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On This Day In History – April 7, 1945

sinking of yamato

April 7, 1945 – The Japanese battleship Yamato, the heaviest and most powerfully armed battleships ever constructed, is sunk on her way to Okinawa

Yamato was the lead ship of her class of battleships built for the Imperial Japanese Navy shortly before World War II. She and her sister ship, Musashi, were the heaviest and most powerfully armed battleships ever constructed, displacing nearly 72,000 tonnes at full load and armed with nine 46 cm (18.1 in) Type 94 main guns, which were the largest guns ever mounted on a warship.

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On This Day In History – April 6, 1896

first modern Olympic Games

April 6, 1896, In Athens, the opening of the first modern Olympic Games is celebrated, 1,500 years after the original games are banned by Roman emperor Theodosius I.

Fourteen nations and 241 athletes (all males; this number is also disputed) took part in the games. Participants were all European, or living in Europe, with the exception of the United States team. Over 65% of the competing athletes were Greek.

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On This Day In History – April 5, 1951

Julius_and_Ethel_Rosenberg

On April 5, 1951, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg are sentenced to death by electric chair. The couple was accused of passing information about nuclear weapons on to the Soviet Union. It later emerged that Ethel was not involved in her husband’s activities. Both were executed in 1953.

Julius Rosenberg and Ethel Rosenberg were American citizens who were convicted of spying on behalf of the Soviet Union.

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On This Day In History – April 4, 1949

nato signing

On April 4, 1949, Secretary of State Dean Acheson and the foreign ministers of Canada, and 10 Western European nations (Belgium, Denmark, France, Great Britain, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, and Portugal) gathered in Washington, DC, to sign the North Atlantic Treaty.

In his memoirs, Dean Acheson recalled “All the North Atlantic Treaty ministers met in Washington on April 2 to approve the draft treaty and arrange for its signature at a ceremony set for April 4. Here President Truman again showed his consideration for me. I had told him that it would be appropriate and fitting for him to sign the treaty on behalf of the United States, but this he refused to do. He would attend the ceremony and stand beside me as I signed, but the treaty would bear my name.”

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Today in History

On April 1, 1945, after suffering the loss of 116 planes and damage to three aircraft carriers, 50,000 U.S. combat troops, under the command of Lieutenant General Simon B. Buckner Jr., land on the southwest coast of the Japanese island of Okinawa, 350 miles south of Kyushu, the southern main island of Japan.

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Picture of the Day

taylor-camp

In 1969, Taylor Camp, a hippie colony, was established in Hawaii taking in anyone who wanted to escape the craziness of the period and reaching about to 120 resident. Residents lived in make-shift homes and clothing was optional

In 1969 Howard Taylor (Elizabeth Taylor’s brother) owned seven acres on Kauai’s North Shore and invited a group of young men, women, and children who had recently been arrested for vagrancy—the 13 original colonists, so to speak—to set up camp there.

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Picture of the Day

ella fitzgerald and marilyn monroe

Marilyn Monroe with Ella Fitzgerald at the the Mocambo. A popular Hollywood night club at the time.

In the 1950s, Ella Fitzgerald was not allowed to play Hollywood’s most popular nightclub, Mocambo, because of her race. Marilyn Monroe, who was a big fan, called the owner & told him that if he booked Ella, Marilyn would be there every night — which guaranteed huge press coverage.

He booked Ella and Marilyn was there, front table, every night. Ella said, "After that, I never had to play a small jazz club again. She was an unusual woman – a little ahead of her times. And she didn’t know it."

Picture of the Day

execution by cannon

Execution by cannon in Iran, 1890s

George Carter Stent described the process as follows:

“The prisoner is generally tied to a gun with the upper part of the small of his back resting against the muzzle. When the gun is fired, his head is seen to go straight up into the air some forty or fifty feet; the arms fly off right and left, high up in the air, and fall at, perhaps, a hundred yards distance; the legs drop to the ground beneath the muzzle of the gun; and the body is literally blown away altogether, not a vestige being seen”.

Picture of The Day

nathan green and jack daniels

This photo—taken at the turn of the century—shows Jack Daniel (in the white hat) seated next to George Green, the son of Nathan “Nearest” Green who was the first Black master distiller in America.

It was long believed that Daniel was taught how to make whiskey by a wealthy landowner and Lutheran preacher named Dan Call. However, his true teacher was Nathan Green who had been rented out by his owners to Call. Green essentially took Daniel under his wing and went on to work for his whiskey business after the end of the Civil War.

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