History Today

Hello, and welcome to This Day in History. Here’s what happened on April 6th. After news that this year’s Summer Olympics in Tokyo will be postponed due to the COVID-19 outbreak, we look back to this day in 1896, when the first modern Olympic Games were held in Athens. The games were a long lost tradition of ancient Greece that had been banned some 1,500 years before by Roman Emperor Theodosius I.

Hello, and welcome to This Day in History. Here’s what happened on April 5th. Just over three years into his presidency, Donald Trump has issued six vetoes--a presidential power that was first used on this day in 1792, when President George Washington vetoed a Congressional plan to give some Northern states more Congressional seats. Washington used the veto just twice in his 8 years in office.

Hello, and welcome to This Day in History. Here’s what happened on April 4th. It was an event that shook the country--on this day in 1968, civil rights hero Martin Luther King Jr. was fatally shot by an assassin while standing on a motel room balcony in Memphis, Tennessee. King was in Tennessee to lead a demonstration in support of African-American sanitation workers.

Hello, and welcome to This Day in History. Here’s what happened on April 3rd. Star Wars is one of the most popular movie franchises of all time, but on this day in 1978 it lost the Academy Award for Best Picture to Annie Hall, a romantic comedy directed by and starring Woody Allen opposite Diane Keaton.

Hello, and welcome to This Day in History. Here’s what happened on April 2nd. This summer, America will celebrate the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage, but the first woman served in the US Congress even before women nationally won the right to vote. That woman was Jeannette Rankin, who became the first woman to take a Congressional seat on this day in 1917. A progressive Republican, Rankin was elected to the House of Representatives from Montana.

Hello, and welcome to This Day in History. Here’s what happened on April 1st. Today is April Fool’s Day, and if you pranked a friend...from a healthy distance of course...you’re part of a tradition dating back to the early 1700s, when English pranksters began an annual custom of playing jokes on each other.

Hello, and welcome to This Day in History. Here’s what happened on March 31st. Paris’ Eiffel Tower has been one of the world’s premiere tourist attractions since it opened to the public back on this day in 1889. The construction of the tower was part of France’s celebration of the centenary of the French Revolution. At the time, it was the tallest manmade structure in the world.

Hello, and welcome to This Day in History. Here’s what happened on March 30th. As presidential candidates continue to debate gun policy, we remember this day in 1981, when Ronald Reagan became the fifth U.S. president to survive a shooting. Reagan’s would-be assassin John Hinckley, Jr. was apprehended at the scene and later found not guilty by reason of insanity. Hinckley reportedly hoped the shooting would impress the actress Jodie Foster, with whom he had developed an obsession.

Hello, and welcome to This Day in History. Here’s what happened on March 29th. At 18 years long, the war in Afghanistan is now officially the longest war in U.S. history. The second longest was Vietnam, which came to an end on this day in 1973 with the withdrawal of the last American combat troops from Vietnam. However, some 7,000 civilian Department of Defense employees remained in Vietnam until 1975, when they were airlifted out as Saigon fell to North Vietnamese forces.

Hello, and welcome to This Day in History. Here’s what happened on March 28th. Newton’s third law states that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. And on this day in 1774, the British parliament reacted to an action that caused outrage across the pond--the Boston Tea Party--with what they called the Coercive Acts.