1139 – The Second Lateran Council opened in Rome.

1534 – Jacques Cartier, a French explorer, set sail from St. Malo to explore the North American coastline.

1653 – In England, Oliver Cromwell expelled the Long Parliament for trying to pass the Perpetuation Bill that would have kept Parliament in the hands of only a few members.

1657 – English Admiral Robert Blake fought his last battle when he destroyed the Spanish fleet in Santa Cruz Bay.

1689 – The siege of Londonderry began. Supporters of James II attacked the city.

1769 – Ottawa Chief Pontiac was murdered by an Illinois Indian in Cahokia.

1775 – American troops began the siege of British-held Boston.

1792 – France declared war on Austria, Prussia, and Sardinia. It was the start of the French Revolutionary wars.

1809 – Napoleon defeated Austria at Battle of Abensberg, Bavaria.

1832 – Hot Springs National Park was established by an act of the U.S. Congress. It was the first national park in the U.S.

1836 – The U.S. territory of Wisconsin was created by the U.S. Congress.

1837 – Erastus B. Bigelow was granted a patent for his power loom.

1841 – In Philadelphia, PA, Edgar Allen Poe’s first detective story, “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” was published in Graham’s Magazine.

1861 – Robert E. Lee resigned from U.S. Army.

1865 – Safety matches were first advertised.

1879 – First mobile home (horse drawn) was used in a journey from London to Cyprus.

1902 – Scientists Marie and Pierre Curie isolated the radioactive element radium.

1912 – Fenway Park opened as the home of the Boston Red Sox.

1916 – Sir Roger Casement landed in Ireland to incite rebellion against the British. Casement, a British diplomat, was captured within hours and was hanged for high treason on August 3.

1916 – Chicago’s Wrigley Field held its first Cubs game with the first National League game at the ballpark. The Cubs beat the Cincinnati Reds 7-6 in 11 innings.

1919 – The Polish Army captured Vilno, Lithuania from the Soviets.

1940 – The First electron microscope was demonstrated by RCA.

1942 – Pierre Laval, the premier of Vichy France, in a radio broadcast, establishes a policy of “true reconciliation with Germany.”

1945 – Soviet troops began their attack on Berlin.

1945 – During World War II, Allied forces took control of the German cities of Nuremberg and Stuttgart.

1953 – Operation Little Switch began in Korea. It was the exchange of sick and wounded prisoners of war. Thirty Americans were freed.

1953 – The Boston marathon was won by Keizo Yamada with a record time of 2:18:51.

1959 – “Desilu Playhouse” on CBS-TV presented a two-part show titled “The Untouchables.”

1961 – FM stereo broadcasting was approved by the FCC.

1962 – The New Orleans Citizens’ Council offered a free one-way ride for blacks to move to northern states.

1967 – U.S. planes bombed Haiphong for first time during the Vietnam War.

1971 – The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the use of busing to achieve racial desegregation in schools.

1972 – The manned lunar module from Apollo 16 landed on the moon.

1977 – Woody Allen’s film “Annie Hall” premiered.

1981 – A spokesman for the U.S. Nave announced that the U.S. was accepting full responsibility for the sinking of the Nissho Maru on April 9.

1982 – The Activision game Pitfall! was released for the Atari 2600 game system.

1984 – Britain announced that its administration of Hong Kong would cease in 1997.

1985 – In Madrid, Santiago Carillo was purged from the Communist Party. Carillo was a founder of Eurocommunism.

1987 – In Argentina, President Raul Alfonsin quelled a military revolt.

1988 – The U.S. Air Forces’ Stealth (B-2 bomber) was officially unveiled.

1989 – Scientist announced the successful testing of high-definition TV.

1991 – Mikhail Gorbachev became the first Soviet head of state to visit South Korea.

1992 – The worlds largest fair, Expo ’92, opened in Seville, Spain.

1998 – Kenyan runner Moses Tanui, 32, won the Boston Marathon for the second time. He also registered the third fastest time with 2 hours 7 minutes and 34 seconds.

1999 – The Columbine High School massacre was a school shooting that occurred on April 20, 1999, at Columbine High School in Columbine, an unincorporated area of Jefferson County in the American state of Colorado.wiki

Launched on April 17, 1967, Surveyor 3 landed on April 20, 1967, at the Mare Cognitum portion of the Oceanus Procellarum (S3° 01′ 41.43″ W23° 27′ 29.55″), in a small crater that was subsequently named Surveyor. It transmitted 6,315 TV images to the Earth.^{[citation needed]}

As Surveyor 3 was landing (in a crater, as it turned out ^[1][2]), highly reflective rocks confused the spacecraft’s lunar descent radar. The engines failed to cut off at 14 feet (4.3 meters) in altitude as called for in the mission plans, and this delay caused the lander to bounce on the lunar surface twice.^[3] Its first bounce reached the altitude of about 35 feet (10 meters). The second bounce reached a height of about 11 feet (3.4 metres). On the third impact with the surface—from the initial altitude of 3 meters, and velocity of zero, which was below the planned altitude of 14 feet (4.3 meters), and very slowly descending —Surveyor 3 settled down to a soft landing as intended.

This Surveyor mission was the first one that carried a surface-soil sampling-scoop, which can be seen on its extendable arm in the pictures. This mechanism was mounted on an electric-motor-driven arm and was used to dig four trenches in the lunar soil. These trenches were up to seven inches (18 centimeters) deep. Samples of soil from the trenches were placed in front of the Surveyor’s television cameras to be photographed and the pictures radioed back to the Earth. When the first lunar nightfall came on 3 May 1967, Surveyor 3 was shut down because its solar panels were no longer producing electricity. At the next lunar dawn (after 14 terrestrial days, or about 336 hours), Surveyor 3 could not be reactivated, because of the extremely cold temperatures that it had experienced. This is in contrast with the Surveyor 1, which was able to be reactivated twice after lunar nights, but then never again.^{[citation needed]}

Surveyor 3 became famous after the manned mission Apollo 12 used it as a landing target site. Landing within walking distance on 19 November 1969, the crew took several pictures of the probe and removed some pieces which were returned to Earth. Surveyor 3 is the only probe visited by humans on another world.

 

By FRED P. GRAHAM
Special to The New York Times

ASHINGTON, April 20 — The Supreme Court unanimously upheld today the constitutionality of busing as a means to “dismantle the dual school system,” of the South.

But the Court made it clear that today’s decision did not apply to Northern-style segregation, based on neighborhood patterns.

In a series of decisions written by Chief Justice Warren E. Burger and supported by the eight other Justices, the Court overrode the arguments of the Nixon Administration and the Justice Department, which had intervened on the side of Southern school systems in the four cases decided today.

Dismay Over U.S. View

To the dismay of civil rights organizations and the delight of many white Southerners, the Justice Department lawyers had argued that Southern school systems should be allowed to assign students to schools in their own neighborhoods, even if this resulted in slowing the pace of desegregation in the South.

Southern lawyers had contended that the Northern areas were permitted to have neighborhood schools and that it would be discriminatory if the South were not allowed the same “privilege.”

“Desegregation plans cannot be limited to the walk-in school,” the Court declared. It held that busing was proper unless “the time or distance is so great as to risk either the health of the children or significantly impinge on the educational process.” Young children may be improper subjects for busing when the distances are long, the Court concluded.

Limits on Decision

The Court stopped short of ordering the elimination of all-black schools or of requiring racial balance in the schools. But it said that the existence of all-black schools created a presumption of discrimination and held that Federal district judges may use racial quotas as a guide in fashioning desegregation decrees.

This is expected to touch off a new wave of desegregation orders this summer in the cities of the South, where school segregation has persisted despite the 1954 Supreme Court decision that declared legally required segregation to be unconstitutional.

Chief Justice Burger excluded “de facto” segregation of the North from today’s ruling by declaring, “We do not reach in this case the question whether showing that school segregation is a consequence of other types of state action, without any discriminatory action by the school authorities, is a constitutional violation requiring remedial action by a school desegregation decree.”

The major portion of what Mr. Burger described as “guidelines, however imperfect, for the assistance of school authorities and courts” came in a 28-page opinion upholding a busing decree governing the joint school system in Charlotte-Mecklenburg County, N.C.

The court upheld the judgment of Federal District Judge James B. McMillan, who required massive crosstown busing of children in an effort to approximate in each elementary school the ration of 71 per cent whites and 29 per cent blacks that exists in the entire school system.

Judge McMillan’s ruling was overturned by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit on the grounds that it was unreasonable and burdensome. In upholding Judge McMillan, the Supreme Court stressed that the school board had failed to propose an acceptable plan and that this had forced him to produce his own plan.

In such cases a district court has “broad powers to fashion a remedy,” the Supreme Court said. It said that Judge McMillan’s solution was acceptable under those particular circumstances, although it did not mean that other judges were required to order similar measures.

The Court’s guidelines contained the following points:

 

• Desegregation does not require that every school in every community must always reflect the racial composition of the school system as a whole. However, if a judge wishes to use mathematical ratios, as Judge McMillan did, as a “starting point in the process of shaping a remedy,” this may be within his equitable discretion.
• The existence of “some small numbers” of schools of one race, or virtually one race, is not alone proof of racial discrimination. “But in a system with a history of segregation” the courts may indulge in “a presumption against schools that are substantially disproportionate in their racial composition.” If such school districts have any all-black schools, the burden will be on them “to satisfy the court that their racial composition is not the result of present or past discriminatory action on their part.”

for the complete article: https://archive.nytimes.com/…/042171race-ra.html

 

1139 – The Second Lateran Council opened in Rome.

1534 – Jacques Cartier, a French explorer, set sail from St. Malo to explore the North American coastline.

1653 – In England, Oliver Cromwell expelled the Long Parliament for trying to pass the Perpetuation Bill that would have kept Parliament in the hands of only a few members.

1657 – English Admiral Robert Blake fought his last battle when he destroyed the Spanish fleet in Santa Cruz Bay.

1689 – The siege of Londonderry began. Supporters of James II attacked the city.

1775 – American troops began the siege of British-held Boston.

1792 – France declared war on Austria, Prussia, and Sardinia. It was the start of the French Revolutionary wars.

1809 – Thomas Jefferson sells indentured servant to newly elected President James Madison

1809 – Napoleon defeated Austria at Battle of Abensberg, Bavaria.

1832 – Hot Springs National Park was intially created by an act of the U.S. Congress. It was the first time a piece of land was set aside by the U.S. government to preserve the area for recreation. The area was made a national park on March 4, 1921.

1836 – The U.S. territory of Wisconsin was created by the U.S. Congress.

1837 – Erastus B. Bigelow was granted a patent for his power loom.

1841 – In Philadelphia, PA, Edgar Allen Poe’s first detective story, “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” was published in Graham’s Magazine.

1861 – Robert E. Lee resigned from U.S. Army.

1865 – Safety matches were first advertised.

1879 – First mobile home (horse drawn) was used in a journey from London to Cyprus.

1902 – Scientists Marie and Pierre Curie isolated the radioactive element radium.

1912 – Fenway Park opened as the home of the Boston Red Sox.

1916 – Sir Roger Casement landed in Ireland to incite rebellion against the British. Casement, a British diplomat, was captured within hours and was hanged for high treason on August 3.

1916 – Chicago’s Wrigley Field held its first Cubs game with the first National League game at the ballpark. The Cubs beat the Cincinnati Reds 7-6 in 11 innings.

1919 – The Polish Army captured Vilno, Lithuania from the Soviets.

1940 – The First electron microscope was demonstrated by RCA.

1942 – Pierre Laval, the premier of Vichy France, in a radio broadcast, establishes a policy of “true reconciliation with Germany.”

1945 – Soviet troops began their attack on Berlin.

1945 – During World War II, Allied forces took control of the German cities of Nuremberg and Stuttgart.

1953 – Operation Little Switch began in Korea. It was the exchange of sick and wounded prisoners of war. Thirty Americans were freed.

1953 – The Boston marathon was won by Keizo Yamada with a record time of 2:18:51.

1959 – “Desilu Playhouse” on CBS-TV presented a two-part show titled “The Untouchables.”

1961 – FM stereo broadcasting was approved by the FCC.

1962 – The New Orleans Citizens’ Council offered a free one-way ride for blacks to move to northern states.

1967 – U.S. planes bombed Haiphong for first time during the Vietnam War.

1971 – The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the use of busing to achieve racial desegregation in schools.

1972 – The manned lunar module from Apollo 16 landed on the moon.

1977 – Woody Allen’s film “Annie Hall” premiered.

1981 – A spokesman for the U.S. Nave announced that the U.S. was accepting full responsibility for the sinking of the Nissho Maru on April 9.

1982 – The Activision game Pitfall! was released for the Atari 2600 game system.

1984 – Britain announced that its administration of Hong Kong would cease in 1997.

1985 – In Madrid, Santiago Carillo was purged from the Communist Party. Carillo was a founder of Eurocommunism.

1987 – In Argentina, President Raul Alfonsin quelled a military revolt.

1988 – The U.S. Air Forces’ Stealth (B-2 bomber) was officially unveiled.

1989 – Scientist announced the successful testing of high-definition TV.

1991 – Mikhail Gorbachev became the first Soviet head of state to visit South Korea.

1992 – The worlds largest fair, Expo ’92, opened in Seville, Spain.

1998 – Kenyan runner Moses Tanui, 32, won the Boston Marathon for the second time. He also registered the third fastest time with 2 hours 7 minutes and 34 seconds.

1999 – Jane Seymour received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

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