This Week in History

USPA NEWS - The Hubble space telescope is placed into orbit by space shuttle Discovery, Karl Jansky reports reception of cosmic radio signal in Washington, D.C, the Chernobyl nuclear disaster occurs, Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun commit suicide, and the ice cream cone makes its debut at the St. Louis World’s Fair. All this and more, happened this week in history.

April 25 (1507) German cartographer, Martin Waldseemüller, is the first to use the name “America” on his world map “Universalis Cosmographia”. (1792) Guillotine first used in France, executes highwayman Nicolas Pelletier. (1886) Sigmund Freud opens practice at Rathausstrasse 7, Vienna. (1945) Elbe Day – US and Soviet forces meet at Torgau, Germany on the Elbe River during the invasion of Germany in WWII. (1953) Francis Crick and James Watson’s discovery of the double helix structure of DNA is published in “Nature” magazine. (1954) Bell labs announces the first solar battery made from silicon. (1981) More than 100 workers are exposed to radiation during repairs of a nuclear power plant in Tsuruga, Japan. (1985) West German Parliament rules it is illegal to deny the Holocaust. (1990) Hubble space telescope is placed into orbit by space shuttle Discovery. (2015) 7.8 magnitude earthquake near Kathmandu in Nepal, killing 8,000 and leaving over 100,000 homeless, destroying many historic sites.

April 26 (1514) Copernicus makes his first observations of Saturn. (1859) Dan Sickles is acquitted of murder on grounds of temporary insanity, the first time this defense is used successfully in the US. (1941) The first musical organ used at a baseball stadium for the Chicago Cubs, thus beginning a tradition. (1945) World War II: Battle of Bautzen- last successful German tank-offensive of the war and last noteworthy victory of the Wehrmacht. (1954) Mass trials of Jonas Salk’s anti-polio vaccine begin. The first shot is delivered in Fairfax County, Virginia. More than 443,000 children receive shots over three months. (1956) First modern container ship, the Ideal X, leaves Port Newark, New Jersey for Houston, Texas. (1968) Students seize administration building at Ohio State. (1986) World’s worst nuclear disaster: 4th reactor at Chernobyl nuclear power station in USSR explodes, 31 die, radioactive contamination reaches much of Western Europe. (2005) Under international pressure, Syria withdraws the last of its 14,000 troop military garrison in Lebanon, ending its 29-year military domination of that country. (2018) Serial killer “Golden State Killer” identified after 40 years as a former police officer, Joseph James DeAngelo, responsible for 12 killings and 50 rapes in California.

April 27 (1865) Steamboat “SS Sultana” explodes in the Mississippi River, killing up to 1,800 of the 2,427 passengers, in the greatest maritime disaster in United States history. Most were paroled Union POW’s on their way home. (1933) Karl Jansky reports reception of cosmic radio signal in Washington, D.C. (1940) Heinrich Himmler orders establishment of Auschwitz Concentration Camp. (1943) Witold Pilecki escapes from Auschwitz after having voluntarily been imprisoned there to gain information about the Holocaust. (1960) First atomic powered electric-drive submarine, the USS Tullibee, is launched. (1965) R.C. Duncan patents “Pampers” disposable diapers. (1981) Xerox PARC introduces the computer mouse. (1984) Over 70 inches of snow falls on Red Lake, Montana. (1986) Soviet authorities order the evacuation of the city of Pripyat (population 50,000) one day after the Chernobyl accident. (2006) Construction begins on the Freedom Tower for the new World Trade Center in New York City.

April 28 (1789) Fletcher Christian leads a mutiny on HMS Bounty against its captain William Bligh in the South Pacific. (1910) First night air flight by Claude Grahame-White in England. (1937) First commercial flight across the Pacific operated by Pan Am. (1973) Over six thousand 500 pound bombs detonate over 18 hours in a rail-yard in northern California. 5500 structures damaged, town of Antelope destroyed, with every building reduced to foundations. This leads to the Transportation Safety Act of 1974. (1986) Soviet TV news program Vremya announces a nuclear accident at Chernobyl nuclear power station, two days after the event. (1994) Aldrich Ames, former CIA officer and his wife Rosario plead guilty to spying for the Soviet Union and Russia. (2018) World’s largest child sacrifice, 140 remains uncovered by archaeologists near Trujillo, Peru, dating back 550 years to Chimú civilization. (2019) American diver Victor Vescovo makes the deepest dive ever to the bottom of the Mariana trench, at 10,927m (35,849ft), and finds a plastic bag. (2020) US Department of Defense releases three declassified videos of possible UFO’s from 2004 and 2015. (2021) NASA’s Parker Solar Probe becomes the first spacecraft to cross the Alfvén critical boundary, the outer atmosphere of the Sun.

(1834) Charles Darwin’s expedition sees the top of the Andes Mountains from Patagonia. (1945) US Army liberates 31,601 people from the Dachau Nazi concentration camp in Germany. (1945) Conscientious objector Desmond Doss saves approximately 75 wounded soldiers in the Battle of Okinawa at Hacksaw Ridge. Later depicted in the Oscar-winning film “Hacksaw Ridge”. (1975) Vietnam War: US begins to evacuate its citizens from Saigon in Operation Frequent Wind in response to advancing Vietnamese forces, bringing an end to US involvement in the war. (1990) Wrecking cranes began tearing down the Berlin Wall at the Brandenburg Gate. (1991) Cyclone strikes the Chittagong district in Bangladesh, killing 139,000 people and leaving 10 million homeless. (1992) Jury acquits Los Angeles Police Department officers on charges of excessive force in the beating of Rodney King. The decision sparks massive riots in the city. (2004) Oldsmobile builds its final car, ending 107 years of production. (2015) German Measles is declared eradicated from North and South America. First world region to do so. (2020) World record for the longest single lightning flash of 477 miles (768 km) across US states of Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi, according to World Meteorological Organization.

April 30 (1492) Christopher Columbus is given royal commission by Spanish monarchs Isabella I and Ferdinand II to equip his fleet to the New World. (1789) George Washington is inaugurated as the first President of the United States of America. (1861) US President Abraham Lincoln orders Federal Troops to evacuate Indian Territory during the US Civil War. (1897) English physicist and head of the Cavendish laboratory J.J. Thomson announces his discovery of the electron in a lecture to the Royal Institution. (1904) Ice cream cone makes its debut at the St. Louis World’s Fair, invented by Ernest A Hamwi. (1945) Adolf Hitler commits suicide along with his new wife Eva Braun in the Fuhrerbunker in Berlin as the Red Army captures the city. (1955) Element atomic number 101, Mendelevium, announced. (1973) US President Nixon announces the resignation of H.R. Haldeman, Ehrlichman and others. (1974) US President Richard Nixon hands over partial transcripts of Watergate tape recordings. (1993) The World Wide Web source code is released by CERN, making the software freely available to all.

May 1 (1884) Proclamation of the demand for eight-hour workday in the United States. (1931) Empire State Building opens in New York City. (1939) Batman first appears in Detective Comics #27. (1943) Food rationing begins in the United States during World War II. (1945) About 1,000 citizens of Demmin in Germany, commit suicide provoked by occupation by Soviet Red Army. (1954) The Hudson Motor Car Company merges with the Nash-Kelvinator Corporation to form the American Motors Corporation. (1971) Amtrak Railroad begins operation. (2004) Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia join the European Union, celebrated at the residence of the Irish President in Dublin. (2012) Guggenheim Partners make the largest ever purchase of a sports franchise after buying the Los Angeles Dodgers for $2.1 billion. (2019) Evidence revealed that early humans from ancient Denisovan species lived at high altitudes in Tibet 160,000 years ago.

Thank you for reading my article. These are merely my thoughts and insights based on the facts. I use only verified sources. No fake news here. I write about a variety of subjects, mainly things I want to research and know more about. You can check out my website – Small Village Life at smallvillagelife.com, where I share useful articles and news.

Wendy writes for the United States Press Agency and is a former columnist with the Fulton County Expositor, Wauseon, Ohio.