Back in Time – This Day in History – April 20

1959: Dolly Parton

By Mick Ferris, Press Association, AP, UPI, calendar.songfacts.com, classicbands.com and thisdayinmusic.com

1611: First known performance of Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” at the Globe Theatre, London.

1657: Battle in Santa Cruz Bay, Tenerife: The English fleet under Robert Blake sinks the Spanish silver fleet.

1759: The composer Handel is buried in Westminster Abbey.

1785: Thomas Warton is appointed Poet Laureate by George III.

1792: France declares war on Austria and Prussia, beginning the French Revolutionary Wars.

1809: Napoleon and French forces defeat Austria at the Battle of Abensberg in Bavaria.

1862: First pasteurization test completed by Louis Pasteur and Claude Bernard.

1871: The U.S. Congress passed the Third Force Act, popularly known as the Ku Klux Klan Act, authorizing President Ulysses S. Grant to declare martial law, impose heavy penalties against terrorist organizations and use military force to suppress the Klan.

1887: Georges Bouton wins the world’s first motor race, held in France, on a steam-powered quadricycle.

1889: Birth of Adolf Hitler in Austria-Hungary.

1893: Birth of silent film comedian and director Harold Lloyd.

1898: The United States moved closer to war with Spain as President William McKinley signed a congressional resolution passed the day before recognizing Cuban independence and authorizing U.S. military intervention to achieve that goal.

1901: A world-record crowd for a football match attended Crystal Palace for the FA Cup final between Sheffield United and Tottenham Hotspur. The official attendance was 110.802 although thousands more gained entrance to witness a 2-2 draw. The replay, played a week later at Bolton’s Burnden Park, saw Southern League Spurs become the only non-league side to win the FA Cup since the Football League was founded in 1888 with a 3-1 victory.

1902: Marie Curie and Pierre Curie isolated radioactive radium salts from the mineral pitchblende in their laboratory in Paris.

1912: Death of author Bram Stoker aged 64.

1914: The Ludlow Massacre took place when the Colorado National Guard opened fire on a tent colony of striking miners; about 20 (accounts vary) strikers, women and children died.

1919: King Nicholas of Montenegro abdicates under duress.

1920: The Balfour Declaration is recognised, making Palestine a British Mandate.

1934: Heinrich Himmler becomes inspector of the Prussian secret state police.

1938: “Olympia,” Leni Riefenstahl’s documentary about the 1936 Berlin Olympic games, was first shown in Nazi Germany.

1940: The first electron microscope demonstrated in Philadelphia by RCA.

1945: Soviet artillery begins shelling Berlin.

1948: United Auto Workers president Walter P. Reuther was shot and seriously wounded at his home in Detroit.

1953: The US and Korea swap sick and wounded prisoners of war at Panmunjon.

1957: Elvis Presley started an eight week run at No.1 on the US singles chart with 'All Shook Up.' It went on to be the biggest single of 1957 selling over 2 million copies.

1959: Goldband Records released 'Puppy Love' by a 13-year old Dolly Parton, a song that was recorded two years earlier when she was just eleven years old. The song didn't chart, (later to be a hit for Donny Osmond ).

1961: Radio Havana announced that seven members of the group which attempted an overthrow of Fidel Castro's communist government in Cuba had been executed. It raised the number of executions over the previous three days to 24.

1961: UK TOP 20 : Singles chart:

1. Elvis Presley - Wooden Heart

2. Allisons - Are You Sure

3. Bobby Darin - Lazy River

4. The Everly Brothers - Walk Right Back/Ebony Eyes

5. Matt Monro - My Kind Of Girl

6. Ferrante And Teicher - Theme From 'Exodus'

7. Cliff Richard - Theme For A Dream

8. The Shadows - FBI

9. Anthony Newley - And The Heavens Cried

10. Temperance Seven - You're Driving Me Crazy

11. Connie Francis - Where The Boys Are/Baby Roo

12. Marcels - Blue Moon

13. Lonnie Donegan presents Kenny Ball And His Jazzmen - Samantha

14. Brook Brothers - War Paint

15. Cliff Richard - Gee Whiz It's You

16. Shirelles - Will You Love Me Tomorrow?

17. Johnny Dankworth - African Waltz

18. Adam Faith - Who Am I?/This Is It

19. Ramrods - Riders In The Sky

20. String-A-Longs - Wheels

***

1963: Rick Nelson marries his first wife, Kris Harmon, daughter of college football legend Tom Harmon and sister of actor Mark Harmon, in Los Angeles. A pregnant Kris gives birth to daughter Tracy only six months later. The couple divorce in 1982.

1965: China offers North Vietnam military aid.

1966: During a 12-hour session at EMI Studion in Abbey Road, The Beatles work on And Your Bird Can Sing and George Harrison’s song Taxman for the Revolver album.

1968: In the defining moment of his political career, Conservative right-winger Enoch Powell makes his “rivers of blood” speech attacking the government’s immigration policy. On the same day, Apple Music runs advertisements soliciting tapes from unknown artists, offering financial grants as part of a deal to release records on The Beatles’ Apple label. Also, Deep Purple make their live debut at a gig in Tastrup, Denmark.

1969: Drummer Benny Benjamin of Motown house band The Funk Brothers, dies.

1971: The Supreme Court unanimously upheld the use of busing to achieve racial desegregation in schools. National Public Radio made its on-air debut with live coverage of a U.S. Senate hearing on the Vietnam War.

1972: Apollo 16’s lunar module, carrying astronauts John W. Young and Charles M. Duke Jr., landed on the moon.

1974: The conflict in Northern Ireland claims its 1,000th victim, a petrol station owner from County Fermanagh.

1974: US TOP 20: Album chart:

1. John Denver - John Denver's Greatest Hits

2. Paul McCartney And Wings - Band On The Run

3. Chicago - Chicago VII

4. MFSB - Love Is The Message

5. Soundtrack - The Sting

6. Mike Oldfield - Tubular Bells

7. Joni Mitchell - Court And Spark

8. The Doobie Brothers - What Were Once Vices Are Now Habits

9. Deep Purple - Burn

10. Grand Funk Railroad - Shinin' On

11. Elton John - Goodbye Yellow Brick Road

12. Maria Muldaur - Maria Muldaur

13. Stevie Wonder - Innervisions

14. Seals & Crofts - Unborn Child

15. Barbra Streisand - The Way We Were

16. Carly Simon - Hotcakes

17. Herbie Hancock - Head Hunters

18. Love Unlimited Orchestra - Rhapsody In White

19. Cat Stevens - Buddha And The Chocolate Box

20. Aretha Franklin - Let Me In Your Life

***

1976: The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that federal courts could order low-cost housing for minorities in a city's white suburbs to ease racial segregation.

1977: The U.S. Supreme Court, in Wooley v. Maynard, ruled 6-3 that car owners could refuse to display state mottoes on license plates, such as New Hampshire’s “Live Free or Die.”

1979: Lighting director Billy Duffy is killed in an accident during a Kate Bush concert in Southampton, when he falls 20ft through an open trap door on the stage.

1980: 84 year old George Burns, who starred in the movie Oh God with John Denver, became the oldest person to have a hit on the Billboard Hot 100 when 'I Wish I Was 18 Again' peaked at No.49. When asked if he wished he were 18 again, Burns replied "I wish I was 80 again." Before this, his most recent charting record had been a spoken word comedy routine with his wife and partner Gracie Allen in the summer of 1933.

1985: The charity record 'We Are The World' by USA For Africa was at No.1 on the UK singles chart. The US artists' answer to Band Aid had an all-star cast including Stevie Wonder, Tina Turner, Bruce Springsteen, Diana Ross, Bob Dylan, Daryl Hall, Huey Lewis, Ray Charles, Billy Joel and Paul Simon plus the composer's of the track, Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie.

1986: Following an absence of six decades, Russian-born pianist Vladimir Horowitz performed in the Soviet Union to a packed audience at the Grand Hall of the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow.

1988: Gunmen who had hijacked a Kuwait Airways jumbo jet were allowed safe passage out of Algeria under an agreement that freed the remaining 31 hostages and ended a 15-day siege in which two passengers were slain.

1991: Steve Marriott of The Small Faces and Humble Pie, dies in a fire at his home in Essex.

1992: A Concert For Life’ takes place at Wembley Stadium as a tribute to Queen singer Freddie Mercury and for AIDS awareness. Acts include the surviving members of Queen with bassist John Deacon making his final appearance on stage, Elton John, George Michael, David Bowie, Annie Lennox, Axl Rose and Slash.

1992: Madonna signed a multimillion-dollar deal with Time Warner to form an entertainment company that would make her the world's highest paid female pop star.

1992: Comedian Benny Hill died in his Greater London flat at age 68.

1998: German terrorist group the Red Army Faction announces its dissolution after 28 years.

1999: A shooting spree by American students Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold at Columbine High School in Denver leaves 15 dead including the two gunmen.

2002: Pop singer Alan Dale ("(The Gang that Sang) Heart of My Heart") dies at age 76. Also known for playing a rock 'n roll singer in the 1956 film Don't Knock the Rock, featuring Alan Freed, Little Richard, The Treniers, and Bill Haley & His Comets.

2003: U.S. Army forces took control of Baghdad from the Marines in a changing of the guard that thinned the military presence in the capital.

2006: Babyshambles singer Pete Doherty is arrested in east London on suspicion of drugs possession only hours after a court appearance.

2007: A man with a handgun barricades himself in NASA’s Johnson Space Centre in Houston, Texas before killing a male hostage and himself.

2008: Danica Patrick won the Indy Japan 300 auto race, becoming the first woman to win an IndyCar event.

2010: An explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil platform, leased by BP, killed 11 workers and caused a blow-out that began spewing an estimated 200 million gallons of crude into the Gulf of Mexico. (The well was finally capped nearly three months later.)

2011: Michel Martelly, an entertainer who performed under the name "Sweet Micky," was elected president of Haiti in a runoff with former first lady Mirlande Manigat.

2012: A Pakistani Bhoja Air jetliner on a flight from Karachi crashed 5 miles from Islamabad, killing all 127 people aboard. Bert Weedon, whose Play in a Day guitar guide set some of the biggest names in rock and roll on the road to greatness, died, aged 91.

2013: An earthquake in China's Sichuan province killed nearly 200 people and injured thousands.

2014: Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, American boxer whose murder convictions were overturned after 19 years in prison, dies of prostate cancer at 76.

2016: Comedian Victoria Wood dies of cancer aged 62.

2018: U.S. health officials told consumers to throw away any store-bought romaine lettuce and warned restaurants not to serve it amid an E. coli outbreak that had sickened more than 50 people in several states. Swedish DJ, remixer, and record producer, Avicii dies aged 28. On the same day, Arsène Wenger announces he will leave Arsenal at the end of the season after 22 years as manager.

BIRTHDAYS: 

Leslie Philips, actor, 97; 

George Takei, actor, 84; 

Johnny Tillotson, singer-songwriter, 83; 

Ryan (Charles) O’Neal, actor, 80; 

Michael Brandon, actor/director, 76; 

Jessica Lange, actress, 72; 

Veronica Cartwright, actress, 72; 

Andy Serkis, actor/director, 57; 

Crispin Glover, actor, 57; 

Mike Portnoy, drummer (Dream Theatre/Transatlantic), 54; 

Shemar Moore, actor, 51; 

Carmen Electra, actress/model, 49; 

Shay Given, former goalkeeper, 45; 

Miranda Kerr, model, 38.