What Happened Today

The Freedom Riders were a group of Civil Rights activists who sought to integrate interstate bus travel throughout the South, helping to ensure Supreme Court decisions would be enforced. The plan was relatively simple, as a a group of 13 people took buses from Washington, DC to New Orleans in early May of 1961, intentionally violating segregation laws as they went. For a little bit, it seemed they would easily make it to New Orleans. Then they entered Alabama. At Anniston, a group of Ku Klux Klansmen stopped a bus, forced everyone off, and firebombed it. Then they dragged the Freedom Riders, beaten and bloodied, to hospitals, where they were not treated. A second bus was similarly set upon as it reached Birmingham. These events, which made headline news, energized even more activists to assist the Freedom Riders and even continue the effort. They would almost all be arrested in Alabama and set upon by more white mobs. Eventually, as they continued, many Freedom Riders would be arrested in Mississippi, filling up jails and the Mississippi State Penitentiary. Finally, the Freedom Riders continued until the Interstate Commerce Commission guaranteed there would be no segregated accommodations in interstate travel.

In the Government of Ireland Act 1920, the British Parliament officially granted limited home rule for the island of Ireland, but only by being split into "Northern Ireland" and "Southern Ireland" in May of 1921. This was largely a reflection of the Protestant-Catholic divide across the island, which had been a rift in the population for centuries. When the Partition came into effect, "Southern Ireland" was well on its way to winning independence from Great Britain in a War of Independence, becoming the Irish Free State. Northern Ireland, meanwhile, mostly was happy to stay as a constituent component of Great Britain. Really, the Government of Ireland Act reflected the ideas of "Home Rule" that were prevalent before World War I, when the opposition came from Ulster Loyalists in Northern Ireland. By 1921, the area that would become the Republic of Ireland was largely wanting to set up a new nation, and the actual partition was largely a formal acknowledgement of centuries old dividing lines. Yet it also firmly established the battle lines for conflicts in Northern Ireland that would lead to the Troubles in the late 20th century.

The death of Confederate General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson is one of those events that people point to as a turning point in history. Although that's not the best view of the Civil War, the impulse is backed up by Jackson's reputation. He gained his nickname, which was also applied to his Stonewall Brigade, at the First Battle of Bull Run, the first major engagement of the war. There, it was said he "stood like a stone wall." In 1862, Jackson increased his status by commanding an Army in the Shenandoah Valley that routed any and all Union armies he faced. In 1863, he was serving under Robert E. Lee with distinction. The Battle of Chancellorsville was a tactical masterstroke by Lee, with Jackson taking the lead in an unusual flanking maneuver. Stonewall's men met the Union force under General Joseph Hooker, stopping their advance on May 1. On May 2, Jackson's men went further around the Union troops and attacked their rear. That night, Jackson took a small reconnaissance mission, but was shot by friendly fire on his way back. His arm would be amputated, pneumonia would set in, and Stonewall Jackson died eight days after being shot. His role in the War would be debated forever.

Any death in auto racing is shocking, as it happens at high speed out of nowhere and is usually shown on live television. Yet when Ayrton Senna crashed into a concrete barrier during the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix, it was altogether something else. Senna was the biggest star in Formula One, an international celebrity, and a national hero in his native Brazil. He also died one day after the Austrian driver Roland Ratzenberger died in a qualifying session at the same track. More shocking, these were the first deaths on a Formula One track in 12 years, after racing deaths occurred about once a season in the 1970s and 1980s. Finally, Ayrton Senna's death was captured on live international television, so the whole world saw him crash into a concrete barrier at the Tamburello Corner on the 7th lap. Senna's front right tire came off and flew into Senna's cockpit. Senna was airlifted to a local hospital, where he was officially declared dead that evening. His funeral was one of the largest events in Brazilian history, and the wreck itself would lead to a number of safety improvements.

Adolf Hitler shot himself shortly after taking a cyanide capsule in his Führerbunker in Berlin when the Red Army was about to come upon him anyway. He had been staying underground for over three months by that point, and he largely committed suicide simply so that when Nazi Germany was defeated he would not be taken by enemies. The killing of Benito Mussolini by Italian partisans on April 28 seemed to have strengthened his resolve to kill himself. In the Führerbunker, Hitler began to put his affairs in order. First, he married his longtime partner Eva Braun. Then he dictated a last will and testament to his secretary. Finally, after hearing that Berlin could no longer be defended, Hitler and Braun committed suicide together. This did not actually end the war, but it was only a matter of time. Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's closest associate and the Reichsminister for Propaganda, became head of Nazi Germany for a day before he too killed himself alongside his wife and his children. Then Admiral Karl Donitz announced Hitler was dead and that Nazi Germany was ready for surrender. A surrender which would not allow Hitler to be brought to justice for everything he did.

The verdict of not guilty for the four officers who were captured on videotape beating Rodney King sparked the Los Angeles riots. Tellingly, they did not begin as soon as the video of King being beaten was shown on television. King had been speeding and then ran away from Highway Patrol officers in a high speed chase. When LAPD officers finally stopped him and pulled him out of the car, they struck him repeatedly with batons and, later, were heard bragging about beating him. Once the official trial process began, most people believed they would be found guilty. Yet the original judge had to be removed and the venue was moved from Downtown Los Angeles to Simi Valley. And the jury in Simi Valley acquitted all four officers. This inflamed already high tensions between police and the African-American community of Los Angeles, which had always existed. Then the riots were essentially stopped by the use of military force. During the riots, Rodney King went on television and asked "Can we all get along?" After the riots, though, Stacey Koon and Laurence Powell, two of the acquitted officers were found guilty in Federal Court of violating Rodney King's civil rights and served time in Federal prison.

The mutiny led by Acting Lieutenant Fletcher Christian against Captain William Bligh on HMS Bounty was not notable in its particulars during the actual mutiny. Christian objected to the verbal lashings he frequently received from Bligh and much of the crew agreed. Yet the fact that half of the ship's crew decided to overthrow the captain was made remarkable because both the mutineers and the loyalists made their own lives. Captain Bligh sailed in an open boat thousands of miles from Tahiti to the Dutch East Indies, where he could be taken back to England, which was a rare occurrence for anyone cast out in a ship's launch in the late eighteenth century. This fact made the mutiny a massive news story in Britain at the time, and the mutineers were hunted by another ship, HMS Pandora. The main corps of mutineers, however, had actually managed to take the Bounty to a small uninhabited island called Pitcairn Island, where, with a contingent of Tahitians, the groups created their own settlement. By the time Pitcairn was discovered, only one member of the Bounty's crew was still alive, and had instructed the Tahitians and children born on the island in Christianity.

In the spring of 1989, university students throughout China had been protesting the Communist Party of China. Although there were significant economic reforms throughout the 1980s under Deng Xiaoping, the Party was still secretive and authoritarian. In particular, the sudden death of reformer Hu Yaobang caused many students to take to the streets, arguing for more openness and change in the Communist leadership. On April 26, the People's Daily then issued an editorial which criticized the protesters as counter-revolutionaries seeking to overthrow the Communist Party and destabilize China. In response, even more students took to the streets on April 27. Across China, most major cities saw wide-scale protests, with the largest numbers appearing in Beijing. The Beijing protesters scaled back their planned march to Tianenmen Square and toned down anti-Party slogans in their midst. This made many Communist leaders begin to seek dialogue with the students. Over the next month, though, tensions would escalate once again, as the protests were ended with Tianenmen Square Massacre on June 4.

The Spanish Civil War was a complicated conflict, pitting associated right wing groups backing a Nationalist coup by generals against the Republican Government of Spain that was backed by a collection of left wing groups. The Nationalists got support from Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, who were backing the troops of Generalissimo Francisco Franco. As Franco and the Nationalists tried to gain the territory of the Basque country in 1937, their best asset was the German Condor Legion, which was testing its strength in aerial warfare through the Spanish Civil War. In late April, the Nationalists had the upper hand, but still faced a long struggle. Then the Condor Legion flew a quick series of missions over the Basque town of Guernica on the evening of April 26, 1937. In total, they ruined most of the town and killed some 300 people. More important than the quite severe immediate damage was the way that the bombing of Guernica foreshadowed future events. Not only did Nationalists steamroll through the Basque country in the immediate aftermath, but the bombing of Guernica was a template the Nazis could use when World War II really began in 1939.

For about a century after Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species, biologists were looking for the solution to precisely how traits are passed on to offspring. With a two column article in the journal Nature entitled, "Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid," Cambridge scientists James Watson and Francis Crick described the structure of DNA, outlining a double helix with a sugar phosphate backbone and linked by specific nucleotide pairs. This structure also showed how DNA could be replicated and passed on to offspring. The work that showed this structure, however, was highly controversial. Key to Watson and Crick's findings was "Photo 51," a microscopic image produced by PhD student Raymond Gosling working under Dr. Rosalind Franklin at King's College London. Franklin's colleague Maurice Wilkins shared this image with James Watson. Franklin, a woman in a male-dominated field in the 1950s, was ostracized by her colleagues. In 1962, Watson, Crick, and Wilkins would receive the Nobel Prize for their research, something Franklin did not receive because she had passed away from ovarian cancer in 1958.