First Confidential

THIS DAY IN HISTORY - APRIL 5th

This Day in History

April 5th, 1081

Byzantine Empire Collage Byzantine Empire is the great church of Hagia Sophia (Church of the Holy Wisdom) in Constantinople (562)

Byzantine Empire (East Roman Empire):
1081 - Alexios I Komnenos is crowned Byzantine Emperor at Constantinople, bringing the Komnenian dynasty to full power.

Wikipedia  Image: The Baptism of Constantine painted by Raphael's pupils (1520–1524, fresco, Vatican City, Apostolic Palace); Mural of Saints Cyril and Methodius, 19th century, Troyan Monastery, Bulgaria; Justinian I depicted on one of the famous mosaics of the Basilica of San Vitale, Ravenna; The Greek fire was first used by the Byzantine Navy during the Byzantine-Arab Wars (from the Madrid Skylitzes, Biblioteca Nacional de España, Madrid); Alexios I, founder of the Komnenos dynasty.
Photo: Byzantine Empire is the great church of Hagia Sophia (Church of the Holy Wisdom) in Constantinople (562).

April 5th, 1242

Crusades collage: Crusades were a series of religious expeditionary wars blessed by Pope Urban II and the Catholic Church, with the stated goal of restoring Christian access to the holy places in and near Jerusalem - Jerusalem considered a sacred city and symbol of all three major Abrahamic faiths (Judaism, Christianity and Islam)

Crusades:
1242 - Northern Crusades; Battle of the Ice of Lake Peipus, Russian forces, led by Alexander Nevsky, rebuff an invasion attempt by the Teutonic Knights.

Wikipedia  Image: The Siege of Antioch, from a 15th-century miniature; After the successful siege of Jerusalem in 1099, Godfrey of Bouillon, leader of the First Crusade, became the first ruler of the Kingdom of Jerusalem; Baldwin I of Jerusalem; Medieval image of Peter the Hermit, leading knights, soldiers and women toward Jerusalem during the First Crusade; The Battle of Ager Sanguinis, 1337 miniature; Pope Innocent III excommunicating the Albigensians, Massacre against the Albigensians by the crusaders; The capture of Jerusalem marked the First Crusade's success.

April 5th, 1621

Mayflower Collage: departs from Southampton, England on its travel to North America

Plymouth Colony:
1621 - The Mayflower sets sail from Plymouth, Massachusetts on a return trip to England.

Wikipedia  Painting: "Mayflower", The Granger Collection, New York 1905; Pilgrims landing on Cape Cod in November of 1620; The Pilgrims on the Speedwell; Mayflower arrived inside the tip of Cape Cod fishhook, November 1620 (satellite image, 1997); Landing of the Pilgrims by Michele Felice Cornè, circa 1805. Displayed in the White House.

April 5th, 1818

The very nature of Chile's topography made it one of the toughest parts of South America for the Spanish to conquer (Torres del Paine National Park (Spanish: Parque Nacional Torres del Paine) is a national park encompassing mountains, a glacier, a lake, and river-rich areas in southern Chilean Patagonia)

1818 - Battle of Maipú; Chile's independence movement - led by Bernardo O'Higgins and José de San Martín, win a decisive victory over Spain.

Wikipedia  Photo: The very nature of Chile's topography made it one of the toughest parts of South America for the Spanish to conquer (Torres del Paine National Park (Spanish: Parque Nacional Torres del Paine) is a national park encompassing mountains, a glacier, a lake, and river-rich areas in southern Chilean Patagonia); Lautaro; The Mapuche were the original inhabitants of central and southern Chile; Chilean and Argentinean troops going to the Battle of Chacabuco (February 12, 1817) led by José de San Martín.

April 5th, 1862

Lincoln Memorial: an American national monument built to honor the 16th President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln - located on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. across from the Washington Monument American Civil War: Battle of Antietam; Stone Bridge at Antietam Battlefield - Sharpsburg, Maryland American Civil War: American Civil War: First Battle Between Ironclads; CSS Virginia/Merrimac (left) vs. USS Monitor, in 1862 at the Battle of Hampton Roads

American Civil War:
1862 - The Battle of Yorktown begins.

Wikipedia  Image: ● Lincoln Memorial; an American national monument built to honor the 16th President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln - located on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. across from the Washington Monument.
● The northern army led by George McClellan and the southern army led by Robert E. Lee met at Antietam Creek, Maryland in September, 1862. It was a bloody battle where 13,000 Confederates and 12,000 Union troops died in just one day. McClellan had hesitated to attack before the battle thus letting the southern troops regroup. Also, he had saved reserves and refused to use them at the end of the battle thinking that Lee was holding reserves for a counterattack, even though those reserves didn't exist. The Union victory stopped Lee's northward advance and was a turning point in the war.
● Battle of Antietam / Stone Bridge at Antietam Battlefield - Sharpsburg, Maryland
● First Battle Between Ironclads: CSS Virginia/Merrimac (left) vs. USS Monitor, in 1862 at the Battle of Hampton Roads.
● Although photography was still in its infancy, war correspondents produced thousands of images, bringing the harsh realities of the frontlines to those on the home front in a new and visceral way. The Atlantic.

April 5th, 1930

Mohandas Gandhi Collage

Mohandas Gandhi ends a 241 mile march to Dandi in the Salt Satyagraha.

Wikipedia  Photo: Mohandas Gandhi, Gandhi (1906), Mohandas K. Gandhi arrived in South Africa as a young British-trained lawyer (1893) - The New York Times; Gandhi in South Africa (1895); Mahatma Gandhi spinning yarn, (1920); Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi.

April 5th, 1932

U.S. Congress passes the Volstead Act over President Woodrow Wilson's veto, paving the way for Prohibition to begin the following January, and ends on December 5th 1933 with the retification of the Twenty-first Amendment to the United States Constitution

Alcohol prohibition in Finland ends. Alcohol sales begin in Alko liquor stores.

Wikipedia  Photo: Volstead Act paves the way for Prohibition the following January, and ends on December 5th 1933 with the retification of the Twenty-first Amendment to the United States Constitution.

April 5th, 1936

Tornado Collage: A tornado is a violently rotating column of air that is in contact with both the surface of the earth and a cumulonimbus cloud or, in rare cases, the base of a cumulus cloud.

Tornadoes:
1936 - Tupelo-Gainesville tornado outbreak; A F5 tornado kills 233 in Tupelo, Mississippi.

Wikipedia  Photo: Weather Front System; Tornado near Anadarko, Oklahoma; North Dakota Tornado; F3 Category Tornado Swirls Across A South Dakota Prairie by Carsten Peter; A waterspout parallels a lightning strike over Lake Okeechobee in Florida, by Fred K. Smith, National Geographics, Extream Instability.

April 5th, 1942

World War II: Second firestorm raid on Germany, the Royal Air Force conducts an air raid on the town of Kassel, killing 10,000 and rendering 150,000 homeless World War II: Battle of Leyte Gulf; Battle of Leyte Gulf; The first kamikaze attack: A Japanese plane carrying a 200-kilogram (440 lb) bomb attacks HMAS Australia off Leyte Island World War II: German V1 flying-bomb and V2 Rockets - Preparations for a Salvo Launch of V-2 Rockets in the Heidelager near Blizna (Poland) (1944) World War II: Eastern Front (World War II); was a theatre of World War II between the European Axis powers and co-belligerent Finland against the Soviet Union, Poland, and some other Allies which encompassed Northern, Southern and Eastern Europe from 22 June 1941 to 9 May 1945

World War II:
1942 - Easter Sunday Raid; Indian Ocean Raid - The Imperial Japanese Navy launches a carrier-based air attack on Colombo Ceylon.
1943 - American bomber aircraft accidentally cause more than 900 civilian deaths, including 209 children, and 1300 wounded among the civilian population of the Belgian town of Mortsel. (The target is the Erla factory one kilometer from the residential area hit.)
Post World War II:
1946 - Soviet troops leave the island of Bornholm, Denmark after an 11 month occupation.

Wikipedia  Photo: Bombing of Dresden in World War II; August Schreitmüller's sculpture 'Goodness' surveys Dresden after a firestorm started by Allied bombers in 1945. USS Bunker Hill was hit by kamikazes piloted by Ensign Kiyoshi Ogawa and another airman on 11 May 1945. 389 personnel were killed or missing from a crew of 2,600; Ensign Kiyoshi Ogawa, who flew his aircraft into the USS Bunker Hill during a Kamikaze mission on 11 May 1945; Kamikaze Missions - Lt Yoshinori Yamaguchi's Yokosuka D4Y3 (Type 33 Suisei) "Judy" in a suicide dive against USS Essex. The dive brakes are extended and the non-self-sealing port wing tank is trailing fuel vapor and/or smoke 25 November 1944.
German V1 flying-bomb and V2 Rockets - Preparations for a Salvo Launch of V-2 Rockets in the Heidelager near Blizna (Poland) (1944), credit German History in Documents and Images GHDI.

Eastern Front (World War II); Germans race towards Stalingrad. August 1942; Soviet children during a German air raid in the first days of the war, June 1941, by RIA Novosti archive; Soviet sniper Roza Shanina in 1944. About 400,000 Soviet women served in front-line duty units Caucasus Mountains, winter 1942/43; Finnish ski patrol: the invisible enemy of the Soviet Army with an unlimited supply of skis; Men of the German Engineers Corps cross a river which is swollen after the first autumn rains, to strengthen bridges linking the German positions on the central front in Russia. by Keystone / Getty Images. October 1942; Russian snipers fighting on the Leningrad front during a blizzard. Photo by Hulton Archive / Getty Images, 1943; German soldiers surrendering to the Russians in Stalingrad, the soldier holding the white flag of surrender is dressed in white so that there could be no doubt of his intentions, a Russian soldier is on the right of the photograph. by Keystone / Getty Images, January 1943.

April 5th, 1944

World War II, The Holocaust

World War II: Holocaust;
1944 - 270 inhabitants of the Greek town of Kleisoura are executed by the Germans.

Wikipedia  Photo: World War II, The Holocaust. Sources: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum USHMM, History 1900s, Internet Masters of Education Technology IMET, Techno Friends, Veterans Today, Concern.

April 5th, 1945

Cold War: often dated from 1947–1991, was a sustained state of political and military tension between the powers of the Western world, led by the United States and its NATO allies, and the communist world, led by the Soviet Union, its satellite states and allies Cold War: in Moscow, downed American U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers is sentenced to ten years imprisonment by the Soviet Union for espionage Cold War: The Iron Curtain symbolized the ideological conflict and physical boundary dividing Europe into two separate areas from the end of World War II in 1945 until the end of the Cold War in 1991

Cold War:
1945 - Yugoslav leader Josip "Tito" Broz signs an agreement with the Soviet Union to allow "temporary entry of Soviet troops into Yugoslav territory".

Wikipedia  Photo: Lockheed C-130 Hercules; RAF Menwith Hill, a large site in the United Kingdom, part of ECHELON and the UKUSA Agreement; New Zealand nuclear test, British nuclear tests near the Malden and Christmas Islands in the mid-Pacific in 1957 and 1958; Nevada nuclear tests, Nevada Division of Environmental Protection Bureau of Federal Facilities.
U2, Lockheed TR-1 in flight.

April 5th, 1951

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg: Ethel Greenglass Rosenberg (September 25, 1915 – June 19, 1953) and Julius Rosenberg (May 12, 1918 – June 19, 1953) were American communists who were convicted and executed on June 19, 1953, for conspiracy to commit espionage during a time of war (Their charges were related to the passing of information about the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union)

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg are sentenced to death for performing espionage for the Soviet Union.

Wikipedia  Picture: Julius and Ethel Rosenberg Ethel Greenglass Rosenberg (September 25, 1915 – June 19, 1953) and Julius Rosenberg (May 12, 1918 – June 19, 1953) were American communists who were convicted and executed on June 19, 1953, for conspiracy to commit espionage during a time of war. (Their charges were related to the passing of information about the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union.)

April 5th, 1956

Cuban Revolution Collage

Cuban Revolution:
1956 - Fidel Castro declares himself at war with the President of Cuba.

Wikipedia  Photo / Map: The leadership of the Cuban revolution; Fidel Castro played the leading role in the Cuban revolution against Fulgencio Batista (1957) AFP; Fidel Castro leads men in a cheer, Cuba, 1957, Bettmann/ Corbis; Cuban Airlift to the United States (1959 and 1962); Resiste Cuba, homenaje a la revolución cubana y sus héroes música: Protesta-Por Cuba; Che Guevara and Fidel Castro ; Official caption: "Off loading Cuban refugees at the Miami sea buoy", photo dated 4 May 1964; Photo No. 7CGD-050464 #12; Guerrillero Heroico - Alberto Korda's famous photograph of Che Guevara; The popularized cropped version.

April 5th, 1976

In the People's Republic of China, the April Fifth Movement leads to the Tiananmen incident

In the People's Republic of China, the April Fifth Movement leads to the Tiananmen incident.

Wikipedia  Photo: Tiananmen incident April 5th, 1976 (The incident occurred on the traditional day of mourning, and removal of the displays of mourning - The Gang of Four, ordered the Square to be cleared) ● Tiananmen Square protests of 1989; The “Unknown Rebel”, taken by Jeff Widener, 1989 ● A month before the crackdown, momentum was already gathering as thousands of students swarmed in the square on May 4, 1989 to call for greater freedom of speech and democracy, credit Peter Turley, Corbis.

April 5th, 1999

Aircraft hijacking (also known as skyjacking) is the unlawful seizure of an aircraft by an individual or a group (In most cases, the pilot is forced to fly according to the orders of the hijackers, Occasionally, however, the hijackers have flown the aircraft themselves)

Aircraft hijacking:
1999 - Two Libyans suspected of bringing down Pan Am flight 103 in 1988 are handed over for eventual trial in the Netherlands.

Wikipedia  Photo: Hijacked Sudan passenger jet lands in Libya, August 27, 2008; Amsterdam false alarm revives airplane hijacking memories, Passengers leave a Vueling plane at a field near Amsterdam Airport after a hijack scare last week that led the Netherlands to scramble F-16 fighter jets, September 2, 2012 Reuters; Egypt Air flight 648 was hijacked in November 1985 by the terrorist Abu Nidal organisation, credit AP; Cockpit section of Pan Am 103 wreckage following a mid-air explosion, December 21, 1988; 747 Pan Am airliner that exploded and crashed over Lockerbie, Scotland, with 259 passengers on board in 1988; Debris lies in a deep gash through the town of Lockerbie, Scotland, caused by the crash of Pan Am flight 103, credit AP; Flight 175 hits the WTC South Tower. The picture was taken from a traffic helicopter. credit: WABC 7/ Salient Stills; Hijacked United Airlines Flight 175 from Boston crashes into the South Tower of the World Trade Center and explodes at 9:03 a.m. on September 11, 2001 in New York City, credit Spencer Platt / Getty Images.

April 5th, 2009

Japan - Korea Satellite image: shows North and South Korea (upper left) as well as the Japanese island of Shikoku, between Kyushu to the southwest and Honshu to the north. credit Earth Observatory, NASA

North Korea launches its controversial Kwangmyŏngsŏng-2 rocket. The satellite passed over mainland Japan, which prompted an immediate reaction from the United Nations Security Council, as well as participating states of Six-party talks.

Wikipedia  Image: Japan - Korea Satellite image: shows North and South Korea (upper left) as well as the Japanese island of Shikoku, between Kyushu to the southwest and Honshu to the north. credit Earth Observatory, NASA.