▶ In 2010, an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil platform, leased by BP, killed 11 workers and caused a blow-out that began spewing an estimated 200 million gallons of crude into the Gulf of Mexico. (The well was finally capped nearly three months later.)
▶ In 2013, a magnitude-7.0 earthquake struck the steep hills of China’s southwestern Sichuan province, leaving nearly 200 people dead. Five snowboarders were killed in a backcountry avalanche on Colorado’s Loveland Pass. Search and rescue crews recovered the bodies several hours after the slide, which was about 600 feet wide and eight feet deep. It was among the deadliest US avalanches in decades.
▶ In 2018, Wells Fargo agreed to pay $1 billion to federal regulators to settle charges stemming from misconduct at its mortgage and auto lending businesses; it was the latest punishment levied against the banking giant for widespread customer abuses.
▶ In 2020, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said reports of accidental poisonings from cleaners and disinfectants were up about 20 percent in the first three months of the year; researchers believed it was related to the coronavirus epidemic.
▶ Last year, Russian forces tightened the noose around die-hard Ukrainian defenders holed up at a Mariupol steel plant amid desperate efforts to open an evacuation corridor for trapped civilians in the ruined city, a key battleground in Moscow’s drive to seize the country’s industrial east.