April 7
1862
Gen. Ulysses S. Grant defeated the Confederates at the battle of Shiloh.
1913
5,000 suffragists march to the Capitol in Washington, D.C., seeking the vote for women.
1927
U.S. secretary of commerce Herbert Hoover’s Washington speech was seen and heard in New York in the first long-distance television transmission.
1943
LSD was first produced at Sandoz Laboratories in Basil, Switzerland, by Albert Hoffman.
1948
The World Health Organization, a UN agency, was founded.
1949
Rodgers’ and Hammerstein’s Pulitzer Prize winner, South Pacific opened on Broadway.
1994
Hutu extremists in Rwanda began massacring ethnic Tutsis and politically moderate Hutus. In 100 days of killing, an estimated 800,000 are murdered.
2003
Cécile de Brunhoff, the creator of Babar the elephant, died.
2009
Vermont becomes the fourth U.S. state to legalize same-sex marriage, just days after Iowa becomes the third.
Birthdays
William Wordsworth
English poet (1770)
Billie Holiday
singer (1915)
Ravi Shankar
sitarist and composer (1920)
Francis Ford Coppola
filmmaker (1939)
Gerhard Schröder
chancellor of Germany (1944)
Jackie Chan
actor (1954)
Russell Crowe
actor (1964)