This Week In #History ... April 11th - 17th
#TalkNerdyToMeLover's @UlaVovk
11 Apr
1713 Peace of Utrecht; France cedes Maritime provinces to Britain - English, Prussian, Savoois, Portuguese and French peace treaty
1814 1st abdication of France by Napoleon; he is exiled to Elba
1895 Anaheim completes it's new electric light system
1906 Einstein introduces his Theory of Relativity
1929 Loetafoon celluloid film system demonstrated in Amsterdam
1943 Frank Piasecki, Vertol founder, flies his 1st (single-rotor) craft
1950 Prince Rainier III becomes ruler of Monaco
1957 Ryan X-13 Vertijet becomes 1st jet to take-off and land vertically
1960 1st weather satellite launched (Tiros 1)
1970 Apollo 13 launched to Moon; unable to land, returns in 6 days
1980 Equal Employment Opportunity Commission regulates sexual harassment
1992 Euro-Disney opens near Paris
2010 Tens of thousands of Poles line the streets to witness the procession of President Kaczynski, en route to the Presidential Palace, Warsaw, where he will lie in state
12 Apr
1606 England adopts Union Jack as its flag
1858 1st U.S. billiards championship (Michael J Phelan wins in Detroit)
1877 Catcher's mask 1st used in a baseball game
1905 French Dufaux brothers test helicopter
1911 1st non-stop London-Paris flight (Pierre Prier in 3h56m)
1928 Assassination attempt on king Victor Emmanuel II of Italy
1938 1st U.S. law requiring medical tests for marriage licenses
1945 Harry Truman sworn in as 33rd president
1955 Salk polio vaccine safe and effective; 4 billion dimes marched
1961 Yuri Gagarin becomes 1st person to orbit Earth in Vostok 1
1985 U.S. Olympic Committee endorses a boycott of Moscow games
1992 Trump Shuttle becomes U.S. Air Shuttle
2010 Hungary's parliamentary election results in 28 regional seats for the left-wing Hungarian Socialist Party, and 26 regional seats for the far-right Movement for a Better Hungary
13 Apr
1796 1st elephant arrives in U.S. from India
1860 1st Pony Express reaches Sacramento, California
1869 Steam power brake patented (George Westinghouse)
1902 J C Penney opens his 1st store in Kemmerer, Wyoming
1912 Royal Flying Corps forms (later RAF)
1928 1st trans atlantic flight Europe-U.S. (Fitzmaurice von Hunefeld-Kohl)
1933 1st flight over Mount Everest by Lord Clydesdale
1957 Due to lack of funds, Saturday mail delivery in U.S. is temporarily halted
1960 Transit 1B, 1st navigational satellite, placed in Earth orbit
1970 Apollo 13 announces "Houston, we've got a problem!" as Beech-built oxygen tank explodes en route to Moon
1979 Longest doubles ping-pong match ends after 101 hours
1986 Spanish Grand Prix decided by 0.014 of a second
1994 President guard at Kigali Rwanda, chops 1,200 church members to death
2010 President of the People's Republic of China, Hu Jintao, meets with President Barack Obama to discuss Iran's nuclear program during the Nuclear Security Summit
14 Apr
1828 1st edition of Noah Webster's dictionary published
1863 William Bullock patents continuous-roll printing press
1865 President Abraham Lincoln shot in Ford's Theater by John Wilkes Booth
1894 Thomas Edison presents "peep show" device
1902 Marie and Pierre Curie isolated the radioactive element radium
1931 Spain becomes republic with overthrow of King Alfonso XIII
1944 1st Jews transported from Athens arrive at Auschwitz
1956 Ampex Corp demonstrates 1st commercial videotape recorder
1958 Sputnik 2 (with dog Laika) burns up in atmosphere
1967 In the Vietnam War, U.S. planes bombed Haiphong for 1st time
1981 1st Space Shuttle-Columbia 1-returns to Earth
1989 1,100,000,000th Chinese born
2010 Ash from Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull volcano drifts towards Europe, causing air traffic to close over Northern Norway
15 Apr
1738 Bottle opener invented
1784 1st balloon flight in Ireland
1877 1st telephone installed: Boston-Somerville, Massachusetts
1896 1st Olympic games close at Athens, Greece
1910 Taft is 1st President to throw out a 1st ball at a baseball game
1921 Black Friday - Labour Party strike of mine workers fails
1923 Insulin becomes generally available for diabetics
1941 1st helicopter flight of 1 hour duration, Stratford, Connecticut
1952 Franklin National Bank issues 1st bank credit card
1955 Ray Kroc starts McDonald's chain of fast food restaurants in Illinois
1970 Libyan leader Gadaffi launches "Green Revolution"
1981 Janet Cooke says her Pulitzer award 8-year-old heroin addict story is a lie, Washington Post relinquishes Pulitzer Prize on fabricated story
1991 Magic Johnson sets NBA record for career assists with 9,898
2010 Roza Otunbayeva says Kyrgyzstan's ousted President Kurmanbek Bakiyev must stand trial over riots; gunfire disrupts a rally in support of the former President in the city of Osh
16 Apr
1789 George Washington heads for 1st presidential inauguration
1861 U.S. president Lincoln outlaws business with confederate states
1866 Karakozov attempts to assassinate Tsar Alexander II of Russia
1912 Harriet Quimby becomes 1st woman pilot to cross English Channel
1924 1st radio-transmission of wireless: Matthaus Passion
1940 1st televised baseball game, WGN-TV, (White Sox vs Cubs exhibition)
1948 Organization for European Economic Cooperation (EEC) forms in Paris
1964 Geraldine Mock of U.S. is 1st woman to fly solo round the world
1972 Apollo 16 launched; 5th manned lunar landing (Decartes Highlands)
1986 To dispel rumors he's dead, Moammar Gadhafi appears on TV
2010 Planes across the United Kingdom, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia are grounded as a result of the volcanic ash coming from Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull volcano
17 Apr
1524 Giovanni Verrazano, a florentine navigator, discovers New York Bay
1629 1st commercial fishery established
1704 1st successful U.S. newspaper; published in Boston by John Campbell
1861 Virginia is 8th state to secede
1875 "Snooker" (variation of pool) invented by Sir Neville Chamberlain
1912 1st unofficial gold record (Al Jolson's "Ragging The Baby To Sleep")
1920 American Professional Football Association forms (NFL)
1937 Cartoon characters Daffy Duck, Elmer Fudd and Petunia Pig, debut
1956 Premium Savings Bonds introduced in Great Britain
1964 Ford Mustang formally introduced ($2368 base)
1969 Sirhan Sirhan is convicted of assassinating Sen Robert F Kennedy
1986 IBM produces 1st megabit-chip
2010 Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, calls for the US to be expelled from the international nuclear system because religion prohibits the use of nuclear weapons