753 BC – Today is the traditional date of the foundation of Rome.

43 BC – Marcus Antonius was defeated by Octavian near Modena, Italy.

1526 – Mongol Emperor Babur annihilated the Indian Army of Ibrahim Lodi.

1649 – The Maryland Toleration Act was passed, allowing all freedom of worship.

1689 – William III and Mary II were crowned joint king and queen of England, Scotland and Ireland.

1789 – John Adams was sworn in as the first U.S. Vice President.

1836 – General Sam Houston defeated Santa Anna at the Battle of San Jacinto. This battle decided the independence of Texas.

1856 – The Mississippi River was crossed by a rail train for the first time (between Davenport, IA, and Rock Island, IL).

1862 – The U.S. Congress established the U.S. Mint in Denver, CO.

1865 – U.S. President Abraham Lincoln‘s funeral train left Washington.

1892 – The first Buffalo was born in Golden Gate Park.

1895 – Woodville Latham and his sons demonstrated their Panopticon. It was the first movie projector developed in the United States.

1898 – The Spanish-American War began.

1914 – U.S. Marines occupied Vera Cruz, Mexico. The troops stayed for six months.

1916 – Bill Carlisle, the infamous ‘last train robber,’ robbed a train in Hanna, WY.

1918 – German fighter ace Manfred von Richthofen, “The Red Baron,” was shot down and killed during World War I.

1940 – “Take It or Leave It” premiered on CBS Radio.

1943 – U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt announced that several Doolittle pilots had been executed by the Japanese.

1953 – In New York, the Sidney Janis Gallery held the Dada exhibition.

1956 – Leonard Ross, age 10, became the youngest prizewinner on the “The Big Surprise”. He won $100,000.

1959 – Alf Dean caught a 16-foot, 10-inch white shark that weighed 2,664 pounds. At the time it was the largest catch with a rod and reel.

1960 – Brasilia became the capital of Brazil.

1961 – The French army revolted in Algeria.

1967 – Svetlana Alliluyeva (Svetlana Stalina) defected in New York City. She was the daughter of Joseph Stalin.

1967 – In Athens, Army colonels took over the government and installed Constantine Kollias as premier.

1972 – Apollo 16 astronauts John Young and Charles Duke explored the surface of the moon.

1975 – South Vietnam president, Nguyen Van Thieu, resigned, condemning the United States.

1977 – “Annie” opened on Broadway.

1984 – In France, it was announced that doctors had found virus believed to cause AIDS.

1985 – Manuel Ortega proposed a cease-fire for Nicaragua.

1986 – Geraldo Rivera opened a vault that belonged to Al Capone at the Lexington Hotel in Chicago. Nothing of interest was found inside.

1987 – Special occasion stamps were offered for the first time by the U.S. Postal Service. “Happy Birthday” and “Get Well” were among the first to be offered.

1989 – The Game Boy handheld video game device was released in Japan.

1992 – Robert Alton Harris became the first person executed by the state of California in 25 years. He was put to death for the 1978 murder of two teen-age boys.

1994 – Jackie Parker became the first woman to qualify to fly an F-16 combat plane.

1998 – Astronomers announced in Washington that they had discovered possible signs of a new family of planets orbiting a star 220 light-years away.

2000 – In Sinking Spring, PA, a man chased his estranged girlfriend through town and then forced her car into the path of an oncoming train. The woman and her 3 passengers were killed.

2000 – North Carolina researchers announced that the heart of a 66 million-year-old dinosaur was more like a mammal or bird than that of a reptile.

2000 – The 1998 Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act went into effect.

2002 – In the city of General Santos, 14 people were killed and 69 were injured in a bomb attack on a department store. The attack was blamed on Muslim extremists.

2003 – North and South Korea agreed to hold Cabinet-level talks the following week.

2009 – UNESCO launched The World Digital Library. The World Digital Library (WDL) is an international digital library operated by UNESCO and the United States Library of Congress.

on-this-day.com

With passage of the Third Force Act, popularly known as the Ku Klux Act, Congress authorizes President Ulysses S. Grant to declare martial law, impose heavy penalties against terrorist organizations and use military force to suppress the Ku Klux Klan (KKK).

Founded in 1865 by a group of Confederate veterans, the KKK rapidly grew from a secret social fraternity to a paramilitary force bent on reversing the federal government’s progressive Reconstruction Era-activities in the South, especially policies that elevated the rights of the local African American population. The name of the Ku Klux Klan was derived from the Greek word kyklos, meaning “circle,” and the Scottish-Gaelic word “clan,” which was probably chosen for the sake of alliteration. Under a platform of philosophized white racial superiority, the group employed violence as a means of pushing back Reconstruction and its enfranchisement of African-Americans. Former Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest was the KKK’s first grand wizard and in 1869 unsuccessfully tried to disband it after he grew critical of the Klan’s excessive violence.Play Video

Ku Klux Klan

Most prominent in counties where the races were relatively balanced, the KKK engaged in terrorist raids against African Americans and white Republicans at night, employing intimidation, destruction of property, assault and murder to achieve its aims and influence upcoming elections. In a few Southern states, Republicans organized militia units to break up the Klan. In 1871, passage of the Ku Klux Act led to nine South Carolina counties being placed under martial law and thousands of arrests. In 1882, the U.S. Supreme Court declared the Ku Klux Act unconstitutional, but by that time Reconstruction had ended, and much of the KKK had faded away.

Source: history.com

For the complete article, click the link above

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