April 15

It’s Rubber Eraser Day and Titanic Remembrance Day

ON THIS DAY…
1755 Samuel Johnson’s A Dictionary of the English Language published in London
1770 Dr. Joseph Priestley made the first mention in English that a piece of a rubber substance could erase marks from black-lead pencils
1783 Preliminary articles of peace ending Revolutionary War ratified
1817 The first American school for the deaf was opened in Hartford, CT
1850 The city of San Francisco was incorporated
1861 President Lincoln mobilized the Federal army
1865 Abraham Lincoln dies after being shot the previous evening by John Wilkes Booth and Andrew Johnson becomes the 17th President of the United States
1871 “Wild Bill” Hickok became the marshal of Abilene, KS
1878 Harley Procter developed Ivory Soap, which when marketed later, made Procter and Gamble a multi-million dollar business
1880 William Gladstone became Prime Minister of England
1892 The General Electric Company, formed by the merger of the Edison Electric Light Co. and other firms, was incorporated in New York state
1912 The fourth dimension was spoken of by Einstein as time
1912 The British passenger liner RMS Titanic sinks in the North Atlantic, after hitting an iceberg two and a half hours earlier, the previous day
1920 President Woodrow Wilson commutes Robert Stroud, the “Birdman of Alcatraz,” death sentence
1923 Insulin became generally available for diabetics’ use on this day
1924 Rand McNally publishes its first road atlas
1934 In the comic strip “Blondie,” Dagwood and Blondie Bumstead welcomed a baby boy, Alexander; the child would be nicknamed, Baby Dumpling
1935 The first pipeless organ was exhibited at the Industrial Arts Exhibition, New York City in Radio City’s RCA Building
1935 “Fibber McGee and Molly” debuted on radio
1938 Disney’s Donald Duck cartoon Donald’s Nephews is released; it is the first film appearance of Huey, Dewey and Louie
1941 Igor Ivor Sikorsky made the first helicopter flight over one-hour duration in his Vought-Sikorsky VS-300; it used a three-bladed main propeller 28-feet in diameter, and stayed in the air for 65 minutes and 14.5 seconds
1943 The first chapter of The Batman is released in US movie theaters marking the first DC Comics character appears in a movie serial
1945 The Bergen-Belsen concentration camp is liberated by British and Canadian troops
1947 Jackie Robinson debuts for the Brooklyn Dodgers baseball team, breaking that sport’s color line
1952 President Harry Truman signed the official Japanese peace treaty
1953 Charlie Chaplin surrendered his US re-entry permit rather than face proceedings by the US Justice Department; Chaplin was accused of sympathizing with Communist groups
1955 Ray Kroc opens his first franchise of McDonald’s restaurant in Des Plaines, IL
1956 General Motors announced that the first free piston automobile had been developed
1964 Chesapeake Bay Bridge opened, the longest in the world at 17½ miles
1966 The first X-ray three-dimensional stereo fluoroscopic system was installed for use in heart catherization by Richard J Kuhn
1967 Richard Speck was found guilty of murdering eight student nurses
1977 Terry Gilliam solo directorial debut, Jabberwocky, is released to US theaters
1983 Tokyo Disneyland opened
1989 In Sheffield, England, 93 people were killed and 180 were injured at a soccer game at Hillsborough Stadium when a crowd surged into an overcrowded standing area
1990 In Living Color debuted on FOX
1994 Backbeat is released to US movie theaters

BORN:
1452 Leonardo Da Vinci, painter, draftsman, sculptor, architect, and engineer; his drawings demonstrate a genius for mechanical invention and insight into scientific inquiry, truly centuries ahead of their time although his greater fame lies in being one of the greatest painters of all times, best known for such paintings as the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper
1684 Catherine I of Russia, the second wife of Peter the Great, reigned as Empress of Russia from 1725 until her death two years later
1707 Leonhard Euler, mathematician and physicist, one of the founders of pure mathematics
1741 Charles Willson Peale, portrait painter and naturalist who opened the first U.S. popular Museum of Natural Science and Art
1793 Friedrich Georg Wilhelm von Struve, astronomer, one of the greatest 19th-century astronomers and the first in a line of four generations of distinguished astronomers; he founded the modern study of binary (double) stars
1800 Sir James Clark Ross, British naval officer who carried out important magnetic surveys in the Arctic and Antarctic and discovered the Ross Sea and the Victoria Land region of Antarctica
1801 Édouard Lartet, geologist, archaeologist, and a principal founder of paleontology, who is chiefly credited with discovering man’s earliest art and with establishing a date for the Upper Paleolithic Period of the Stone Age
1856 Conrad Hubert, inventor who founded the Everready Flashlight Co.
1874 Johannes Stark, physicist who won the 1919 Nobel Prize for Physics for his discovery in 1913 that an electric field would cause splitting of the lines in the spectrum of light emitted by a luminous substance; the phenomenon is called the Stark effect
1880 Max Wertheimer, psychologist, one of the founders, with Kurt Koffka and Wolfgang Köhler, of Gestalt psychology, which attempts to examine psychological phenomena as structural wholes, rather than breaking them down into components
1891 Wallace Reid, silent film actor (Excuse My Dust, The Dictator, The Ghost Breaker)
1902 Samuel Kurtz Hoffman, propulsion engineer who led U.S. efforts to develop rocket engines for space vehicles
1917 Hans Conried, actor who is remembered for his plethora of voice work (Peter Pan, The Dudley Do-Right Show, Fractured Flickers, Rocky & Bullwinkle & Friends)
1922 Michael Ansara, actor (The Robe, Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy, Broken Arrow, Law of the Plainsman, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea)
1923 Harvey Lembeck, character actor (Stalag 17, Sergeant Bilko, Beach Party)
1933 Roy Clark, country music musician (banjo, guitar, fiddle, harmonica and mandolin) and performer; he is also skilled in Classical guitar
1933 Elizabeth Montgomery, actress (Bewitched, The Legend of Lizzie Borden, Mrs. Sundance)
1944 Dave Edmunds, musician and record producer (Rockpile)
1959 Emma Thompson, actress and Academy Award-winning screenwriter (Sense and Sensibility, Harry Potter films, I Am Legend, Dead Again)
1982 Seth Rogen, actor and screenwriter (Freaks and Geeks, Superbad, Donnie Darko, The 40 Year Old Virgin)
1990 Emma Watson, actress (Harry Potter films, The Tale of Despereaux, Ballet Shoes)
2007 Henry Francis Dougherty, little gray cat who was found under a dumpster behind a grocery store (the date of his birth is a guess as he’s not talking)

DIED:
1446 Filippo Brunelleschi, architect and engineer who was one of the pioneers of early Renaissance architecture in Italy, dies at 69
1764 Madame de Pompadour, mistress of King Louis XV of France, dies at 42
1819 Oliver Evans, millwright and inventor who invented the first automatic corn mill, pioneered the high-pressure steam engine and created the first continuous production line, dies at 63
1820 John Bell, surgeon, anatomist and artist; his anatomical etchings are harshly realistic because he criticized the approach of artists in his day to beautify the body and their “vitious practice of drawing from imagination,” dies at 56
1965 Abraham Lincoln, 16th President of the United States (1861-1865), is assassinated at 56
1948 Alfred Church Lane, geologist and educator who originated, promoted, and directed research on the determination of the age of the Earth, dies at 85
1949 Wallace Beery, Academy Award-winning actor (The Champ, The Big House, The Lost World, Min and Bill, The Three Ages), dies at 64
1965 Syd Chaplin, actor and half-brother of Charlie (Gussle, the Golfer, Charlie’s Aunt), dies at 80
1980 Jean-Paul Sartre, existentialist philosopher and pioneer, dramatist and screenwriter, novelist, critic and Nobel laureate, dies at 74
1982 Arthur Lowe, actor (Dad’s Army, Bless Me Father, O Lucky Man!), dies at 66
1988 Kenneth Williams, actor (Carry On films, Jackanory, Tommy the Toreador), dies at 62
1990 Greta Garbo, actress (Anna Christie, Ninotchka, Two-Faced Woman, Queen Christina), dies at 84
1993 Pol Pot, dictator and leader of the communist movement known as the Khmer Rouge who was responsible for 2 million Cambodian deaths, dies at 73
1997 Oscar Auerbach, pathologist whose research showing that cigarette smoking was causally related to lung cancer, based on his examination of thousands of lung tissue samples, dies at 92
1998 Edwin J. Shoemaker, engineer and businessman whose invention of the recliner made the La-Z-Boy furniture company one of the most successful in the US, dies at 91
2000 Edward Gorey, Tony Award-winning costume designer, artist noted for his macabre illustrated books, and writer (Amphigorey collections), dies at 75
2001 Joey Ramone (Jeffry Ross Hyman), singer and songwriter (The Ramones), dies at 49
2002 Damon Knight, prolific science fiction author, editor, critic and fan (To Serve Man, Masters of Evolution, The Sun Saboteurs), dies at 79