(1999) Columbine High School shooting shocks a nationDate: Apr 20, 1999
Fatalities: 15
(1999) Columbine High School shooting shocks a nation.
Also on this day,
1902 | Curies isolate radium
1939 | `Strange Fruit` recorded
1986 | Jordan scores 63
(1902) Madame and Monsieur Curie isolate radioactive radium
Marie Skłodowska Curie, born Maria Salomea Skłodowska, was a Polish and naturalized-French physicist and chemist who conducted pioneering research on radioactivity. She was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, the first person and only woman to win twice, the only person to win a Nobel Prize in two different sciences, and was part of the Curie family legacy of five Nobel Prizes. She was also the first woman to become a professor at the University of Paris, and in 1995 became the first woman to be entombed on her own merits in the Panthéon in Paris.Lived: Nov 07, 1867 – Jul 04, 1934 (age 66)
Spouse: Pierre Curie (m. 1895 – 1906)
Awards: Nobel Prize in Chemistry (1911) · Nobel Prize in Physics (1903) · Elliott Cresson Medal (1909) · Davy Medal (1903) · Matteucci Medal (1904) · Benjamin Franklin Medal (1921) · John Scott Medal
Discovered: Radium · Polonium
Children: Irène Joliot-Curie (Daughter) · Ève Curie (Daughter)Highlights
- 1867: Maria Skłodowska was born in Warsaw, in the Russian partition of Poland, on 7 November 1867, the fifth and youngest child of well-known teachers Bronisława, née Boguska, and Władysław Skłodowski.
- 1891: In 1891, aged 24, she followed her older sister Bronisława to study in Paris, where she earned her higher degrees and conducted her subsequent scientific work.
- 1895: Maria Sklodowska-Curie married Pierre Curie on July 26, 1895; their marriage lasted 11 years till April 19, 1906.
- 1898: She named the first chemical element that she discovered—polonium, which she isolated in 1898—after her native country.
- 1925: In 1925, she visited Poland, to participate in the ceremony that laid foundations for the Radium Institute in Warsaw.
- 1934: A few months later, on 4 July 1934, she died at the Sancellemoz sanatorium in Passy, Haute-Savoie, from aplastic anemia believed to have been contracted from her long-term exposure to radiation.
Pierre Curie was a French physicist, a pioneer in crystallography, magnetism, piezoelectricity and radioactivity. In 1903 he received the Nobel Prize in Physics with his wife, Marie Skłodowska-Curie, and Henri Becquerel, “in recognition of the extraordinary services they have rendered by their joint researches on the radiation phenomena discovered by Professor Henri Becquerel”.Lived: May 15, 1859 – Apr 19, 1906 (age 46)
Spouse: Maria Sklodowska-Curie (m. 1895 – 1906)
Discovered: Radium · Polonium
Awards: Nobel Prize in Physics (1903) · Davy Medal (1903) · Matteucci Medal (1904)
Children: Ève Curie (Daughter) · Irène Joliot-Curie (Daughter)Highlights
- 1880: In 1880, Pierre and his older brother Jacques (1856–1941) demonstrated that an electric potential was generated when crystals were compressed, i.e. piezoelectricity.
- 1895: Pierre Curie married Maria Sklodowska-Curie on July 26, 1895.
- 1903: In 1903 he received the Nobel Prize in Physics with his wife, Marie Skłodowska-Curie, and Henri Becquerel, “in recognition of the extraordinary services they have rendered by their joint researches on the radiation phenomena discovered by Professor Henri Becquerel”.
- 1903: Pierre Curie was awarded Davy Medal in 1903.
- 1904: Radium written by Pierre Curie was first published in 1904.
- 1906: Pierre Curie died in a street accident in Paris on 19 April 1906.
(1939) Billie Holiday records landmark civil rights songAlbum: The Great American Songbook
Artist: Billie Holiday
Release year: 1939
Duration: 3:17
Genre: Pop music, Easy Listening
(1986) Michael Jordan scores 63 points in playoff gameBorn: Feb 17, 1963 (age 54) · Brooklyn, NY
Height: 6′ 6″ (1.98 m)
Net worth: $1.20 billion USD (2017)
Spouse: Yvette Prieto (m. 2013) · Juanita Jordan (m. 1989 – 2006)
Children: Jeffrey Jordan (Son) · Marcus Jordan (Son) · Jasmine Mickael Jordan (Daughter) · Victoria Jordan (Daughter) · Ysabel Jordan (Daughter)
Education: Emsley A Laney High · University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (1981 – 1984)Highlights
- 1982: He made the game-winning jump shot in the 1982 NCAA Championship game against Georgetown, which was led by future NBA rival Patrick Ewing.
- 1988: In the 1988–89 season, Jordan again led the league in scoring, averaging 32.5 ppg on 53.8% shooting from the field, along with 8 rpg and 8 assists per game (apg).
- 1989: Jordan married Juanita Vanoy in September 1989, and they had two sons, Jeffrey Michael and Marcus James, and a daughter, Jasmine.
- 1992: In the 1992 Summer Olympics, he was a member of the star-studded squad that included Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, and David Robinson and was dubbed the “Dream Team”.
- 1999: With Phil Jackson’s contract expiring, the pending departures of Scottie Pippen and Dennis Rodman looming, and being in the latter stages of an owner-induced lockout of NBA players, Jordan retired for the second time on January 13, 1999.
- 2003: Playing in his 14th and final NBA All-Star Game in 2003, Jordan passed Kareem Abdul-Jabbar as the all-time leading scorer in All-Star Game history (a record since broken by Kobe Bryant).
(1999) Columbine High School shooting shocks a nationDate: Apr 20, 1999
Fatalities: 15
| (1782) US and Britain agree to preliminary peace terms | |
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Representatives from the United States and Great Britain sign an initial peace agreement to end the Revolutionary War. These peace articles establish US independence and borders, and will later be formalized as the 1783 Treaty of Paris.. |
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| (1982) Michael Jackson’s album ‘Thriller’ is released worldwide | |
| The former Jackson 5 singer releases what will be the best-selling album of all time, ‘Thriller.’ Of the album’s nine tracks, seven will reach the top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 list. ‘Thriller’ will be among the first albums to use music videos as a marketing tool.. |  |
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| (1993) US President Bill Clinton signs Brady Bill into law | |
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The Brady Bill imposes a five-day waiting period for handgun purchases and federal background checks on buyers. The act is named for James Brady, who was shot and critically injured in a 1981 assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan by an assailant who was later ruled insane.. |
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| (1999) Brits free once again to eat T-bone steaks | |
| The English government says that its countrywide ban on the sale of beef-on-the-bone will be lifted in time for Christmas. T-bones, ribs, oxtail, and more were outlawed in 1997 after a report linked these cuts to so-called “mad cow disease.” The French ban on British beef will fall soon after.. |  |
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| (1054) East and West in Constantinople Church clash | |
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The conflict between the Latin West and Greek East divisions of the Christian church heats up when a Papal writ of excommunication is placed by Western Roman legates on the altar of the Hagia Sofia, the holy site of the Christian East. It’s the first major crack that will end in a total break some 100 years later.. |
| (1945) Nuclear age begins in New Mexico | |
| Architects of the Manhattan Project, including project director J. Robert Oppenheimer, gather in shelters 10,000 yards from ‘The Gadget’s’ detonation site in New Mexico and at 5:29 AM the world’s first nuclear bomb explosion, code-named Trinity, pierces the darkness with 20 kilotons of atomic power. . |  |
| (1951) Holden Caulfield is done with phonies in Salinger’s new novel | |
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A teenager is expelled from school and travels to New York City to spend a few days wandering around. Out of this deceptively simple plotline, J.D. Salinger weaves an archetypal tale of teenage angst in ‘The Catcher in the Rye,’ a novel published today that will be hailed and censored in equal measure. . |
| (1999) The son of a slain president loses his life in a plane crash | |
| Flying to Massachusetts to attend his cousin’s wedding, John F. Kennedy, Jr. loses control of his Piper Saratoga aircraft and it plunges into the Atlantic, killing him, his wife Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, and his sister-in-law Lauren Bessette. Their ashes will be scattered off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard.. |  |
| (1841) Poe publishes world’s first detective story | |
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A story concerning two grisly murders committed in a windowless room, and featuring a large ape-like creature wielding a razor, Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’ will inspire the creation of future fictional detectives such as Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot. . |
| (1902) Madame and Monsieur Curie isolate radioactive radium | |
| The married scientific research team of Marie and Pierre Curie chemically isolate one-tenth gram of pure radium chloride, an element not naturally occurring in isolation. Their work with radium and radioactivity will lead to the first Nobel Prize awarded to a woman.. |  |
| (1939) Billie Holiday records landmark civil rights song | |
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One of the first songs to explicitly call out the murderous brutality suffered by African Americans in the Jim Crow South, the painful and poetic ‘Strange Fruit’ is recorded by Billie Holiday. A relatively small jazz label, Commodore, records it after Holiday’s label, Columbia Records, refuses to.. |
| (1999) Columbine High School shooting shocks a nation | |
| Two students enter a Colorado high school armed with semi-automatic handguns, carbine rifles, and explosives, and begin a massacre that leaves 13 people dead and 21 wounded. The incident will be one of the deadliest modern-day mass shootings. . |  |