First Confidential

THIS DAY IN HISTORY - APRIL 23rd

William Shakespeare, Quote

“We are such stuff as dreams are made on; and our little life is rounded with a sleep” ~ “Prospero” in The Tempest

“The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.” ~ in As You Like It

“We defy augury; there's a special providence in the fall of a sparrow.”

“If it be now, 'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come: the readiness is all.” ~ in Hamlet

~ William Shakespeare

Wikiquote (William Shakespeare (April 26, 1564 (baptised) – April 23, 1616) an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist.)

This Day in History

April 23rd, 215 BC

Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus on Rome's Capitoline Hill is dedicated on the ides of September Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that began growing on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to become one of the largest empires in the ancient world

Roman Empire:
215 BC - A temple is built on the Capitoline Hill dedicated to Venus Erycina to commemorate the Roman defeat at Lake Trasimene.

Wikipedia  Image: Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus; Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus (Latin: Aedes Iovis Optimi Maximi Capitolini, Italian: Tempio di Giove Ottimo Massimo, English: "Temple of Jupiter Best and Greatest on the Capitoline") was the most important temple in Ancient Rome, located on the Capitoline Hill.
● 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.

April 23rd, 1661

English Civil War: (1642–1651) was a series of armed conflicts and political machinations between Parliamentarians (Roundheads) and Royalists (Cavaliers)

English Civil War:
1661 - Charles II of England, Scotland and Ireland is crowned in Westminster Abbey.

Wikipedia  Painting: English Civil War (1642–1651) was a series of armed conflicts and political machinations between Parliamentarians (Roundheads) and Royalists (Cavaliers);
John Milton publishes Areopagitica; Battle of Naseby, victory of the Parliamentarian New Model Army; Battle of Marston Moor, 1644; "Cromwell at Dunbar", by Andrew Carrick Gow; Oliver Cromwell; King Charles I, painted by Van Dyck; "And when did you last see your father?" by William Frederick Yeames.

April 23rd, 1815

Kingdom of Yugoslavia: (Serbo-Croatian: Kraljevina Jugoslavija, Краљевина Југославија) was a state stretching from the Western Balkans to Central Europe which existed during the often-tumultuous interwar era of 1918–1941

Second Serbian Uprising: second phase of the national revolution of the Serbs against the Ottoman Empire, erupts shortly after the annexation of the country to the Ottoman Empire.

Wikipedia  Map: Kingdom of Yugoslavia; Belgrade, Yugoslavia; A twilight moon rises above the Kamniske mountains and Slovenia’s Sava River Valley, Slovenia, credit National Geographic; Yugoslavia, November 1977, credit National Geographic.

April 23rd, 1918

World War I: Collage

World War I:
1918 - Zeebrugge Raid; The British Royal Navy makes a raid in an attempt to neutralise the Belgian port of Bruges-Zeebrugge.

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 23rd, 1940

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:
1940 - Rhythm Night Club fire; at a dance hall in Natchez, Mississippi, kills 198 people.
1941 - The Greek government and King George II evacuate Athens before the invading Wehrmacht.
1942 - Baedeker Blitz: German bombers hit Exeter, Bath and York in retaliation for the British raid on Lübeck.
1945 - Göring telegram; Adolf Hitler's designated successor Hermann Göring sends him a telegram asking permission to take leadership of the Third Reich, which causes Hitler to replace him with Joseph Goebbels and Karl Dönitz.

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 23rd, 1949

Chinese Civil War Collage

Chinese Civil War:
1949 - Establishment of the People's Liberation Army Navy.

Wikipedia  Photo: In 1934, Mao Zedong headed the Long March. The Long March was when the Chinese Nationalists, led by Chiang Kai-shek, forced the Chinese Communists, led by Mao Zedong, on a march to the caves of Shaanxi. (colorized); Government soldiers train with modern machine guns; People's Liberation Army attacking government defensive positions in Shangtang; US diplomat Patrick J. Hurley, Chiang Ching-kuo, Chiang Kai-shek, Chang Ch'ün, Wang Shi Jie (王世杰), Mao Zedong; A Communist leader addressing Long March survivors; The PLA enters Beijing in the Pingjin Campaign and control the later capital of PRC.

April 23rd, 1951

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:
1951 - American journalist William N. Oatis is arrested for espionage by the Communist government of Czechoslovakia.

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 23rd, 1967

The Soviet space program is the rocketry and space exploration programs conducted by the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (the Soviet Union or U.S.S.R.) from the 1930s until its dissolution in 1991.

Soviet space program:
1967 - Soyuz 1 (Russian: Союз 1, Union 1) is a manned spaceflight, Launched into orbit carrying cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov.

Wikipedia  Photo: Soviet space program; Soviet Soyuz rockets were among the first reliable means to transport objects into Earth orbit ● Vostok I capsule used by Yuri Gagarin on the first manned space flight, on display at the RKK Energiya Museum outside of Moscow. ● Yuri Gagarin, the first human in space ● Space Shuttle Atlantis approached the Russian space station before docking during the STS-76 mission. ● Mir's Legacy - The core modules of the International Space Station, Phase Two of the ISS program. ● Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, a pioneer of space exploration science.

April 23rd, 1968

Vietnam War: Operation Swift; U.S. Marines engage the North Vietnamese in battle in the Que Son Valley Vietnam War: Mobs of Vietnamese people scale the wall of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, Vietnam, trying to get to the helicopter pickup zone, just before the end of the Vietnam War on April 29, 1975. Neal Ulevich, AP

Vietnam War:
1968 - Columbia University protests of 1968; Student protesters at Columbia University in New York City take over administration buildings and shut down the university.

Wikipedia  Photo: Vietnam_War; Side view of an HH-53 helicopter of the 40th Aerospace Rescue and Recovery Squadron as seen from the gunner's position on an A-1 of the 21st Specialist Operations Squadron. (USAF Photo by Ken Hackman), Boston Globe;
● Mobs of Vietnamese people scale the wall of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, Vietnam, trying to get to the helicopter pickup zone, just before the end of the Vietnam War on April 29, 1975. Neal Ulevich, AP.
Vietnam War: The Big Picture / Boston Globe.

April 23rd, 1985

The Coca-Cola Company incorporated in Atlanta, Georgia

Coca-Cola changes its formula and releases New Coke. (The response is overwhelmingly negative, and the original formula is back on the market in less than 3 months.)

Wikipedia  Photo: The Coca-Cola Company.

April 23rd, 2013

List of modern conflicts in the Middle East

Modern conflicts in the Middle East and terrorist attacks:
2013 - Hawija clashes; At least 28 people are killed and more than 70 are injured as violence breaks out in Hawija, Iraq.
1997 - Omaria massacre; In Algeria, 42 villagers are killed.

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)