This date in history

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1945: The Norwegian built, German commandeered MV GOYA is torpedoed and sunk by Russian submarine carrying wounded and civilian refugees. Built as a freighter and jammed with 7000 people she sank in seven minutes after a single torpedo strike. The exact number of passengers and fatalities is not known, but over 6100 people were documented and many more were probably aboard, perhaps as many as 8000! Being sunk in the middle of the night probably did not help finding survivors (183) before they died of hypothermia. Oddly, the Liberty sized vessel had been used by the German for torpedo practice. Actually, some historians consider the sinking of the M/V GOYA the greatest marine disaster of all time.-ahead of the Wilhem Gustaf's 5,348 but no accurate count was made of the number of refugees taken aboard and accounts even differ on how many were rescued. All that is known for certain is that in the last weeks of the war, the 5,000 ton German transport hurriedly took several thousand desperate refugees aboard from the port of Hela in what became known as "Germany’s Dunkirk". The GOYA was sunk by two torpedoes from the Soviet sub L-3 and rests today just north of the Gulf of Danzig. the list: http://www.militaryhistoryonline.com/wwii/articles/wilhelmgustloff.aspx

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1961 - 1,400 Cuban exiles land in Bay of Pigs in a doomed attempt to overthrow Castro.

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1906: San Francisco earthquake struck the coast of California at 5:12 a.m. on Wednesday, April 18. Devastating fires broke out in the city that lasted for several days. As a result, about 3,000 people died and over 80% of San Francisco was destroyed
The earthquake and resulting fire are remembered as one of the biggest natural in US history alongside the Galveston Hurricane of 1900 and Hurricane Katrina in 2005 The death toll from the earthquake and resulting fire remains the greatest loss of life from a natural disaster in California's history. A photo collection now in the care of the SF Legion of Honor Museum is being properly conserved as it was done by a Kodak A3 on cellulose Nitrate film (the high tech of the day- hastily grabbed off the store shelf by Arnold Genthe) and is now literally fading away. $40,000 is being raised to conserve the 158 picture collection of professional photographer Arnold Genthe, whose own shop had been destroyed, considered the best photo series taken of the event as it occurred.Arnold Genthe >1906 and man are you there! Ruth Newman, age 113, and William Del Monte, age 109, are the last two survivors STILL LIVING. They will not be attending the annual pilgrimage and wreath laying to Lotta's Fountain on Market street which kept flowing during the crises and has been restored...and still flows!1905>donated by Immortal entertainer: 'Lotta' Crabtree http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotta_Crabtree

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1783 - Fighting ceases in the American Revolution, eight years to the day since it began.

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1770 - British explorer Captain James Cook 1st sights Australia.

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1865: Lincoln in state at the White House...soldiers opened White House gates to receive an immense crowd stretching for blocks in downtown Washington. From 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. the shocked and grieving public filed past President Lincoln's open coffin in the first official mourning event after his assassination. Newspaper reporters estimated the number of visitors at 20,000 to 30,000 or more. So many had to be turned away that officials scheduled another public viewing at the Capitol two days later. In researching this post I came across this story; one that I had never heard before " William H. Johnson was described as a free "colored man" who came with Lincoln from Illinois and became President Lincoln's part-time valet and messenger of the Treasury Department. He worked for Samuel Y. Atlee of the Treasury in the afternoon and tended to Lincoln's wardrobe, shaved him, and did other personal services for the president in the morning.

On November 18, 1863, Lincoln wrote a note explaining that Johnson would travel with him to Gettysburg for the dedication of the soldiers' cemetery. Mrs. Lincoln did not accompany the president because their son Tad was ill with smallpox. Once in Gettysburg, Lincoln must have mentioned Tad's condition to Edward Everett, the featured orator at the dedication, because he later wrote him, "Our sick boy, for whom you kindly enquired, we hope is past the worst." After delivery of his now famous speech, Lincoln also felt ill and on the return train trip to Washington "lay in a relaxed position with a wet towel across his head," placed there by Johnson. Upon arrival at the White House, the president was put to bed and his doctor was called, who remarked, "Mr. Lincoln's case is not fully developed yet. Varioloid." The White House became a virtual smallpox hospital. Out of it came a touch of Lincoln's (wicked) humor. "Now let the office-seekers come, for at last I have something I can give all of them." But he probably gave it to his valet, and Johnson died. Lincoln requested that he be buried in what is now called Arlington National Cemetery, and paid for his burial and tombstone. Note: Contrary to a popular myth though, Lincoln did not purchase the headstone that appears there now. Arlington ordered a new stone and inscribed on it Citizen, which was the label used to distinguish civilian graves from soldiers before Arlington became an exclusively military cemetery. http://www.freetoursbyfoot.com/black-history-of-arlington-national-cemetery/

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1862 - The first pasteurization test completed by Louis Pasteur and Claude Bernard.

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1509 - Henry VIII crowned King of England.

1918 - World War I: German fighter ace Baron Manfred von Richthofen, known as "The Red Baron", is shot down and killed over Vaux sur Somme in France. Canadian pilot Captain Arthur Roy Brown was credited with the kill.

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753 BC: According to tradition, Romulus and his twin brother, Remus, found Rome on the site where they were suckled by a she-wolf as orphaned infants. Actually, the Romulus and Remus myth originated sometime in the fourth century B.C., and the exact date of Rome’s founding was set by the Roman scholar Marcus Terentius Varro in the first century B.C.

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Originally Posted by Jimbuna

1918 - World War I: German fighter ace Baron Manfred von Richthofen, known as "The Red Baron", is shot down and killed over Vaux sur Somme in France. Canadian pilot Captain Arthur Roy Brown was credited with the kill.

The virtual Achilles of the Great War, Von Richthofen simply does leave the public consciousness even after 100 years. During his brief 25-year lifetime, the German flying ace was never known as the “Red Baron.” That only came about later. As late as 1927, a book by Floyd Gibbons about the baron’s WWI exploits was entitled The Red Knight of Germany, not “The Red Baron.” Gibbons never uses the term “Red Baron” in his 383-page book. The nickname comes from Richthofen’s title of nobility, Freiherr, or baron. His own autobiography, "The Red Battle Flyer" ends in 1917...well before his death in 1918. Oddly, little about the baron was original. The Fokker Dr I was an answer to the highly regarded and superior British Sopwith 'tripe' and France's ace Jean Navarre had painted his Nieuport 11 'bebe' red while the Baron was still a cavalryman.> Some cool footage of a seven plane Fokker DrI flight. http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/newreply.php?do=newreply&p=2308304 The best Jasta 11 pilots flew these...and you didn't want to 'meet these Fokkers'! An avid hunter, the Baron collected trophies from his 80 downed victims until becoming one himself as his famed mostly red plane DrI 425/17 was picked apart in turn by souvenir hunters Just landing next to the San José Airport's 94th Aero Squdron restaurant replica of a red Fokker DrI was a kitschy thrill in my Cessna 172...

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1915 - 1st military use of poison gas (chlorine, by Germany) in WW I.

1969 - 1st human eye transplant performed.

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1992 - McDonald's opens its 1st fast-food restaurant in China.

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Apr 24th 1184 BC - The Greeks enter Troy using the Trojan Horse (or June 24 1184BC: Troy is sacked and burned, according to calculations by Eratosthenes.) your pick; its all Greek to me...from the most ancient to the most modern renditions- the famous horse:The expression 'a Trojan horse' has come to mean: 'beware Greeks bearing gifts'...Bottom line: this hollow device 'put paid'- after ten years siege- to history's greatest amphibious operation; Helen of Troy: the face that launched a thousand ships! And we're still talkin' about it after 3200-odd years!
The gods who, according to Homer-but dispensed with by movie director Petersen-allegedly brought about the war, are not to be taken lightly-at all!: Actor Brad Pitt who starred as Achilles in the movie Troy (by the director of Das Boot-Wolfgang Petersen) tore his left Achilles tendon during production...

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1967 - Vietnam War: American General William Westmoreland says in a news conference that the enemy had "gained support in the United States that gives him hope that he can win politically that which he cannot win militarily."

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1915: What is regarded as the Armenian genocide begins with the roundup of Armenian political and cultural leaders in Constantinople. Recently the Turkish government, in a revisionist denial of the current Pope's comments said (again) there was no genocide. Pope Francis this month became the first head of the Roman Catholic church to publicly call the killing of as many as 1.5 million Armenians “genocide”, prompting a row with Turkey, which summoned the Vatican’s envoy and recalled its own. The 100th anniversary on Friday of the WWI massacre by Ottoman Turkish forces has stirred controversy, with Germany set to join France, the European parliament and Francis in using the term “genocide”. German official Max Erwin von Scheubner-Richter wrote that fewer than 100,000 Armenians survived the genocide out of an estimated 2 million, the rest having been exterminated. During WWI, he served in Ottoman Turkey as the German vice consul of Erzerum. In addition to holding that post, Scheubner-Richter documented the Turkish massacres of Armenians as part of the Armenian Genocide. footnote: During the Beer Hall Putsch, walking arm-in-arm with Hitler, he was shot in the lungs and died instantly as Hitler and others marched toward armed guards on 9 November 1923. He had brought Hitler down and dislocated Hitler's right shoulder when he fell. He was the only first-tier Nazi leader to die during the Putsch. Of all the early party members who died in the Putsch, Adolf Hitler had claimed Scheubner-Richter to be the only "irreplaceable loss". [wiki] IMHO: Supreme commander GEN Eisenhower, in anticipation, marched troops through the death camps of WWII to make sure denial of the Jewish Holocaust could not happen. So the Armenian Holocaust is a grey area of present revisionist history??? Let us simply turn to the master of Götterdämmerung, Hitler, in his own clarifying write: [August 22, 1939]
"My decision to attack Poland was arrived at last spring. Originally, I feared that the political constellation would compel me to strike simultaneously at England, Russia, France, and Poland. Even this risk would have had to be taken.
Ever since the autumn of 1938, and because I realized that Japan would not join us unconditionally and that Mussolini is threatened by that nit-wit of a king and the treasonable scoundrel of a crown prince, I decided to go with Stalin.
In the last analysis, there are only three great statesmen in the world, Stalin, I, and Mussolini.(really Me, Myself and I) Mussolini is the weakest, for he has been unable to break the power of either the crown or the church. Stalin and I are the only ones who envisage the future and nothing but the future. Accordingly, I shall in a few weeks stretch out my hand to Stalin at the common German-Russian frontier and undertake the redistribution of the world with him.
Our strength consists in our speed and in our brutality. Genghis Khan led millions of women and children to slaughter — with premeditation and a happy heart. History sees in him solely the founder of a state. It's a matter of indifference to me what a weak western European civilization will say about me.
I have issued the command — and I'll have anybody who utters but one word of criticism executed by a firing squad — that our war aim does not consist in reaching certain lines, but in the physical destruction of the enemy. Accordingly, I have placed my death-head formations in readiness — for the present only in the East — with orders to them to send to death mercilessly and without compassion, men, women, and children of Polish derivation and language. Only thus shall we gain the living space (Lebensraum) which we need. Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians? " Simple enough then; start with a Genocide/annihilation + Zyklon-B = Holocaust...a note from our man in Istanbul>http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-479143/The-forgotten-Holocaust-The-Armenian-massacre-inspired-Hitler.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_Genocide#/media/File:April24Victims.jpg Arrested and executed Armenian Intellectuals on 4/24/1915