This date in history

[Jimbuna]

1899 David Beatty is appointed executive officer of the HMS Barfleur, a small battleship and flagship of the China Station.

1918 Manfred von Richthofen, aka The Red Baron, shoots down his 79th and 80th victims marking his final victories before his death the following day.

1934 Heinrich Himmler becomes inspector Prussian secret state police.

1945 Soviet artillery begins shelling Berlin.

1945 US 7th army captured German city of Nuremberg.

1987 US deports Karl Linnas to USSR, charged with Nazi war crimes.

2018 Commonwealth countries decide Prince Charles will succeed Queen Elizabeth as the next head of the Commonwealth.

[Catfish]

At april 19th, there also was the Oklahoma city bombing, and on this date today the explosion of the "Deepwater horizon" in the Gulf of Mexico.
More modern history, of course, but with definitive consequences. Especially that nothing has been learned of the rig explosion, the security measures have since been reduced for competition reasons.

[Jimbuna]

1916 The Aud, carrying a cargo of 20,000 rifles to assist Irish republicans in staging what would become the 1916 Rising, is captured by the British Navy and forced to sail towards Cork Harbour.

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

1945 Soviet army arrives at outskirts of Berlin.

1986 Geraldo Rivera opens Al Capone's vault on TV and finds nothing.

[Jimbuna]

1915 First military use of poison gas (chlorine, by Germany) in WW I

1916 Karl Spindler scuttles the Aud near Daunt's Rock, to prevent its cargo of 20,000 rifles destined for Irish republicans falling into enemy hands.

1930 US, Britain & Japan sign London Naval Treaty.

1940 Rear Admiral Joseph Taussig testifies before US Senate Naval Affairs Committee that war with Japan is inevitable.

1945 Battle of Berlin: Upon being informed that a planned counter-attack never happened, Adolf Hitler flies into a rage, denounces the German Army and concedes World War II is lost.

1945 SS chief Heinrich Himmler secretly meets with Count Folke Bernadotte of Sweden, asking him to act as an intermediary for a surrender offer to the Western Allies. The Allies do not take the offer seriously.

[Jimbuna]

1867 Queen Victoria & Napoleon III turn down plans for a channel tunnel.

2003 Beijing closes all schools for two weeks because of the SARS virus.

[Jimbuna]

1916 Easter Rising of Irish republicans against British occupation begins in Dublin.

1916 Ernest Shackleton and five men of the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition launch a lifeboat from uninhabited Elephant Island in the Southern Ocean to organise a rescue for ice-trapped ship Endurance.

1941 Dutch Prince Bernhard becomes an RAF pilot.

1953 Winston Churchill knighted by Queen Elizabeth II

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."

1969 Paul McCartney says there is no truth to rumours he is dead.

[Jimbuna]

1960 First submerged circumnavigation of Earth completed by USS submarine Triton in 60 days, 21 hours.

[Jimbuna]

1944 First B-29 attacked by Japanese fighters, one fighter shot down.

1945 Marshal Philippe Pétain, leader of France's Vichy collaborationist regime during World War II, arrested for treason.

1945 Battle of Bautzen - last successful German tank-offensive of the war and last noteworthy victory of the Wehrmacht.

1952 US minesweeper Hobson rams aircraft carrier Wasp, kills 176

1982 Argentina surrenders to Great Britain on South Georgia Island, near the Falkland Islands.

1986 World's worst nuclear disaster: 4th reactor at Chernobyl nuclear power station in USSR explodes, 31 die, radioactive contamination reaches much of Western Europe.

[Jimbuna]

1773 British Parliament passes Tea Act (Boston won't like this)

1865 Steamboat "SS Sultana" explodes in the Mississippi River, killing up to 1,800 of the 2,427 passengers in the greatest maritime disaster in United States history. Most were paroled Union POWs on their way home.

1945 Italian partisans capture Benito Mussolini at Dongo (Lake Como)

2006 Construction begins on the Freedom Tower for the new World Trade Center in New York City.

2018 Historic Korean summit, the North's Kim Jong-un and Moon Jae-in of South Korea agree to officially end Korean war and rid peninsula of nuclear weapons.

[Aktungbby]

Originally Posted by Jimbuna

1865 Steamboat "SS Sultana" explodes in the Mississippi River, killing up to 1,800 of the 2,427 passengers in the greatest maritime disaster in United States history. Most were paroled Union POWs on their way home.

INDEED! Move over Titanic!

"shoddy': having a delusive appearance of high quality," a Northern word from the American Civil War in reference to the quality of government supplies for the armies, from earlier noun meaning "rag-wool, wool made of woolen waste and old rags"

Photo of Sultana the day before the disaster> but the real culprit was greed and 'shoddyness' no 'imho' about it!:

The U.S. government would pay $2.75 per enlisted man and $8 per officer to any steamboat captain who would take a group north. Knowing that Mason was in need of money, Hatch suggested that he could guarantee Mason a full load of about 1,400 prisoners if Mason would agree to give him a kickback. Hoping to gain much money through this deal, Mason quickly agreed to the offered bribe. Leaving Vicksburg, Sultana traveled down river to New Orleans, continuing to spread the news of Lincoln's assassination. On April 21, 1865 Sultana left New Orleans with about 70 cabin and deck passengers, and a small amount of livestock. She also carried a crew of 85. About ten hours south of Vicksburg, one of Sultana's four boilers sprang a leak. Under reduced pressure, the steamboat limped into Vicksburg to get the boiler repaired and to pick up her promised load of prisoners. THe shoddy work: Although the mechanic wanted to cut out and replace a ruptured seam, Mason knew that such a job would take a few days and cost him his precious load of prisoners. By the time the repairs would be completed, the prisoners would have been sent home on other boats. Instead, Mason and his chief engineer, Nathan Wintringer, convinced the mechanic to make temporary repairs, hammering back the bulged boiler plate and riveting a patch of lesser thickness over the seam. Instead of taking two or three days, the temporary repair took only one. During her time in port, and while the repairs were being made, Sultana took on the paroled prisoners. Although Sultana had a legal capacity of only 376, by the time she backed away from Vicksburg on the night of April 24, 1865, she was severely overcrowded with 1,960 paroled prisoners, 22 guards from the 58th Ohio Volunteer Infantry, 70 paying cabin passengers, and 85 crew members, a total of 2,137 people. The most recent investigation into the cause of the disaster by Pat Jennings, Principal Engineer of Harford Steam Boiler Inspection and Insurance Company, which came into existence in 1866 because of the Sultana explosion, has determined that three main factors led to the explosion:
1) The type of metal used in the construction of the boilers – Charcoal Hammered No. 1, which tends to become brittle with prolonged heating and cooling. Charcoal Hammered No. 1 was no longer used for the manufacture of boilers after 1879.
2) The use of the dirty Mississippi River water to feed the boilers. The dirt tended to settle on the bottom of the boilers or clog between the flues and leave hotspots.
3) The design of the boilers. Sultana had tubular boilers filled with 24 horizontal 5-inch flues. Being so closely packed within the 48-inch diameter boilers tended to cause the muddy sediment to form hot pockets. They were extremely difficult to clean. Tubular boilers were pulled from use on steamboats plying the Lower Mississippi after two more steamboats with tubular boilers exploded shortly after the Sultana.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sultana_(steamboat)

[Mr Quatro]

Today In Naval History Supplement 28 April 1789

The mutiny on the Royal Navy vessel HMS Bounty

The mutiny on the Royal Navy vessel HMS Bounty occurred in the south Pacific on 28 April 1789. Disaffected crewmen, led by Acting Lieutenant Fletcher Christian, seized control of the ship from their captain Lieutenant William Bligh and set him and 18 loyalists adrift in the ship's open launch. The mutineers variously settled on Tahiti or on Pitcairn Island. Bligh meanwhile completed a voyage of more than 3,500 nautical miles (6,500 km; 4,000 mi) in the launch to reach safety, and began the process of bringing the mutineers to justice.

Bounty had left England in 1787 on a mission to collect and transport breadfruit plants from Tahiti to the West Indies. A five-month layover in Tahiti, during which many of the men lived ashore and formed relationships with native Polynesians, proved harmful to discipline. Relations between Bligh and his crew deteriorated after he began handing out increasingly harsh punishments, criticism and abuse, Christian being a particular target. After three weeks back at sea, Christian and others forced Bligh from the ship. Twenty-five men remained on board afterwards, including loyalists held against their will and others for whom there was no room in the launch.

After Bligh reached England in April 1790, the Admiralty despatched HMS Pandora to apprehend the mutineers. Fourteen were captured in Tahiti and imprisoned on board Pandora, which then searched without success for Christian's party that had hidden on Pitcairn Island. After turning back towards England Pandora ran aground on the Great Barrier Reef, with the loss of 31 crew and four prisoners from Bounty. The 10 surviving detainees reached England in June 1792 and were court martialled; four were acquitted, three were pardoned and three were hanged.

Christian's group remained undiscovered on Pitcairn until 1808, by which time only one mutineer, John Adams, remained alive. Almost all his fellow-mutineers, including Christian, had been killed, either by each other or by their Polynesian companions. No action was taken against Adams; descendants of the mutineers and their Tahitian consorts live on Pitcairn into the 21st century. The generally accepted view of Bligh as an overbearing monster and Christian as a tragic victim of circumstances, as depicted in well-known film accounts, has been challenged by late 20th- and 21st-century historians from whom a more sympathetic picture of Bligh has emerged.

[Aktungbby]

The generally accepted view of Bligh as an overbearing monster and Christian as a tragic victim of circumstances, as depicted in well-known film accounts, has been challenged by late 20th- and 21st-century historians from whom a more sympathetic picture of Bligh has emerged.

Upon learning of the mutiny, the Royal Navy dispatched the Pandora to Tahiti, where it captured three mutineers. Bligh himself put back to sea in the Providence in 1791, determined to complete his mission. However, it was a fatal choice for his public reputation, as he was not in England for the trial and execution of the mutineers, and accusations about his command went unanswered. In his Narrative of the Mutiny, published a few months after his return to England, Bligh argued that the hedonistic delights of the South Seas were the cause of the mutiny. < HEY! I'VE BEEN TO TAHITI-CLUBMED; IT'S TRUE! Christian’s brother Edward, a professor of law at the University of Cambridge, replied in a pamphlet that interviews with the Bounty crew revealed many flaws in Bligh’s command. (HARDLY AN UNBIASED SOURCE IMHO) The abolition movement, which also had no sympathy for the expedition, circulated the journal of boatswain’s mate James Morrison, which contained very damning stories of his former captain’s extravagant behaviour. (Morrison was condemned to hang for the mutiny but was later given King’s Mercy.)

HIS VOYAGES UNDER THE EXPLORER JAMES COOK AND HIS CONDUCT IN MUZZLE TO MUZZLE BATTLE OF COPENHAGEN HMS GLATTON(54 GUNS)-EARNING A COMMENDATION FROM ADMIRAL NELSON HIMSELF AFTER A 19 MINUTE EXCHANGE OF FIRE WITH A SUPERIOR VESSEL!!

Originally Posted by BLIGH'S ACCOUNT

At 10:26 the action began. At noon the action continuing very hot, ourselves much cut up – our opponent the Danish Commodore struck to us but his seconds ahead and astern still kept up a strongfire. At 11:24 our fore topmast was shot away, seven of our upper deck guns disabled by the enemy.
The action continuing very hot at 2:45 it may be said to have ended. Our losses 17 killed, 34 wounded. Mast very dangerously wounded. Rigging and sails shot to pieces. Seven upper deck guns, and two lower disabled by the enemy’s shot.
Our number of men on board, including officers were 309 so that we had 1/6 of the whole killed and disabled. All the ships and vessels to the southward of the Crown Battery struck and except one or two, was destroyed or taken. We fought at a cables length distant from our opponents.

AND CAMPERDOWN IN HMS DIRCTOR(64GUNS ) WHERE HIS VESSEL CROSSED THE ENEMY FLAGSHIP'S STERN WITH RAKING FIRE; BEFORE PERSONALLY BOARDING AND CAPTURING THE ENEMY ADMIRAL REFLECT THE HIGHEST COMPETENCE AND WARRIOR'S RESOLVE! BLIGH IN A COURT MARTIAL FOR 'ABUSIVE' LANGAUGE ACKNOWLEDGED HIS SHORTCOMINGS:

I candidly and without reserve avow that I am not a tame and indifferent observer of the manner in which officers placed under my orders conduct themselves in the performance of their several duties. A signal or any communication from a commanding officer has ever been to me an indication for exertion and alacrity to carry into effect the purport thereof and peradventure I may occasionally have appeared to some of those officers as unnecessarily anxious for its execution by exhibiting an action or gesture peculiar to myself to such.

THROWING AN UNBELIEVABLY SKILLFUL 3618 (NAUTICAL)MILE 4-WEEK VOYAGE IN AN OPEN BOAT WITH 18 VERY MALCONTENT SAILORS

From the outset, the weather was wet and stormy, with mountainous seas that constantly threatened to overwhelm the boat.When the sun appeared, Bligh noted in his daily journal that it "gave us as much pleasure as a winter's day in England. Bligh endeavoured to continue his journal throughout the voyage, observing, sketching, and charting as they made their way west. To keep up morale, he told stories of his prior experiences at sea, got the men singing, and occasionally said prayers. The launch made the first passage by Europeans through the Fiji Islands, but they dared not stop because of the islanders' reputation for cannibalism. On 17 May, Bligh recorded that "our situation was miserable; always wet, and suffering extreme cold ... without the least shelter from the weather". 6 MORE WOULD DIE OF DISEASE AFTER REACHING BATAVIA...

... AND THAT OUR OWN SECRETARY OF THE NAVY JUST RESIGNED AFTER USING 'ABUSIVE' LANGUAGE....NUTHING GOOD GOES OUTTA STYLE AND OL' BLIGH RATES A RETRIAL IN THE HINDSIGHT OF HISTORY IN GETTING TO THE IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUM IN LONDON, I PASSED HIS HOUSE AND STOPPED TO REFLECT INASMUCH AS I'D MADE A MODEL OF HMS BOUNTY AS A LAD

[Jimbuna]

1910 First night air flight by Claude Grahame-White in England.

1919 First jump with US Army Air Corps (rip-cord type) parachute (Les Irvin)

1939 Adolf Hitler claims German-Polish non-attack treaty still in effect.

1940 SS-Obersturmbannführer (lieutenant colonel) Rudolf Höss (not Hess, different Nazi) becomes commandant of concentration camp Auschwitz.

1942 German Luftwaffe estimated to have flown over 11 thousand sorties against Malta since 20th March.

1942 "WW II" titled so, as result of Gallup Poll.

1944 Exercise "Tiger" ends with 750 US soldiers dead in D-Day rehearsal after their convoy ships were attacked by German torpedo boats off Slapton Sands, Devon.

1952 Dwight D. Eisenhower resigns as Supreme Commander of NATO.

1967 The Douglas Aircraft Company behind schedule with deliveries of the DC-8 and DC-9 and close to bankruptcy agrees to merge with the McDonnell Aircraft Corporation to form McDonnell Douglas.

1973 Over 6000 Mk. 82 500 pound bombs detonate over 18 hrs in a railyard in northern California. 5500 structures damaged, town of Antelope destroyed, with every building reduced to foundations. Leads to Transportation Safety Act (1974)

[Mr Quatro]

Wow! I never heard of that one before ... can you imagine 6,000 five hundred lb bombs going off in your neighborhood?

1973 Over 6000 Mk. 82 500 pound bombs detonate over 18 hrs in a railyard in northern California. 5500 structures damaged, town of Antelope destroyed, with every building reduced to foundations. Leads to Transportation Safety Act (1974)

[Aktungbby]

^ AT LEAST THIS TIME THER WAS NO MUTINY!

On the night of July 17, 1944, something went terribly wrong. Two-thousand tons of ordinance loaded into one of two cargo ships went up in a massive blast. Nothing was left of the EA Bryan.
A neighboring ship, the 455 foot long Quinault Victory, was ripped apart.
What was left landed 500 feet away, upside down. The Port Chicago disaster was a deadly munitionsexplosion that occurred on July 17, 1944, at the Port Chicago Naval Magazine in Port Chicago, California, United States. Munitions detonated while being loaded onto a cargo vessel bound for the Pacific Theater of Operations, killing 320 sailors and civilians and injuring 390 others. Most of the dead and injured were enlisted African American sailors.
A month later, unsafe conditions inspired hundreds of servicemen to refuse to load munitions, an act known as the Port Chicago Mutiny.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_Chicago_disaster