(1864) General Grant makes a tragic decision at Cold HarborConfederate forces are entrenched just 10 miles southeast of Richmond, capital of the Confederacy. Union General U. S. Grant orders a full frontal assault, despite his reinforcements not having arrived, and 7,000 Union troops are dead within an hour’s time in one of the Civil War’s bloodiest battles.The Battle of Cold Harbor was fought from May 31 to June 12, 1864, with the most significant fighting occurring on June 3. It was one of the final battles of Union Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant’s Overland Campaign during the American Civil War, and is remembered as one of American history’s bloodiest, most lopsided battles. Thousands of Union soldiers were killed or wounded in a hopeless frontal assault against the fortified positions of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee’s army.
Start date: May 31, 1864 End date: Jun 12, 1864
wiki/Battle_of_Cold_Harbor(1943) Military men target Latinos in L.A. riotingFueled by racism, and what’s perceived as the flaunting of wartime rationing rules, the Zoot Suit Riots flare in Los Angeles as white Marines and Navy sailors attack young Latino men. Other cities will see similar clashes between soldiers and minorities wearing the distinctive suit.The Zoot Suit Riots were a series of attacks in June 1943 in Los Angeles, California, United States, by white American servicemen stationed in Southern California against Mexican American youths and other minorities who were residents of the city.
Date: 1943
wiki/Zoot_Suit_Riots(1967) Aretha Franklin gets some R-E-S-P-E-C-T Aretha Franklin hits No. 1 on the ‘Billboard’ Hot 100 singles chart with her version of Otis Redding’s ‘Respect,’ turning the song into a women’s anthem. Decades later, Rolling Stone will rank her recording as one of the five greatest songs of all time.“Respect” is a song written and originally released by American recording artist Otis Redding in 1965. The song became a 1967 hit and signature song for R&B singer Aretha Franklin. The music in the two versions is significantly different, and through a few minor changes in the lyrics, the stories told by the songs have a different flavor. Redding’s version is a plea from a desperate man, who will give his woman anything she wants. He won’t care if she does him wrong, as long as he gets his due respect, when he brings money home . However, Franklin’s version is a declaration from a strong, confident woman, who knows that she has everything her man wants. She never does him wrong, and demands his “respect”. Franklin’s version adds the “R-E-S-P-E-C-T” chorus and the backup singers’ refrain of “Sock it to me, sock it to me, sock it to me…”
Franklin’s cover was a landmark for the feminist movement, and is often considered as one of the best songs of the R&B era, earning her two Grammy Awards in 1968 for “Best Rhythm & Blues Recording” and “Best Rhythm & Blues Solo Vocal Performance, Female”, and was inducted in the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1987. In 2002, the Library of Congress honored Franklin’s version by adding it to the National Recording Registry. It was placed number five on Rolling Stone magazine’s list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. It was also included in the list of Songs of the Century, by the Recording Industry of America and the National Endowment for the Arts. Franklin included a live recording on the album Aretha in Paris (1968).
Album: I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You Artists: Aretha Franklin · Otis Redding Duration: 2:21 Genre: R&B / Soul, Soul
wiki/Respect_(song)(1968) Pop art provocateur is nearly assassinatedAlready well into his 15 minutes of fame, Andy Warhol, the king of Manhattan’s underground art-world elite, is shot at his famed workspace, The Factory. He will survive after a 5-hour operation, and his would-be assassin, Valerie Solanas, will be diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic.Andy Warhol was an American artist, director and producer who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art. His works explore the relationship between artistic expression, celebrity culture, and advertising that flourished by the 1960s, and span a variety of media, including painting, silkscreening, photography, film, and sculpture. Some of his best known works include the silkscreen paintings Campbell’s Soup Cans and Marilyn Diptych, the experimental film Chelsea Girls, and the multimedia events known as the Exploding Plastic Inevitable.
Lived: Aug 06, 1928 – Feb 22, 1987 (age 58) Height: 5′ 11″ (1.80 m) Periods: Pop art · Modern art Education: Carnegie Mellon University (1945 – 1949) · Schenley High School (1942 – 1945) Buried: St. John the Baptist Byzantine Catholic Cemetery Parents: Julia Warhola (Mother) · Andrej Warhola (Father)
(1831) Pioneering mountain man meets his end Jedediah Strong Smith, 32, has earned his middle name by surviving three massacres, a bear mauling, and travels through the vast wilds of the American West, including the unforgiving Mojave Desert. Exploring near the Santa Fe Trail in present day Kansas, Smith is killed by Comanche warriors.Jedediah Strong Smith, was a clerk, frontiersman, hunter, trapper, author, cartographer, and explorer of the Rocky Mountains, the North American West, and the Southwest during the early 19th century. After 75 years of obscurity following his death, Smith was rediscovered as the American whose explorations led to the use of the 20-mile-wide South Pass as the dominant point of crossing the Continental Divide for pioneers on the Oregon Trail.
Born: Jan 06, 1799 · Bainbridge, NY Died: May 27, 1831 · Ulysses, KS Romance: NN Smith Parents: Sally Smith (Mother) · Jedediah Strong Smith, I (Father) Children: Gordon Smith (Son) Siblings: Austin Smith · Peter Smith · Ira Smith
Highlights
1822: Coming from a modest family background, Smith traveled to St. Louis and joined William H. Ashley and Andrew Henry’s fur trading company in 1822.
1826: Smith and his party of 15 other men left the Bear River on August 7, 1826, and after retrieving the cache he had left earlier, headed south through present-day Utah and Nevada to the Colorado River, finding increasingly harsh conditions and difficult travel.
1828: Smith and his party of 15 other men left the Bear River on August 7, 1826, and after retrieving the cache he had left earlier, headed south through present-day Utah and Nevada to the Colorado River, finding increasingly harsh conditions and difficult travel.
1829: Late in 1829, Smith Jackson and Sublette wrote another letter to William Clark.
1830: Smith later wrote a letter to Secretary of War John Eaton in 1830 making the location of the South Pass public information.
1831: The only known portrait of Jedediah Smith, painted after his death in 1831, showed the long hair he wore over the side of his head, to hide his scars.
wiki/Jedediah_Smith(1905) First naval battle of its kind pits Russia vs. JapanThe first and only ‘decisive’ naval battle fought by modern steel battleship fleets, and also the first in which radio communications play a decisive role, the Battle of Tsushima will result in a crushing blow to the mighty Russian Imperial Navy, as Japanese forces destroy almost their entire fleet.The Battle of Tsushima, also known as the Battle of Tsushima Strait and the Naval Battle of the Sea of Japan in Japan, was a major naval battle fought between Russia and Japan during the Russo-Japanese War. It was naval history’s only decisive sea battle fought by modern steel battleship fleets, and the first naval battle in which wireless telegraphy played a critically important role. It has been characterized as the “dying echo of the old era – for the last time in the history of naval warfare ships of the line of a beaten fleet surrendered on the high seas.”
Start date: May 27, 1905 End date: May 28, 1905
wiki/Battle_of_Tsushima(1943) A survivor’s incredible odyssey beginsFormer Olympic track runner and now US Army Air Corps bombardier, Louie Zamperini is shot down 850 miles south of Oahu, Hawaii. He will survive 47 days on the open ocean, only to be captured, imprisoned, and tortured in Japanese POW camps, all of which prove Zamperini is “unbreakable.”Louis Silvie “Louie” Zamperini was a US prisoner of war survivor in World War II, a Christian evangelist and an Olympic distance runner. Zamperini took up running in high school and qualified for the US in the 5000m race for the 1936 Berlin Olympics. He finished 8th in the event. In 1941 he was commissioned into the United States Army Air Forces as a Lieutenant. He served as a bombardier in B-24 Liberators in the Pacific. On a search and rescue mission, mechanical difficulties forced Zamperini’s plane to crash in the ocean. After drifting at sea for 46-47 days he landed on the Japanese occupied Marshall Islands and was captured. He was taken to a prison camp in Japan where he was tortured. Following the war he initially struggled to overcome his ordeal. Later he became a Christian Evangelist with a strong belief in forgiveness. Zamperini is the subject of two biographical films, the 2014 Unbroken and the 2015 Captured by Grace.
Lived: Jan 26, 1917 – Jul 02, 2014 (age 97) Height: 5′ 11″ (1.80 m) Spouse: Cynthia Applewhite (m. 1946 – 2001) Movies: Zamperini: Still Carrying the Torch Education: Torrance High School · University of Southern California Children: Cissy Zamperini (Daughter) · Luke Zamperini (Son)
Highlights
1943: His death had mistakenly been announced previously, when the US government classified him as KIA during World War II, after his B-24 Liberator aircraft went down in 1943, and no survivors were located by the military.
1946: Louis Zamperini married Cynthia Applewhite on May 25, 1946; their marriage lasted 55 years till 2001.
2010: In 2010, Zamperini detailed his experiences in Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption, written by Laura Hillenbrand.
2011: In May 2011, Zamperini was guest of honor at Magellan Christian Academy’s graduation ceremony with over 700 attendees at the University of North Florida in Jacksonville, Florida.
2011: In late July 2011, Zamperini received the Kappa Sigma Golden Heart Award during the Kappa Sigma 68th Biennial Grand Conclave held at the Flamingo Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada.
2014: After Zamperini’s death on July 2, 2014, the Tournament announced that it is “committed to honoring him as the Grand Marshal of the 2015 Rose Parade”.
wiki/Louis_Zamperini(1994) Banished son of Russia returns to his motherlandWinner of 1970’s Nobel Prize in Literature, author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn returns to the homeland that exiled him for the very writing that garnered him acclaim. Communism’s fall now allows the author of ‘The Gulag Archipelago’ to be reunited with a country he hasn’t seen for 20 years.Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn was a Russian novelist, historian, and short story writer. He was an outspoken critic of the Soviet Union and communism and helped to raise global awareness of its Gulag forced labor camp system. He was allowed to publish only one work in the Soviet Union, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, in the periodical Novy Mir. After this he had to publish in the West, most notably Cancer Ward, August 1914, and The Gulag Archipelago. Solzhenitsyn was awarded the 1970 Nobel Prize in Literature “for the ethical force with which he has pursued the indispensable traditions of Russian literature”. Solzhenitsyn was afraid to go to Stockholm to receive his award for fear that he would not be allowed to reenter. He was eventually expelled from the Soviet Union in 1974, but returned to Russia in 1994 after the state’s dissolution.
Lived: Dec 11, 1918 – Aug 03, 2008 (age 89) Spouse: Natalia Dmitrievna Svetlova (m. 1973 – 2008) · Natalia Alekseevna Reshetovskaya (m. 1957 – 1972) · Natalia Alekseevna Reshetovskaya (m. 1940 – 1952) Awards: Nobel Prize in Literature (1970) · State Prize of the Russian Federation (2006) · Templeton Prize (1983) Education: Southern Federal University · Rostov State University Children: Ignat Solzhenitsyn (Son) · Stepan Solzhenitsyn (Son) · Yermolai Solzhenitsyn (Son) Parents: Taisiya Solzhenitsyna (Mother) · Isaakiy Solzhenitsyn (Father)
(1803) US makes Louisiana Purchase for $15 millionAt a cost of about four cents per acre, the American government purchases from the French 828,000 square miles of land, stretching across much of North America. France needs the money for another looming war with Britain, and President Thomas Jefferson is happy to oblige.The Louisiana Purchase was the acquisition of the Louisiana territory by the United States from France in 1803. The U.S. paid fifty million francs and a cancellation of debts worth eighteen million francs for a total of sixty-eight million francs. The Louisiana territory included land from fifteen present U.S. states and two Canadian provinces. The territory contained land that forms Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nebraska; the portion of Minnesota west of the Mississippi River; a large portion of North Dakota; a large portion of South Dakota; the northeastern section of New Mexico; the northern portion of Texas; the area of Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado east of the Continental Divide; Louisiana west of the Mississippi River; and small portions of land within the present Canadian provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan. Its non-native population was around 60,000 inhabitants, of whom half were African slaves.
Start date: 1801 End date: Apr 30, 1803
wiki/Louisiana_Purchase(1943) ‘Operation Mincemeat’ fools the NazisThe British dress a corpse as one of their officers, load it with fake invasion plans, and release the body off Spain’s coast. The Germans will find the body, believe the plan, and expect the Brits to invade Greece, instead of the real target, Italy.Operation Mincemeat was a successful British disinformation strategy used during the Second World War. As a deception intended to cover the 1943 Allied invasion of Sicily, two members of British intelligence obtained the body of Glyndwr Michael, a tramp who died from eating rat poison, dressed him as an officer of the Royal Marines and placed personal items on him identifying him as Captain William Martin. Correspondence between two British generals which suggested that the Allies planned to invade Greece and Sardinia, with Sicily as merely the target of a feint, was also placed on the body. wiki/Operation_Mincemeat(1945) Hitler commits suicide as Soviet Red Army takes BerlinHiding in his fortified underground bunker with his wife of 40 hours by his side, Adolf Hitler shoots himself, and Eva Braun takes a cyanide pill. Their bodies are hauled to the ruined garden above the bunker, doused with gasoline, and burned.Adolf Hitler was a German politician who was the leader of the Nazi Party, Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and Führer of Nazi Germany from 1934 to 1945. As dictator of the German Reich, he initiated World War II in Europe with the invasion of Poland in September 1939, and was central to the Holocaust.
Lived: Apr 20, 1889 – Apr 30, 1945 (age 56) Height: 5′ 9″ (1.75 m) Spouse: Eva Braun (m. 1945 – 1945) Children: Jean-Marie Loret (Son) Founded: Nazi Party · Schutzstaffel · Hitler Youth · Gestapo · Sturmabteilung · Wehrmacht · Waffen-SS · 1st SS Panzer Division Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler Parents: Alois Hitler (Father) · Klara Hitler (Mother)
Highlights
1918: His wartime experience reinforced his German patriotism and he was shocked by Germany’s capitulation in November 1918.
1923: On 8 November 1923 Hitler and the SA stormed a public meeting of 3,000 people organised by Kahr in the Bürgerbräukeller, a beer hall in Munich.
1934: In August 1934, Hitler appointed Reichsbank President Hjalmar Schacht as Minister of Economics, and in the following year, as Plenipotentiary for War Economy in charge of preparing the economy for war.
1936: In August 1936, in response to a growing economic crisis caused by his rearmament efforts, Hitler ordered Göring to implement a Four Year Plan to prepare Germany for war within the next four years.
1938: In early 1938, in the wake of the Blomberg–Fritsch Affair, Hitler asserted control of the military-foreign policy apparatus, dismissing Neurath as foreign minister and appointing himself Oberster Befehlshaber der Wehrmacht (supreme commander of the armed forces).
1945: In the final days of the war, during the Battle of Berlin in 1945, Hitler married his long-time lover, Eva Braun.
wiki/Adolf_Hitler(1975) Saigon falls to communists as South Vietnam surrenders The Viet Cong and People’s Army control South Vietnam’s largest city after Saigon’s defensive forces surrender, effectively ending the Vietnam War. The capital will be renamed ‘Ho Chi Minh City,’ as the communist reunification of the country begins.The Fall of Saigon, or the Liberation of Saigon, depending on context, was the capture of Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam, by the People’s Army of Vietnam and the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam on April 30, 1975. The event marked the end of the Vietnam War and the start of a transition period to the formal reunification of Vietnam under the Socialist Republic.
(1775) American Revolutionary War beginsThirteen colonies enter the bloody struggle to break free from the crown, as British troops arrive in Lexington, Massachusetts, intent on seizing the patriots’ weapons and imprisoning its leaders. Shots are exchanged, eight Americans die, and the war for independence is on.The American Revolutionary War, also referred to as the American War of Independence and as the Revolutionary War in the United States, was an armed conflict between Great Britain and those thirteen of its North American colonies which after the onset of the war declared independence as the United States of America.
Start date: Apr 19, 1775 End date: Sep 03, 1783
wiki/American_Revolutionary_War(1897) First running of the Boston MarathonInspired by the revival of the Olympic Games the year before and the invention there of the marathon running race, the Boston Athletic Association puts on its own footrace. Fifteen runners take off from the starting line, and 10 finish the 24.5-mile hilly route in Boston’s first marathon.The Boston Marathon is an annual marathon hosted by several cities in greater Boston in eastern Massachusetts, United States. It is always held on Patriots’ Day, the third Monday of April. Begun in 1897, inspired by the success of the first marathon competition in the 1896 Summer Olympics, the Boston Marathon is the world’s oldest annual marathon and ranks as one of the world’s best-known road racing events. It is one of six World Marathon Majors, and is one of five major events held in the United States through the years of both World Wars.
First occurred: Apr 19, 1897
wiki/Boston_Marathon(1943) Jewish resistance fighters battle in Warsaw Ghetto Uprising Hundreds of thousands of Jews have been packed by Nazis inside the Warsaw Ghetto, a 1.3-square-mile sector in Poland’s capital. Thousands have already died of disease and starvation, but today many fight back when Germans attempt to ship off the ghetto’s survivors to concentration camps.The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was the 1943 act of Jewish resistance that arose within the Warsaw Ghetto in German-occupied Poland during World War II, and which opposed Nazi Germany’s final effort to transport the remaining Ghetto population to Treblinka. The uprising started on 19 April when the Ghetto refused to surrender to the police commander SS-Brigadeführer Jürgen Stroop, who then ordered the burning of the Ghetto, block by block, ending on 16 May. A total of 13,000 Jews died, about half of them burnt alive or suffocated. German casualties are not known, but were not more than 300. It was the largest single revolt by Jews during World War II.
Start date: Apr 19, 1943 End date: May 16, 1943
wiki/Warsaw_Ghetto_Uprising(1995) Oklahoma City bombing destroys federal building, kills 168An enormous blast tears through the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, causing massive damage and casualties. One hundred sixty-eight will die, and upwards of 700 are injured after Timothy McVeigh detonates a homemade truck bomb.
The Oklahoma City bombing was a domestic terrorist truck bombing on the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Downtown, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, United States on April 19, 1995. Carried out by Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, the bombing destroyed one-third of the building, killed 168 people, and injured more than 680 others. The blast destroyed or damaged 324 other buildings within a 16-block radius, shattered glass in 258 nearby buildings, and destroyed or burned 86 cars, causing an estimated $652 million worth of damage. Extensive rescue efforts were undertaken by local, state, federal, and worldwide agencies in the wake of the bombing, and substantial donations were received from across the country. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) activated eleven of its Urban Search and Rescue Task Forces, consisting of 665 rescue workers who assisted in rescue and recovery operations. This was the deadliest terrorist attack on American soil until the September 11 attacks six years later, and it still remains as the deadliest domestic terrorism incident in United States history.
Within 90 minutes of the explosion, McVeigh was stopped by Oklahoma Highway Patrolman Charlie Hanger for driving without a license plate and arrested for illegal weapons possession. Forensic evidence quickly linked McVeigh and Nichols to the attack; Nichols was arrested, and within days, both were charged. Michael and Lori Fortier were later identified as accomplices. McVeigh, who was a U.S. militia movement sympathizer and a veteran in the Gulf War, had detonated a Ryder rental truck full of explosives parked in front of the building. His co-conspirator, Nichols, had assisted in the bomb preparation. Motivated by his dislike for the U.S. federal government and angry about its handling of the Ruby Ridge incident in 1992 and the Waco Siege in 1993, McVeigh timed his attack to coincide with the second anniversary of the deadly fire that ended the siege at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas.
The official investigation, known as “OKBOMB”, saw FBI agents conduct 28,000 interviews, amass 3.5 short tons (3.2 tonnes) of evidence, and collect nearly one billion pieces of information. The bombers were tried and convicted in 1997. McVeigh was executed by lethal injection on June 11, 2001, and Nichols was sentenced to life in prison in 2004. Michael and Lori Fortier testified against McVeigh and Nichols; Michael was sentenced to 12 years in prison for failing to warn the United States government, and Lori received immunity from prosecution in exchange for her testimony.
As a result of the bombing, the U.S. Congress passed the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, which tightened the standards for habeas corpus in the United States, as well as legislation designed to increase the protection around federal buildings to deter future terrorist attacks. On April 19, 2000, the Oklahoma City National Memorial was dedicated on the site of the Murrah Federal Building, commemorating the victims of the bombing. Annual remembrance services are held at the same time of day as the explosion occurred.
(73 CE) Roman troops end siege of Jewish rebel stronghold MasadaHaving spent months building a giant ramp to reach Masada, a mountaintop fortress defended by just 967 Jewish rebels, a massive Roman force uses a battering ram to breach the walls. Inside, according to a Jewish chronicler of the events, the Romans find the rebels dead, having committed mass suicide.The siege of Masada was one of the final events in the First Jewish–Roman War, occurring from 73 to 74 CE on a large hilltop in current-day Israel. The siege was chronicled by Flavius Josephus, a Jewish rebel leader captured by the Romans, in whose service he became a historian. According to Josephus the long siege by the troops of the Roman Empire led to the mass suicide of the Sicarii rebels and resident Jewish families of the Masada fortress. Masada has become a controversial event in Jewish history, with some regarding it as a place of reverence, commemorating fallen ancestors and their heroic struggle against oppression, and others regarding it as a warning against extremism and the refusal to compromise.
(1746) The Battle of Culloden is Scottish Jacobites’ last standA pitched battle near Inverness between Scottish Highlanders and British Loyalists results in thousands of casualties for the Scots, and a victory for the Brits that will lead to a cracking down on the Scottish clan system and a depopulating of the Highlands.The Battle of Culloden was the final confrontation of the Jacobite rising of 1745 and part of a religious civil war in Britain. On 16 April 1746, the Jacobite forces of Charles Edward Stuart were decisively defeated by loyalist troops commanded by William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, near Inverness in the Scottish Highlands.
Phone: 0844 493 2159 Date: Apr 16, 1746
wiki/Battle_of_Culloden(1943) Scientist Albert Hofmann takes history’s first LSD trip During research into compounds synthesized in part from a grain fungus, Swiss scientist Dr. Albert Hofmann accidentally touches and absorbs a small amount of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), and experiences a 2-hour-long hallucinogenic journey.Albert Hofmann was a Swiss scientist known best for being the first person to synthesize, ingest, and learn of the psychedelic effects of lysergic acid diethylamide. Hofmann was also the first person to isolate, synthesize, and name the principal psychedelic mushroom compounds psilocybin and psilocin. He authored more than 100 scientific articles and numerous books, including LSD: Mein Sorgenkind. In 2007, he shared first place, alongside Tim Berners-Lee, in a list of the 100 greatest living geniuses, published by The Telegraph newspaper.
Born: Jan 11, 1906 · Baden, Switzerland Died: Apr 29, 2008 · Burg im Leimental, Switzerland Inventions: Lysergic acid diethylamide Education: University of Zurich Parents: Adolf Hofmann
Highlights
1938: While researching lysergic acid derivatives, Hofmann first synthesized LSD on 16 November 1938.
1958: He first synthesized 4-AcO-DET in 1958 in the Sandoz lab.
1969: The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich) honored him with the title D.Sc. (honoris causa) in 1969 together with Gustav Guanella, his brother-in-law.
1971: After retiring from Sandoz in 1971, Hofmann was allowed to take his papers and research home.
1971: In 1971 the Swedish Pharmaceutical Association (Sveriges Farmacevtförbund) granted him the Scheele Award, which commemorates the skills and achievements of the Swedish Pomeranian chemist and pharmacist Carl Wilhelm Scheele.
2008: Hofmann died of a heart attack on 29 April 2008, surrounded by several grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
wiki/Albert_Hofmann(1947) A freighter’s payload explodes and wipes out Texas CityAmmonium nitrate fertilizer catches fire on a vessel in Galveston Bay and explodes, flattening much of the town of Texas City, Texas. The disaster will kill nearly 600 and wound over 3,000, becoming the worst industrial accident in US history.The Texas City disaster was an industrial accident that occurred April 16, 1947, in the Port of Texas City. It was the deadliest industrial accident in U.S. history, and one of the largest non-nuclear explosions. Originating with a mid-morning fire on board the French-registered vessel SS Grandcamp, her cargo of approximately 2,200 tons of ammonium nitrate detonated, with the initial blast and subsequent chain-reaction of further fires and explosions in other ships and nearby oil-storage facilities. It killed at least 581 people, including all but one member of the Texas City fire department. The disaster triggered the first ever class action lawsuit against the United States government, under the then-recently enacted Federal Tort Claims Act, on behalf of 8,485 victims.
(1864) General Grant makes a tragic decision at Cold Harbor
(1943) Military men target Latinos in L.A. rioting
(1967) Aretha Franklin gets some R-E-S-P-E-C-T 
(1968) Pop art provocateur is nearly assassinated
