1513 – Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de Leon landed in Florida. He had sighted the land the day before.

1776 – George Washington received an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Harvard College .

1829 – James Carrington patented the coffee mill.

1860 – The first Pony Express riders left St. Joseph, MO and Sacramento, CA. The trip across country took about 10 days. The Pony Express only lasted about a year and a half.

1865 – Union forces occupy Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia.

1866 – Rudolph Eickemeyer and G. Osterheld patented a blocking and shaping machine for hats.

1882 – The American outlaw Jesse James was shot in the back and killed by Robert Ford for a $5,000 reward. There was later controversy over whether it was actually Jesse James that had been killed.

1910 – Alaska’s Mt. McKinley, the highest mountain in North America was climbed.

1933 – First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt informed newspaper reporters that beer would be served at the White House. This followed the March 22 legislation that legalized “3.2” beer.

1936 – Richard Bruno Hauptmann was executed for the kidnapping and death of the son of Charles and Anne Lindbergh.

1942 – The Japanese began their all-out assault on the U.S. and Filipino troops at Bataan.

1946 – Lt. General Masaharu Homma, the Japanese commander responsible for the Bataan Death March, was executed in the Philippines.

1948 – U.S. President Harry Truman signed the Marshall Plan to revive war-torn Europe. It was $5 billion in aid for 16 countries.

1949 – Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis debuted on radio on the “Martin and Lewis Show”. The NBC program ran until 1952.

1953 – “TV Guide” was published for the first time.

1967 – The U.S. State Department said that Hanoi might be brainwashing American prisoners.

1968 – Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “mountaintop” speech just 24 hours before he was assassinated.

1968 – North Vietnam agreed to meet with U.S. representatives to set up preliminary peace talks.

1972 – Charlie Chaplin returned to the U.S. after a twenty-year absence.

1979 – Jane Byrne became the first female mayor in Chicago.

1982 – John Chancellor stepped down as anchor of the “The NBC Nightly News.” Roger Mudd and Tom Brokaw became the co-anchors of the show.

1983 – It was reported that Vietnamese occupation forces had overrun a key insurgent base in western Cambodia.

1984 – Sikh terrorists killed a member of the Indian Parliament in his home.

1984 – Col. Lansana Konte became the new president of Guinea when the armed forces seized power after the death of Sekou Toure.

1985 – The U.S. charged that Israel violated the Geneva Convention by deporting Shiite prisoners.

1986 – The U.S. national debt hit $2 trillion.

1987 – Riots disrupted mass during the Pope’s visit to Santiago, Chili.

1993 – The Norman Rockwell Museum opened in Stockbridge, MA.

1996 – An Air Force jetliner carrying Commerce Secretary Ron Brown crashed in Croatia, killing all 35 people aboard.

1996 – Unabomber suspect Theodore Kaczynski was arrested. He pled guilty in January 1998 to five Unabomber attacks in exchange for a life sentence without chance for parole.

1998 – The Dow Jones industrial average climbed above 9,000 for the first time.

2000 – A U.S. federal judge ruled that Microsoft had violated U.S. antitrust laws by keeping “an oppressive thumb” on its competitors. Microsoft said that they would appeal the ruling.

2000 – The Nasdaq set a one-day record when it lost 349.15 points to close at 4,233.68.

2010 – The first Apple iPad was released.

by history.com

   Photo by Jeff Peterson, Deseret News

On this day in 1700, English pranksters began popularizing the annual tradition of April Fools’ Day by playing practical jokes on each other.

Although the day, also called All Fools’ Day, has been celebrated for several centuries by different cultures, its exact origins remain a mystery.

Some historians speculate that April Fools’ Day dates back to 1582, when France switched from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar, as called for by the Council of Trent in 1563. People who were slow to get the news or failed to recognize that the start of the new year had moved to January 1 and continued to celebrate it during the last week of March through April 1 became the butt of jokes and hoaxes. These included having paper fish placed on their backs and being referred to as “poisson d’avril” (April fish), said to symbolize a young, easily caught fish and a gullible person.

Historians have also linked April Fools’ Day to ancient festivals such as Hilaria, which was celebrated in Rome at the end of March and involved people dressing up in disguises. There’s also speculation that April Fools’ Day was tied to the vernal equinox, or first day of spring in the Northern Hemisphere, when Mother Nature fooled people with changing, unpredictable weather.

April Fools’ Day spread throughout Britain during the 18th century. In Scotland, the tradition became a two-day event, starting with “hunting the gowk,” in which people were sent on phony errands (gowk is a word for cuckoo bird, a symbol for fool) and followed by Tailie Day, which involved pranks played on people’s derrieres, such as pinning fake tails or “kick me” signs on them. In modern times, people have gone to great lengths to create elaborate April Fools’ Day hoaxes. Newspapers, radio and TV stations, and Web sites have participated in the April 1 tradition of reporting outrageous fictional claims that have fooled their audiences.

In 1957, the BBC reported that Swiss farmers were experiencing a record spaghetti crop and showed footage of people harvesting noodles from trees; numerous viewers were fooled.

In 1985, Sports Illustrated tricked many of its readers when it ran a made-up article about a rookie pitcher named Sidd Finch who could throw a fastball over 168 miles per hour.

In 1996, Taco Bell, the fast-food restaurant chain, duped people when it announced it had agreed to purchase Philadelphia’s Liberty Bell and intended to rename it the Taco Liberty Bell. In 1998, after Burger King advertised a “Left-Handed Whopper,” scores of clueless customers requested the fake sandwich.

1513 – Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de Leon sighted Florida. The next day he went ashore.

1792 – The U.S. Congress passed the Coinage Act to regulate the coins of the United States. The act authorized $10 Eagles, $5 Half Eagles, $2.50 Quarter Eagle gold coins, silver dollars, dollars, quarters, dimes and half-dimes to be minted.

1801 – During the Napoleonic Wars, the Danish fleet was destroyed by the British at the Battle of Copenhagen.

1860 – The first Italian Parliament met in Turin.

1865 – Confederate President Davis and most of his Cabinet fled the Confederate capital of Richmond, VA.

1872 – G.B. Brayton received a patent for the gas-powered streetcar.

1877 – The first Egg Roll was held on the grounds of the White House in Washington, DC.

1889 – Charles Hall patented aluminum.

1902 – The first motion picture theatre opened in Los Angeles with the name Electric Theatre.

1905 – The Simplon rail tunnel officially opened. The tunnel went under the Alps and linked Switzerland and Italy.

1910 – Karl Harris perfected the process for the artificial synthesis of rubber.

1914 – The U.S. Federal Reserve Board announced plans to divide the country into 12 districts.

1917 – U.S. President Woodrow Wilson presented a declaration of war against Germany to the U.S. Congress.

1932 – A $50,000 ransom was paid for the infant son of Charles and Anna Lindbergh. He child was not returned and was found dead the next month.

1935 – Sir Watson-Watt was granted a patent for RADAR.

1944 – The Soviet Union announced that its troops had crossed the Prut River and entered Romania.

1947 – “The Big Story” debuted on NBC radio. It was on the air for eight years.

1947 – The U.N. Security Council voted to appoint the U.S. as trustee for former Japanese-held Pacific Islands.

1951 – U.S. General Dwight Eisenhower assumed command of all allied forces in the Western Mediterranean area and Europe.

1956 – “The Edge of Night” and “As the World Turns” debuted on CBS-TV.

1958 – The National Advisory Council on Aeronautics was renamed NASA.

1960 – France signed an agreement with Madagascar that proclaimed the country an independent state within the French community.

1963 – Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King began the first non-violent campaign in Birmingham, AL.

1966 – South Vietnamese troops joined in demonstrations at Hue and Da Nang for an end to military rule.

1967 – In Peking, hundreds of thousands demonstrated against Mao foe Liu Shao-chi.

1972 – Burt Reynolds appeared nude in “Cosmopolitan” magazine.

1978 – The first episode of “Dallas” aired on CBS.

1981 – In Lebanon, thirty-seven people were reported killed during fighting in the cities of Beirut and Zahle. It was the worst violence since the 1976 cease fire.

1982 – Argentina invaded the British-owned Falkland Islands. The following June Britain took the islands back.

1983 – The New Jersey Transit strike that began on March 1 came to an end.

1984 – John Thompson became the first black coach to lead his team to the NCAA college basketball championship.

1984 – In Jerusalem, three Arab gunmen wounded 48 people when they opened fire into a crowd of shoppers.

1985 – The NCAA Rules Committee adopted the 45-second shot clock for men’s basketball to begin in the 1986 season.

1986 – On a TWA airliner flying from Rome to Athens a bomb exploded under a seat killing four Americans.

1987 – The speed limit on U.S. interstate highways was increased to 65 miles per hour in limited areas.

1988 – U.S. Special Prosecutor James McKay declined to indict Attorney General Edwin Meese for criminal wrongdoing.

1989 – An editorial in the “New York Times” declared that the Cold War was over.

1989 – General Prosper Avril, Haiti’s military leader, survived a coup attempt. The attempt was apparently provoked by Avril’s U.S.-backed efforts to fight drug trafficking.

1990 – Iraqi President Saddam Hussein threatened to incinerate half of Israel with chemical weapons if Israel joined a conspiracy against Iraq.

1992 – Mob boss John Gotti was convicted in New York of murder and racketeering. He was later sentenced to life in prison.

1995 – The costliest strike in professional sports history ended when baseball owners agreed to let players play without a contract.

1996 – Russia and Belarus signed a treaty that created a political and economic alliance in an effort to reunite the two former Soviet republics.

1996 – Lech Walesa resumed his old job as an electrician at the Gdansk shipyard. He was the former Solidarity union leader who became Poland’s first post-war democratic president.

2002 – Israeli troops surrounded the Church of the Nativity. More than 200 Palestinians had taken refuge at the church when Israel invaded Bethlehem.

2013 – The United Nations General Assembly adopted the Arms Trade Treaty to regulate the international trade of conventional weapons.

2014 – The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that limits on the total amount of money individuals can give political candidates and political action committees were unconstitutional.

on-this-day.com