THIS DATE IN HISTORY

Today is Friday, April 12, the 103rd day of 2024. There are 263 days left in the year. On this date in:

1633: Catholic Cardinal and chief inquisitor Vincenzo Maculani da Firenzuola and the church accused Galileo Galilei of heresy for suggesting Earth is a planet that revolves around the sun, as Nicolaus Copernicus had theorized nearly a century prior. Galilei would be found guilty and sentenced to spend the rest of his life on house arrest. It took the Catholic Church over 350 years to admit Galilei was correct.

1861: The American Civil War officially began at the Battle of Fort Sumter with Confederate forces firing onto Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina. Union forces surrendered less than 36 hours later.

1927: A massive F5 tornado tore through Rocksprings, Texas. The devastation resulted in 235 buildings destroyed and the death of 72 townspeople. Another 205 suffered injuries. It is the third-deadliest tornado in Texas history.

1945: President Franklin Roosevelt died of a massive brain hemorrhage partway into his fourth term in office. Roosevelt had complained of a sharp pain in his head before collapsing. He was pronounced shortly after.

1955: The polio vaccine, developed by Dr. Jonas Salk, was announced to be safe and effective by Dr. Thomas Francis Jr. of the University of Michigan. One of the most important breakthroughs in modern medicine, polio cases now number less than a hundred worldwide.

1961: Aboard the Vostok 1 spacecraft, Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human to enter outer space and orbit the earth. His space vehicle orbited the Earth at a speed of 27,400 kilometers per hour and the flight took 108 minutes.

1963: The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Was arrested alongside fellow civil rights activists Ralph Abernathy, Fred Shuttlesworth and others while protesting segregation in Birmingham, Alabama. He wrote “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” while incarcerated.

1981: Space shuttle Columbia first launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Part of NASA’s Space Transportation System, Columbia helped transform space travel and flew 28 missions before tragedy struck on Feb. 1, 2003, when its crew died as it fell apart upon reentry.

1988: Harvard University received the first-of-its-kind U.S. patent for a genetically engineered animal named OncoMouse. The mice were genetically manipulated to express a cancer gene, making them more predisposed to develop cancer.

1999: U.S. District Court Judge Susan Webber Wright cited President Bill Clinton for contempt of court for “intentionally false statements” during a sexual misconduct civil lawsuit brought against him by Paula Jones.

2022: Known global COVID-19 cases passed 500 million with over 6 million deaths reported.