Today in History

Today in History Today is Tuesday, April 6, the 96th day of 2021. There are 269 days left in the year. Today’s Highlight in History: On April 6, 1909, American explorers Robert E. Peary and Matthew A. Henson and four Inuits became the first men to reach the North Pole. On this date: In 1862, the Civil War Battle of Shiloh began in Tennessee as Confederate forces launched a surprise attack against Union troops, who beat back the Confederates the next day. In 1886, the Canadian city of Vancouver, British Columbia, was incorporated. In 1896, the first modern Olympic games formally opened in Athens, Greece. In 1917, the United States entered World War I as the House joined the Senate in approving a declaration of war against Germany that was then signed by President Woodrow Wilson. In 1945, during World War II, the Japanese warship Yamato and nine other vessels sailed on a suicide mission to attack the U.S. fleet off Okinawa; the fleet was intercepted the next day. In 1954, Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy, R-Wis., responding to CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow’s broadside against him on ‘œSee It Now,’� said in remarks filmed for the program that Murrow had, in the past, ‘œengaged in propaganda for Communist causes.’� In 1968, 41 people were killed by two consecutive natural gas explosions at a sporting goods store in downtown Richmond, Indiana. In 1974, Swedish pop group ABBA won the Eurovision Song Contest held in Brighton, England, with a performance of the song ‘œWaterloo.’� In 1985, William J. Schroeder (SHRAY’-dur) became the first artificial heart recipient to be discharged from the hospital as he moved into an apartment in Louisville, Kentucky. In 2008, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, speaking at a private fundraiser in San Francisco, spoke of voters in Pennsylvania’s Rust Belt communities who ‘œcling to guns or religion’� because of bitterness about their economic lot; Democratic rival Hillary Rodham Clinton seized on the comment, calling it ‘œelitist.’� In 2017, Don Rickles, the big-mouthed, bald-headed ‘œMr. Warmth’� whose verbal assaults endeared him to audiences and peers and made him the acknowledged grandmaster of insult comedy, died at his Beverly Hills home at age 90. In 2019, former South Carolina Democratic Sen. Ernest ‘œFritz’� Hollings, who had also helped guide the state through desegregation as governor, died at the age of 97; he was the eighth-longest-serving senator in U.S. history. Ten years ago: Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi appealed directly to President Barack Obama in a letter to end what Gadhafi called ‘œan unjust war’�; he also wished Obama good luck in his bid for re-election. Portugal became the third debt-stressed European country to need a bailout as the prime minister announced his country would request international assistance. Five years ago: A federal judge in Charleston, West Virginia, sentenced former coal executive Don Blankenship to a year in prison for his role in the 2010 Upper Big Branch Mine explosion that killed 29 men in America’s deadliest mining disaster in four decades; Blankenship maintained that he had committed no crime. Country giant Merle Haggard died in Palo Cedro, California, on his 79th birthday.