April 1st to 30th Major and Important news items from each day click link to find more news for that day
1918 Royal Air force is Founded
1946 Hawaii Earthquake and Tsunami
1970 Cigarette Advertising Banned in US
1999 Eleven countries in the European Union adopted the Euro as a common currency
2003 Jessica Lynch is rescued in Iraq
1916 - 1918 World War I Battle Of The Somme
1932 Charles Lindbergh, whose son was kidnapped paid $50,000 ransom
1972 Charlie Chaplin returns to the United States
1977 Red Rum the diminutive horse with the heart of a champion wins the English Grand National for a record third time
1980 Windfall Act on Oil Industries High Profits
1982 Argentina invades Falklands Islands
1992 Mob boss John Gotti often referred to as "The Teflon Don" Convicted for first time
2005 Pope John Paul II Dies
2009 G20 Summit Over Global Financial Problems
1860 Pony Express Service Starts
1974 148 tornadoes hit North America from Georgia to Canada within 16 hours
1994 Civil War breaks out in Rwanda
2010 Apple Releases Ipad
1906 Mount Vesuvius erupts
1949 The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is established
1964 The Beatles hold an unprecedented record of twelve positions on Billboard Hot 100 singles chart
1968 Martin Luther King Jr. Murdered
1973 New York's World Trade Center Completed
2006 Saddam Hussein Charged With Genocide
1933 President Franklin Roosevelt signs "United States Executive Order 6102" Gold Compulsorily Purchased
1968 Race Riots Follow Assassination of Martin Luther King
1969 One of the greatest co-ordinated demonstrations in modern times starts on this weekend against US involvement in Vietnam with demonstrations in New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and other major cities.
1976 American billionaire Howard Hughes dies at the age of 70.
1987 Fox Broadcasting Co. made its prime-time TV debut
1994 Kurt Cobain lead singer, guitarist, and songwriter for the rock band Nirvana commits suicide
2010 Explosion at the Upper Big Branch Mine in Montcoal, Raleigh County, West Virginia
1896 Modern Olympics Games Reborn
1917 America enters World War I
1941 Germany invades Yugoslavia
1933 On April 7th 1933 beer goes on sale again in 19 of the 48 states and the District of Columbia .
1948 The World Health Organization (WHO) established
1949 Rodgers and Hammerstein debut their hit musical "South Pacific" on Broadway
Born in April
Alec Guinness
Born: 2nd April 1914 Paddington, London, England, UK
Marlon Brando
Born: April 3rd 1924 Omaha, Nebraska, U.S.
Spencer Tracy
Born: Spencer Bonaventure Tracy 5th April 1900 Milwaukee, Wisconsin, United States
Billie Holiday
Born: Elinore Harris 7th April 1915 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.
David Letterman
Born: David Michael Letterman 12th April 1947 Indianapolis, Indiana, United States
Victoria Beckham
Born: Victoria Caroline Adams 17th April 1974 Harlow, Essex, England
Anthony Quinn
Born: Antonio Rodolfo Quinn Oaxaca April April 21, 1915 Chihuahua, Chihuahua, Mexico
Jack Nicholson
Born: John Joseph Nicholson April 22, 1937 New York, United States
Shirley Temple
Born: Shirley Jane Temple April April 23rd, 1928 Santa Monica, California, U.S.
Barbra Streisand
Born: Barbara Joan Streisand April 24th, 1942 Brooklyn, New York, USA
Ulysses S. Grant
Born: April 27, 1822, Point Pleasant, Ohio
Alistair MacLean
Born: 30th April 1926, Des Moines, Iowa
1904 Long Acre Square in Manhattan, New York, was renamed Times Square
1958 10,000 protesters arrive in Trafalgar Square, London as part of the CND / Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
1974 Hank Aaron of the Atlanta Braves hits his 715th career home run
1992 The satirical British magazine Punch publishes it's final issue
1865 Robert E. Lee surrenders
1940 Germany invades Norway and Denmark
1942 Philippines Surrender To Japanese
1942 The Japanese forced 75,000 captured American and Filipino soldiers on the Bataan Death March.
1959 America's First Astronauts Introduced
1925 "The Great Gatsby" F. Scott Fitzgerald, is published
1970 Beatles Break Up
1971 US table tennis team begins a week long visit to the People's Republic of China ( Ping Pong Diplomacy )
1957 Singapore gains self rule from the British
1965 The Palm Sunday Tornadoes strike Indiana and the surrounding states
1968 President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1968
1981 Brixton Riots London, England
1945 Franklin D. Roosevelt Dies Vice President Harry S. Truman becomes the President of The United States
1954 Bill Haley and the Comets, record "Rock Around the Clock"
1961 Yuri Gagarin Becomes First Man in Space
1981 First Space Shuttle Columbia Launched
1992 Euro Disney opened in Marne-La-Vallee, Paris, France
2001 Cincinnati Riots
1925 The Butler Act becomes law
1936 Work on the Boulder Dam is completed
1969 The Love Bug, a popular Disney movie, was released
1996 Dunblane Massacre in kindergarten in Scotland
1970 Apollo 13 Explosion
1997 Tiger Woods at 21 years old became the youngest ever golfer to win the Masters Tournament
1999 Jack Kervorkian ( Assisted Suicide Practitioner) was sentenced in Pontiac, Mich., to 10 to 25 years in prison
1865 President Lincoln is shot and mortally wounded by John Wilkes Booth
1912 Titanic stikes an iceburg and sinks on her maiden voyage from Southampton to New York
1935 Twenty of the worst "Black Blizzards" that occurred throughout the Dust Bowl years happen on a single day often referred to as "Black Sunday"
We spent many hours researching cost of living information for each year and I created this page after being asked a number of times about why I did not include current prices alongside our cost of living information for each year and thought this was the easiest way to make the information available. Includes Average Cost of New Home, Average Wages, New Car cost, Gallon of Gas, and a 1 lb Hamburger Meat, 1920 to 2023.
Farm Stake Tonka TruckManufacturer: Tonka
Price: $3.98
Realistic in every detail... right down to its rear wheels with mud flaps! Small-fry farmers find it ideal to haul any load. The stake panels come out for the big jobs. Made of tough, heavy gauge metal.
1953 The Queen launches the Royal Yacht Britannia
1974 Israeli and Syrian troops continue fighting along the Golan Heights
2007 Killing spree at Virginia Tech
1961 1,500 Cuban exiles supported by the US government invade the Bay of Pigs
1964 The Ford Motor Co. unveiled its new Mustang model at the New York World's Fair
1906 Earthquake, measuring 7.8 on the Richter scale, shook the town of San Francisco
1923 first baseball game is played at Yankee Stadium in New York City
1956 Grace Kelly Marries Prince Rainier of Monaco
1983 Car Bomb US Embassy Lebanon
2003 Scott Peterson Arrested
1897 The Worlds oldest annual marathon run in Boston, Massachusetts, United States races for the first time.
1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
1993 Waco Cult Assault
1995 Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building Bombing in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
1972 Antiwar demonstrations draw 100,000 demonstrators in cities across America
1999 Columbine High School Shooting
2010 Deepwater Horizon explodes in the Gulf of Mexico
1955 Fleet Street Newspaper Worker Strike
1989 Student Protest Tiananmen Square
1889 Oklahoma Land Rush
1970 Earth Day was observed for the first time
1932 The New Royal Shakespeare Theatre opens in Shakespears's birthplace of Stratford-upon-Avon
1968 Decimal coins introduced in UK as part of decimalisation
1979 Oil Company Windfall Profits Tax
1984 Singer Marvin Gaye Shot by his father
1985 The Coca-Cola Company announced it has changed its formula for Coke and will known as New Coke
2003 US troops rescue Army Pfc. Jessica Lynch from a hospital in Nasiriyah, Iraq
1954 Mau Mau Rebels Rounded Up By British Troops in Kenya
1968 Student Occupation Columbia University
1980 US Embassy Hostage Crisis in Iran Rescue Attempt Failure
1990 Space Shuttle Discovery launched the Hubble Space Telescope into orbit
Barbie Fashion DollsManufacturer: Mattel
Price: $1.29
These Images are from 1960 sorry could not find any from 1959 the year Barbie Came out but thought I must include Barbie for 1959.
From 1920s Appliances Page
Late Decade Electric Washing Machine
Price: $81.50For the latest and best in washing machine design, this easy to move washing machine features the latest gyrator technology with no center post where clothes can be damaged, the attached wringer is made from the finest semi soft rubber.
1925 Frigidaire
Price: $285.00I included this Frigidaire Electric as the final Electric Item from the Twenties as it was significant in many ways 1. It was made by General Motors not General Electric. 2. The cost was pretty high and I suspect out of most people's reach and 3. It was sold by a dedicated salesman who visited your home rather than through a shop etc.
1956 Elvis Presley has his first number one hit with "Heartbreak Hotel"
1953 Two Cambridge University scientists "James D Watson and Francis Crick" publish an article in Nature Magazine explaining the structure of DNA
1955 The St. Lawrence Seaway opened to ocean vessels seeking passage from Montreal to ports in the USA on the Great Lakes .
2003 The Human Genome Project to determine the sequence of chemical base pairs which make up DNA of the human genome consisting of 20,000-25,000 genes started in 1990 is published.
1927 The Mississippi makes over 150,000 homeless
1986 An explosion and fire at the No. 4 reactor of Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine resulted in a nuclear meltdown
2009 The U.S. declares a public health emergency ( Swine Flu )
1953 President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed Executive Order 10450: Hiring and Firing rules for Government Employment. Homosexuality, moral perversion, and communism were categorized as national security threats
1994 Nelson Mandela voted as South Africa President
1947 Kon-Tiki Expedition Starts
2004 Abu Ghraib Prisoner Abuse Scandal breaks on CBS' "60 Minutes II."
1922 Lower Louisiana Floods
1945 Dachau concentration camp was liberated
1970 US Troops Invade Cambodia
1952 Diary of Anne Frank Published
1789 George Washington Inaugurated as the First President of the United States
1939 New York World's Fair
1945 Hitler Commits Suicide
1975 South Vietnam Surrenders
1980 Terrorist group takes Iran embassy hostages in London