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“A frog in a well cannot conceive of the ocean.”
~ Zhuangzi
Wikiquote (Zhuangzi (an influential Chinese philosopher who lived around the 4th century BCE during the Warring States Period, a period corresponding to the summit of Chinese philosophy, the Hundred Schools of Thought.)
April 8th, 217
Roman Empire:
217 - Roman Emperor Caracalla assassinated (and succeeded) by his Praetorian Guards prefect Marcus Opellius Macrinus.
Wikipedia Photo: ● Ancient roman statue ● Detail of Head from Roman Statue of Antinous, credit Corbis ● Statue of Neptune, Trevi Fountain, Rome ● International Sand Sculpture Festival, FIESA 7 ancient Rome.
Relief from a 3rd-century sarcophagus depicting a battle between Romans and Germanic warriors; the central figure is perhaps the emperor Hostilian / Depiction of the Menorah on the Arch of Titus in Rome.
April 8th, 1093
Winchester Cathedral is dedicated by Walkelin.
Wikipedia Image: Winchester Cathedral; Cathedral Church of the Holy Trinity, and of Saint Peter and Saint Paul and of Saint Swithun.
April 8th, 1820
The Venus de Milo is discovered on the Aegean island of Melos.
Wikipedia Photo: Aphrodite of Milos (known as the Venus de Milo), is an ancient Greek statue and one of the most famous works of ancient Greek sculpture.
April 8th, 1832
American Indian Wars:
1832 - Black Hawk War; Around three-hundred United States 6th Infantry troops leave Saint Louis, Missouri to fight the Sauk in Native Americans.
Wikipedia Photos: American Indians - Chief Crazy Horse, Tashunca-uitco (1849 - 1877) ● Geronimo Apache Chief (1829 - 1909) ● Indian Chief 'Two Eagles'; Crow Indian Chief ● Snake Cheif ● Band of Chiricahua Apache Indians, followers of legendary renegade Geronimo, attending a peace negotiation after a long struggle against U.S. government attempts to force them onto reservations - Tombstone, Arizona (1886), Life Magazine ● American Horse - Oglala ● Native American Arapaho Indian ● Washakie, Shoshone leader ● Arapaho American Indian Chief.
April 8th, 1864
American Civil War:
1864 - Battle of Mansfield; Union forces are thwarted by the Confederate army at Mansfield, Louisiana.
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 8th, 1895
1895 - Pollock v. Farmers' Loan & Trust Co.: The Supreme Court of the United States declares unapportioned income tax to be unconstitutional.
1913 - The Seventeenth Amendment to the United States Constitution requiring direct election of Senators.
Wikipedia Photo: United States Supreme Court building; Guardian of Law, by James Earle Fraser, US Supreme Court, Washington, DC, USA.
April 8th, 1904
Longacre Square in Midtown Manhattan is renamed Times Square after The New York Times.
Wikipedia Image: Times Square renamed after The New York Times.
April 8th, 1906
Auguste Deter, the first person to be diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease dies.
Wikipedia Painting: Intellectual activities such as playing chess or regular social interaction have been linked to a reduced risk of AD in epidemiological studies, although no causal relationship has been found.
April 8th, 1911
Dutch physicist Heike Kamerlingh Onnes discovers superconductivity.
Wikipedia Photo: superconductivity is a phenomenon of exactly zero electrical resistance and expulsion of magnetic fields occurring in certain materials when cooled below a characteristic critical temperature.
April 8th, 1918
World War I:
1918 - Actors Douglas Fairbanks and Charlie Chaplin sell war bonds on the streets of New York City's financial district.
Wikipedia Photo: Trenches on the Western Front; a British Mark IV Tank crossing a trench; Royal Navy battleship HMS Irresistible sinking after striking a mine at the Battle of the Dardanelles; a Vickers machine gun crew with gas masks, and German Albatros D.III biplanes. National Archives and Records Administration.
April 8th, 1929
Indian Independence Movement:
1929 - At the Delhi Central Assembly, Bhagat Singh and Batukeshwar Dutt throw handouts and bombs to court arrest.
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 8th, 1942
World War II:
1942 - Siege of Leningrad; Soviet forces open a much-needed railway link to Leningrad
1942 - The Japanese take Bataan in the Philippines.
1943 - United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt, in an attempt to check inflation, freezes wages and prices, prohibits workers from changing jobs unless the war effort would be aided thereby, and bars rate increases by common carriers and public utilities.
Post World War II:
1946 - The last meeting of the League of Nations, the precursor of the United Nations is held.
1946 - Électricité de France, the world's largest utility company, is formed as a result of the nationalization of a number of electricity producers, transporters and distributors.
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 8th, 1945
World War II: Holocaust;
1945 - Celle massacre; After an air raid accidentally destroys a train carrying about 4,000 Nazi concentration camp internees in Prussian Hanover, the survivors are massacred by Nazis.
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 8th, 1954
Aviation accidents and incidents:
1954 - A Royal Canadian Air Force Canadair North American T-6 Texan collided with a Trans-Canada Airlines Canadair North Star over Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, killing 37 people.
1954 - South African Airways Flight 201; A de Havilland DH.106 Comet 1 crashes into the sea during night killing 21 people.
1968 - BOAC Flight 712; catches fire shortly after take off. As a result of her actions in the accident, Barbara Jane Harrison is awarded a posthumous George Cross, the only GC awarded to a woman in peacetime.
Wikipedia Photo: ● Pan AM 747 ● U.S. Airways flight 1549 also known as the "Miracle on the Hudson" navigates an exit ramp near Burlington, New Jersey, June 5, 2011 ● Passengers stand on the wings of a U.S. Airways plane as a ferry pulls up to it after it landed in the Hudson River in New York, Reuters ● US Airways plane crashes into New York Hudson River, Photo: AP
April 8th, 1959
A team of computer manufacturers, users, and university people led by Grace Hopper meets to discuss the creation of a new programming language that would be called COBOL.
Wikipedia Image: Classic computer screen with program code displayed.
April 8th, 1974
Hank Aaron at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium hits his 715th career home run to surpass Babe Ruth's 39-year-old record.
Wikipedia Image: Hank Aaron ● Hank Aaron hitting his 715th career home run on April 8, 1974, breaking the record set by Babe Ruth. credit: Chicago Sun Times ● Herb Scharfman, Sports Imagery / Getty Images ● Men of Saint Joseph.
April 8th, 1975
Frank Robinson manages the Cleveland Indians in his first game as major league baseball's first African American manager.
Wikipedia Image: Frank Robinson; 1975 Frank Robinson Cleveland Indians Sport Magazine.
April 8th, 1985
Bhopal Disaster: India files suit against Union Carbide for the disaster which killed an estimated 2,000 and injured another 200,000.
Wikipedia Photo: Bhopal Disaster: Elderly survivors hold posters as they wait for the verdict near the courthouse in Bhopal, India, Monday. The court on Monday convicted seven former senior employees of Union Carbide's Indian subsidiary of "death by negligence" for their roles in the Bhopal gas tragedy that left an estimated 15,000 people dead more than a quarter century ago in the world's worst industrial disaster, credit Prakash Hatvalne, Associated Press.
April 8th, 2005
Over four million people attend the funeral of Pope John Paul II.
Wikipedia Photo: Pope John Paul II at Vatican City ● Pope John Paul II, 1920-2005, April 11th, 2005 edition Time Cover ● Arial view of the funeral of John Paul II where 4 million attended.
April 8th, 2008
2008 - Bahrain World Trade Center: The construction of the world's first building to integrate wind turbines is completed in Bahrain.
Wikipedia Photo: Bahrain World Trade Center world's first building to integrate wind turbines.
April 8th, 2013
Modern conflicts in the Middle East, social unrest and terrorist attacks:
2013 - Syrian Civil War; The Islamic State of Iraq enters the Syrian Civil War and begins by declaring a merger with the Al-Nusra Front under the name Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.
Wikipedia Photo: Middle East satellite image, NASA. ● Camels are seen early morning on a beach in the Marina area of Dubai October 16, 2008. (Steve Crisp, Reuters) ● A portrait of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad burns during clashes between rebels and Syrian troops in Selehattin, near Aleppo, on July 23, 2012. (Bulent Kilic, AFP / GettyImages) ● Egyptians gather in their thousands in Tahrir Square to mark the one year anniversary of the revolution on Jan. 25, 2012 in Cairo Egypt. Tens of thousands have gathered in the square on the first anniversary of the Arab uprising which toppled President Hosni Mubarak. (Jeff J Mitchell, Getty Images) ● Black smoke rises above the Tehran skyline as supporters of Mir Hossein Mousavi burn tires and other material in the streets as they fight running battles with police to protest the declared results of the Iranian presidential election in Tehran, Iran, Saturday, June 13, 2009. (Ben Curtis, AP) ● The Iron Dome defense system fires to interecpt incoming missiles from Gaza in the port town of Ashdod, Thursday, Nov. 15, 2012. (Tsafrir Abayov, AP)