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“Prejudice comes from being in the dark; sunlight disinfects it.”
~ Muhammad Ali
Wikiquote (Muhammad Ali poses in the ring, 1970. Photograph: Photoreporters/Rex Features)
April 29th, 711
Islamic conquest of Hispania: Moorish troops led by Tariq ibn-Ziyad land at Gibraltar to begin their invasion of the Iberian Peninsula (Al-Andalus).
Wikipedia Photo: Lisbon, Portugal - Monument to the Portuguese maritime discoveries.
April 29th, 1091
Byzantine Empire (East Roman Empire):
1091 - Battle of Levounion; The Pechenegs are defeated by Byzantine Emperor Alexius I.
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.
April 29th, 1429
Hundred Years' War, Joan of Arc:
1429 - Siege of Orleans; This was Joan of Arc's first major military victory and the first major French success to follow the crushing defeat at Agincourt in 1415 - marked a turning point in the Hundred Years' War between France and England.
Wikipedia Painting: Joan of Arc: An artist's interpretation, since the only known direct portrait has not survived. (Centre Historique des Archives Nationales, Paris, AE II 2490) (1485); Joan of Arc's Death at the Stake, by Hermann Stilke (1843); Jeanne d' Arc, by Eugene Thirion (1876); Joan at the coronation of Charles VII, by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres in (1854); Joan of Arc and Prophet-French Pilgrimage; Joan interrogated in her prison cell by Cardinal Winchester, by Hippolyte Delaroche, (1824); Saint Joan of Arc, Vatican City; Joan of Arc in Battle, by Hermann Anton Stilke.
April 29th, 1483
Gran Canaria, the main island of the Canary Islands is conquered by the Spanish Kingdom of Castile.
Wikipedia Photo: Guanches (name given to the aboriginal inhabitants of the Canary Islands) memorial to the natives of the canary islands.
April 29th, 1587
Singeing the King of Spain's Beard: Francis Drake leads a raid in the Bay of Cádiz, sinking at least 23 ships of the Spanish fleet.
Wikipedia Image: The Golden Hinde: Drake started his famous circumnavigation of the world from Plymouth, England, November 15, 1577, passed through the Straight of Magellan (southern tip of South America) into the Pacific, coasted up the western shores of the Americas, crossed to Asia and the Philippines, and finally returned to Britain on September 26, 1580.
April 29th, 1672
Franco-Dutch War:
1672 - Louis XIV of France invades the Netherlands.
Wikipedia Painting: Battle of Solebay, The Burning of the Royal James at the Battle of Solebay, 7 June 1672 by Willem van de Velde the younger.
April 29th, 1770
British Captain James Cook arrives at and names Botany Bay, Australia.
Wikipedia Painting: James Cook, portrait by Nathaniel Dance-Holland, c. 1775, National Maritime Museum, Greenwich; British explorer James Cook's ship was named the HMS Endeavour; Captain James Cook, Sir Joseph Banks, Lord Sandwich, Dr Daniel Solander and Dr John Hawkesworth, credit National Library of Australia (NLA) digital collections; Captain James Cook (1728-1779) is shown meeting Nootka leader Muquinna (died 1798) at Nootka Sound on what is now Vancouver Island, in 1778, during his explorations of Canada’s northwest coast, credit Canadian Military History.
April 29th, 1781
American Revolutionary War:
1781 - Battle of Fort Royal; British and French ships clash off the coast of the Caribbean island of Martinique.
Wikipedia Paintings: Washington Crossing the Delaware, by Emanuel Leutz; Battle of the Chesapeake, French (left) and British (right) lines; Battle of Bunker Hill, The Death of General Warren at the Battle of Bunker Hill by John Trumbull; The Defeat of the Floating Batteries at Gibraltar, September 13, 1782, by John Singleton Copley; Washington and the Comte de Rochambeau at Yorktown, 1781; "The surrender at Saratoga" shows General Daniel Morgan in front of a French de Vallière 4-pounder; Surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown by (John Trumbull, 1797).
Painting: Battle of Cape Saint Vincent, by Thomas Buttersworth (1768-1842).
April 29th, 1861
American Civil War:
1861 - Maryland's House of Delegates votes not to secede from the Union.
1862 - New Orleans, Louisiana falls to Union forces under Admiral David Farragut.
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 29th, 1903
Earthquake:
1903 - A 30 million cubic-metre landslide kills 70 in Frank, Alberta, Canada.
Wikipedia Image: Preliminary Determination of Epicenters / Aleppo Syria; Anchorage, Alaska - March 28, 1964 Prince William Sound USA earthquake and tsunami; 8.9 Mega Earthquake Strikes Japan; Tsunami Swirls Japan's Ibaraki Prefecture March 12 2011. credit NOAA / NGDC, NOAA National Geophysical Data Center, USGS, National Geographics.
April 29th, 1916
World War I:
1916 - Siege of Kut; The British 6th Indian Division surrenders to Ottoman Forces in one of the largest surrenders of British forces up to that point.
1916 - Easter Rebellion; Martial law in Ireland is lifted and the rebellion is officially over with the surrender of Irish nationalists to British authorities in Dublin.
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 29th, 1945
World War II:
1945 - The German army in Italy unconditionally surrenders to the Allies.
1945 - Operations Manna begins.
1945 - Captain class frigate HMS Goodall K479 is torpedoed by U-286 outside the Kola Inlet becoming the last ship of the Royal Navy sunk in the European theatre of World War II.
1945 - Fuehrerbunker: Adolf Hitler marries his longtime partner Eva Braun in a Berlin bunker and designates Admiral Karl Dönitz as his successor. Both Hitler and Braun commit suicide the following day.
1945 - The Italian commune of Fornovo di Taro is liberated from German forces by Brazilian forces.
2013 - Surviving Doolittle Raider members meet for the last time. Retired Lt. Col. Richard Cole, 97, David Thatcher, 91, and Retired Lt. Col Edward Saylor 93, decided to meet at Eglin because it is where they trained for their top-secret mission in the winter of 1942, just weeks after the Japanese devastated the American fleet at Pearl Harbor. (In response of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the Doolittle Raid on Japan occured on April 18 1942, with the bombing of Tokyo, Yokohama, Kobe and Nagoya.) During the public reunion Saylor joked with the audience of young airmen and local dignitaries. “My reaction when I out found out we were bombing Japan from an aircraft carrier was that it was too far to swim back home so we might as well go ahead with it“, he said.
Post World War II:
1946 - The International Military Tribunal for the Far East convenes and indicts former Prime Minister of Japan Hideki Tojo and 28 former Japanese leaders for war crimes.
Wikipedia / The Examiner 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. Lt. Col. Richard Cole, 97, David Thatcher, 91, and Retired Lt. Col Edward Saylor 93. Getty Image.
April 29th, 1945
World War II: Holocaust;
1945 - Dachau concentration camp is liberated by United States troops.
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 29th, 1951
Chinese Civil War:
1951 - Tibetan delegates to the Central People's Government arrive in Beijing and draft a Seventeen Point Agreement for Chinese sovereignty and Tibetan autonomy.
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 29th, 1967
After refusing induction into the United States Army the day before (citing religious reasons), Muhammad Ali is stripped of his boxing title.
Wikipedia Photo: Muhammad Ali after The World Boxing Association Stripped Of His Heavyweight Championship, 1967.
April 29th, 1968
The controversial musical Hair opens on Broadway.
Wikipedia Image: Hair The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical posters.
April 29th, 1970
Vietnam War:
1970 - Cambodian Campaign; United States and South Vietnamese forces invade communist sanctuaries in Cambodia.
1975 - Operation Frequent Wind; The United States begins to evacuate U.S. citizens from Saigon prior to an expected North Vietnamese takeover. U.S. involvement in the war comes to an end.
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 29th, 1974
Watergate Scandal:
1974 - United States President Richard Nixon announces the release of edited transcripts of White House tape recordings relating to the scandal.
Wikipedia Photo: Watergate Scandal: was a political scandal that occurred in the United States in the 1970s as a result of the June 1972 break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C., and the Nixon administration's attempted cover-up of its involvement.
Watergate Complex Washington, DC, credit Watergate Notes; President Richard M. Nixon defended himself against many allegations, National Archives; Oliver F. Atkins' photo of Nixon leaving the White House shortly before his resignation became effective, August 9, 1974.
April 29th, 1991
Cyclone:
1991 - A cyclone strikes the Chittagong district of southeastern Bangladesh with winds of around 155 miles per hour (249 km/h), killing at least 138,000 people and leaving as many as 10 million homeless.
Wikipedia Image: In meteorology, a cyclone is an area of closed, circular fluid motion rotating in the same direction as the Earth (This is usually characterized by inward spiraling winds that rotate counterclockwise in the Northern Hemisphere and clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere of the Earth) ● Emergency Management, Australian Government. ● Global tropical cyclone tracks. ● Emergency Information, Burdenkin Shire.
April 29th, 1992
Los Angeles riots: in Los Angeles, California, following the acquittal of police officers charged with excessive force in the beating of Rodney King. (Over the next three days 53 people are killed and hundreds of buildings are destroyed.)
Wikipedia Photo: Rodney King ● Screenshots of King lying down and being approached by LAPD officers ● Rodney King was beaten beyong recognition on March 3,1991, credit: The Rodney King Evolution.
April 29th, 1999
Yugoslav_Wars, NATO bombing of Yugoslavia:
1999 - The Avala TV Tower near Belgrade is destroyed.
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.
Photo: 1995 NATO bombing campaign in Bosnia and Herzegovina / Aug. 30, 1995 by Oleg Stjepanovic (AP) ● Smoke rises from an ammunition depot in Bosnian Serb stronghold Pale near Sarajevo after NATO air strikes ● CK building in the moments after bombing ● Serbia marks the 10th anniversary of the Nato-led bombing campaign ● U.S. F-117 Nighthawk taxis to the runway before taking off from Aviano Air Base, Italy, on March 24, 1999.
April 29th, 2004
September 11 attacks: 9/11 Commission; Dick Cheney and George W. Bush testify before the 9/11 Commission in a closed, unrecorded hearing in the Oval Office.
Wikipedia Photo: September 11 Attacks: From top to bottom: the World Trade Center burning; Trinity Cathedral; Statue of Liberty; a section of the Pentagon collapses; 9/11 memorial service.
April 29th, 2004
Oldsmobile: builds its final car ending 107 years of production.
Wikipedia Photo: General Motors Oldsmobile 1952 convertable.
April 29th, 2005
Modern conflicts in the Middle East and terrorist attacks:
2005 - Syria completes withdrawal from Lebanon, ending 29 years of occupation.
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)
April 29th, 2011
Wedding of Prince William, Duke of Cambridge and Kate Middleton.
Wikipedia Photo: Wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton.
April 29th, 2013
2013 - Prague explosion: A powerful explosion occurs in an office building in Prague, Czech Republic, believed to have been caused by natural gas, injures 43 people.
Wikipedia Photo: A policewoman and paramedic wrap a thermo foil round a woman injured by a powerful gas blast on Monday in Prague’s historic centre. The blast injured up to 20 people, four seriously, rescuers said, adding that it was possible some people were buried in the rubble. (Michal Cizemichal Cizek, AFP)
April 29th, 2015
2015 Baltimore protests: A baseball game between the Baltimore Orioles and Chicago White Sox sets the all-time low attendance mark for Major League Baseball. Zero fans were in attendance for the game, as the stadium was officially closed to the public due to the 2015 Baltimore protests.
Wikipedia Photo: 2015 Baltimore protests: A baseball game between the Baltimore Orioles and Chicago White Sox sets the all-time low attendance mark for Major League Baseball. Camden Yards during the 'zero attendance' game (Todd Olszewski / Baltimore Orioles)