Today in History April 1

1748 – Ruins of Pompeii found

1789 – US House of Representatives first full meeting in New York City

1826 – Samuel Mory patents internal combustion engine

1853 – Cincinnati became first US city to pay firefighters a regular salary

1854 – Hard Times begins serialisation in Charles Dickens magazine, Household Words.

1873 – British White Star steamship Atlantic sinks off Nova Scotia, 547 die

1889 – First dishwashing machine marketed in Chicago

1891 – London-Paris telephone connection opens

1891 – Paul Gauguin leaves Marseille for Tahiti

1929 – Louie Marx introduces Yo-Yo

1934 – Bonnie and Clyde kill two police officers

1935 – First radio tube made of metal announced, Schenectady, NY

1946 – 400,000 US mine workers strike

1954 – Earthquake and tsunami ravage Aleutians, 200 killed

1960 – Census determines the resident population of the United States to be 179,245,000

1963 – NYC’s newspapers resume publishing after a 114 day strike

1965 – Syncom 3, 1st geosynchronous communications satellite, passes from civilian to military control

1970 – John and Yoko release hoax they are having dual sex change operations

1970 – Richard Nixon signs bill limiting cigarette advertisements

1971 – United Kingdom lifts all restrictions on gold ownership

1973 – Japan allows its citizens to own gold

1973 – John and Yoko form a new country with no laws or boundaries, called Nutopia, its national anthem is silence

1974 – Ayatollah Khomeini calls for an Islamic Republic in Iran

1976 – Stephen Wozniak and Steven Jobs found Apple Computer

1979 – Iran proclaimed an Islamic Republic following fall of Shah

1980 – NYC’sTransit Worker Union 100 begins a strike lasting 11 days.

1986 – World oil prices dip below $10 a barrel

1990 – It becomes illegal in Salem Oregon to be within 2 feet of nude dancers

2001 – Same-sex marriage becomes legal in the Netherlands, which is the first country to allow it.

2002 – The Netherlands legalizes euthanasia, becoming the first nation in the world to do so.

1578 – William Harvey, England, physician (discovered blood circulation)

The Romans thought dark red blood came from the liver and bright red blood came from the heart and that these two organs produced our blood and that the blood was used by the other organs of the body.

Mr. Harvey, born in 1758, resurrected the earlier work of Christianismi Restitutio that was lost for a century and came to prove that the circulatory system was indeed a closed system. The heart was the pump moving blood around the body and distributing the supply of oxygen that the blood received in the lungs.

Otto Eduard Leopold, Prince of Bismarck, Duke of Lauenburg, known as Otto von Bismarck, was a conservative Prussian statesman who dominated German and European affairs from the 1860s until 1890 and was the first Chancellor of the German Empire between 1871 and 1890.

1873 – Sergei Rachmaninoff, Novgorod Russia, composer (Prelude in C# Minor)

1961 – Jim Bakker marries Tammy Faye

1917 – Scott Joplin, ragtime composer (The Entertainer), dies at 48

1965 – Helena Rubinstein, Polish-born American cosmetics manufacturer (b. 1870)

1976 – Max Ernst, German/French surrealist painter/sculptor, dies at 85

1991 – Martha Graham, US, choreographer (Appalachian Spring), dies at 96