April 11th What Happened on the day you were born on This day in History
11th April 1951 : President Harry S Truman has fired General Douglas MacArthur as commander of United Nations and US forces in the Far East after General Douglas MacArthur has made public statements calling for an attack on mainland China unless Communist forces laid down their arms in Korea. The president is still hoping for a peaceful settlement.
11th April 1921 : Iowa becomes the first state to impose a cigarette tax
11th April 1929 : US Federal Troops take 100 Mexican prisoners captive on raid on General J Gonzalo Insurgent Encampment on the Border of Escabar near Naco Senora
11th April 1936 : Barbershop quartets across the country breathe a sigh of relief when the SPEBSQSA (Society for the Preservation and Encouragement of Barber Shop Quartet Singing in America) is created.
11th April 1938 : Japanese Fleet Spotted off the Philippines near Davan , US mistakenly said they believed they were Fishing Trawlers
11th April 1945 : United States forces liberated a concentration camp in Buchenwald, Germany today. Over Twenty thousand inmates were free today after its capture. Since 1933 , approximately 200,000 persons doomed to sadistic death or a living hell passed through the gates of the electrically-charged barbed-wire enclosure as infamous as the camps at Dachau and Oranienburg.
11th April 1947 : Jackie Robinson took to the field for the Brooklyn Dodgers in an exhibition match between the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Yankees becoming the first Negro to play in Major league baseball. On April 15th he takes to the field for Brooklyn Dodgers on opening day when the Dodgers defeat the Boston Braves, 5-3
11th April 1953 : 1000 Inmates from Stillwater Prison start fires, smash windows and shout profanities at the guards during a prolonged prison riot.
11th April 1957 : The British government allows the island colony of Singapore to govern itself under a new constitution agreed in London. Great Britain will continue to control external affairs and defense.
11th April 1961 : Adolf Eichmann , went on trial in an Israeli courthouse today. accused of mass murder and the helping in the death of millions of Jews in German Concentration Camps during World War II.
11th April 1965 : The Palm Sunday Tornadoes of 1965 strike Indiana and the surrounding states. In Indiana alone, 1200 people were injured and over 135 were killed
11th April 1968 : President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1968 , prohibiting housing discrimination and providing protection for civil rights workers. President Johnson, voicing outrage at the slaying of Dr. Martin Luther King and the violence that followed it, has signed an historic open-housing bill, The new law will prohibit discrimination in 80 per cent of all housing sales and rentals by 1970.
11th April 1970 : NASA launched Apollo 13 , America's third manned moon-landing mission, from Cape Kennedy, Florida today, Two days after launch, an oxygen tank on the spacecraft exploded, forcing the astronauts to abandon their mission. Although they had only a small supply of oxygen, water and power, the Apollo 13 crew managed to safely return to Earth in the spaceship's lunar module.
11th April 1979 : Tanzanian backed rebels seize control in Uganda and the Ugandan dictator Idi Amin is deposed as president of Uganda and flees to Libya.
11th April 1980 : The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission issued regulations prohibiting sexual harassment in the workplace of workers by supervisors.
11th April 1981 : The arrest of a black man in Brixton, South London leads to mass rioting with youths taking to the streets throwing petrol bombs, bottles and bricks at police, looting local shops and setting fire to cars. A local school and two pubs have also been torched by the rioters and firefighters are unable to reach fires due to the threat of attacks. The Police armed with riot shields and batons charge the rioters and more than 50 police are injured and at least 20 have been arrested.
11th April 1982 : Britain imposed a Naval Blockade with a 200 mile Radius on the Faulkland Isles today and warned that Argentina Ships within that would be sunk as Hostile following the invasion of the Faulklands by Argentina , both sides are now preparing for War
11th April 1990 : Customs officers in Middlesbrough seize the barrel ( 130 feet long )of a "supergun" on a ship bound for Iraq. A gun barrel of this length would give a "supergun" the range of approximately 600 miles.
11th April 1994 : Serbia facing additional air strikes from US on 5 additional Muslim Enclaves and to try to force the Serbs back into peace talks
11th April 1996 : Israel has carried out a series of air strikes on Hezbollah targets in the Lebanese capital, Beirut. The assaults on Hezbollah targets in "Operation Grapes of Wrath" are in retaliation for rocket attacks two days ago on northern Israeli settlements.
11th April 2001 : China agrees to free crew members of an American spy plane that had collided with a Chinese fighter plane, killing its pilot.
11th April 2003 : American troops take control of the northern Iraqi city of Mosul without a fight.
11th April 2006 : Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced that his country had succeeded in enriching uranium on a small scale for the first time
11th April 2006 : Following Ariel Sharon's stroke on January 4, 2006 where he fell into a coma the acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has been performing his duties and on 11th April Israel's Cabinet declared Prime Minister Ariel Sharon permanently incapacitated, officially ending his five-year tenure. As of April 2008, he is still in a persistent vegetative state.
