• 1006: The brightest supernova in recorded history is observed 
• 1789: George Washington is inaugurated as the first President of the United States 
• 1798: The Department of the Navy established by the U.S. second President, John Adams 
• 1803: The United States more than doubles its size through the Louisiana Purchase 
• 1808: First practical typewriter finished by Italian Pellegrini Turri 
• 1812: Louisiana becomes the 18th state 
• 1900: Hawaii becomes a U.S. territory 
• 1900: Train engineer Casey Jones is killed while trying to save the Cannonball Express as it highballed through Vaughn, MS 
• 1939: Lou Gehrig plays his last game with the New York Yankees 
• 1947: Boulder Dam reverts to its original name in honor of Herbert Hoover 
• 1948: Organization of American States (OAS) charter signed in Bogota, Colombia 
• 1955: Scientists announce the discovery of element 101, Mendelevium 
• 1973: President Nixon announces that top White House aides H.R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman, along with Attorney General Richard Kleindienst and White House counsel John Dean, have resigned amidst the controversies surrounding the investigation of the Watergate break-in 
• 1975: U.S. forces evacuate from Vietnam - Saigon surrenders 
• 2003: Mahmoud Abbas took office as the first Palestinian prime minister.  
• 2003: The U.S. Navy withdrew from its disputed Vieques bombing range in Puerto Rico.
•   2007: A British judge sentenced five al-Qaida-linked men, all British citizens, to life in prison for plotting to attack London targets, including a nightclub, power plants and shopping mall, with bombs.

BOR ON THIS DAY — April 30th

• 1429: Joan of Arc leads Orleans France to victory over English forces 
• 1813: Rubber is first patented 
• 1852: The first edition of Peter Roget’s Thesaurus is published 
• 1913: Zipper patented
• 1916: Irish nationalists surrender to British in Dublin 
• 1945: U.S. troops liberate prisoners from the Nazi concentration camp in Dachau Germany 
• 1946: 28 former Japanese leaders are indicted in Tokyo as war criminals 
• 1971: Bill Graham closes down the Fillmore & Fillmore East 
• 1990: Wrecking cranes begin tearing down the Berlin Wall at Brandenburg Gate 
• 1991: A cyclone hits Bangladesh killing 139,000 people and leaving 10 million homeless 
• 1992: A California jury acquits Los Angeles police officers of wrong-doing in the beating of Rodney King (riots begin in Los Angeles) 
• 1996: Former CIA Director William Colby goes missing and is presumed drowned after an apparent boating accident in Maryland 
• 1997: A worldwide treaty to ban chemical weapons goes into effect
• 2004: A national monument to the 16 million U.S. men and women who served during World War II opened to the public in Washington DC

BOR ON THIS DAY — April 29th

• 1686: The first volume of Isaac Newton’s “Principia” published 
• 1754: The mutiny is staged on the HMS Bounty 
• 1788: Maryland becomes the 7th state to ratify the Constitution 
• 1937: The first commercial flight is made across the Pacific (by Pan Am) 
• 1947: A six-man expedition, led by anthropologist Thor Heyerdahl, sails from Peru aboard a balsa wood raft named the Kon-Tiki on a 101-day journey across the Pacific Ocean to Polynesia to prove Heyerdahl’s theory that Polynesia, including Hawaii, could have been colonized from South America.
• 1967: Muhammad Ali refuses induction into the U.S. armed forces (he is sentenced to five years in prison, but remains out on appeal, effectively banned from boxing) 
• 1988: Aloha Airlines’ Boeing 737 roof tears off in flight (killing a stewardess) 
• 1994: Former CIA official Aldrich Ames, who betrayed U.S. secrets to the Soviet Union pleads guilty to espionage and tax evasion (he is sentenced to life in prison without parole) 
• 2001: 60-year old millionaire Dennis Tito blasts off on board a Russian supply ship to begin his week-long, $20 million trip to the International Space Station to become the world’s first civilian who has paid to travel into space – a “space tourist” (he returns to Earth on May 8th) 
• 2004: The first photos of the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal were shown on CBS’ “60 Minutes II.”

BORN ON THIS DAY — April 28th

• 1521: Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan is killed by natives in the Philippines 
• 1565: The first Spanish settlement in Phillipines is founded (Cebu City) 
• 1773: British Parliament passes the Tea Act (Boston won’t like this) 
• 1861: President Abe Lincoln suspends the writ of habeas corpus 
• 1871: The American Museum of Natural History first opens to the public in New York City 
• 1874: P.T. Barnum opens his Barnum’s Monster Classical and Geological Hippodrome 
•  1947: “Babe Ruth Day” is held at Yankee Stadium to honor the ailing baseball star  
• 1978: The Afghanistan revolution (National Day) 
• 1982: The trial of John W Hinckley Jr, attempted assassin of President Reagan, begins 
• 1983: Nolan Ryan becomes the strikeout king (3509), surpassing Walter Johnson 
• 1986: The video hacker Captain Midnight (John R MacDougall) interrupts cable network HBO’s broadcast  
•  1992 Russia and 12 other former Soviet republics won entry into the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.
•  2006: Construction began on the 1,776-foot Freedom Tower on the site of the World Trade Center in New York City.

BORN ON THIS DAY — April 27th