This Week in History – April 11-April 17
April 11, 1836 – George Mueller, leader of the Plymouth Brethren movement, opens his famous orphanage on Wilson Street in Bristol in South West England. By 1875, Mueller’s orphanage provided care for over 2,000 children, a work sustained not by regular fundraising but by thousands of answers to prayer.
April 12, 1861 – The American Civil War began as Confederate troops under the command of General Pierre Beauregard opened fire at 4:30 a.m. on Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina.
April 12, 1944 – The National Religious Broadcasters Association is founded in Columbus, OH.
April 12, 1955 – The polio vaccine by Jonas Salk, announced to be “safe and effective,” is given full approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Prior to the vaccine, deaths in the U.S. alone numbered in the thousands, but paralysis was the primary fear. W.H.O estimates there were between 10 and 20 million people worldwide that suffered paralysis from the polio pandemic of the first half of the 20th century. As with all pandemics and epidemics that had gone before, there were no government-imposed lockdowns or restrictions in the U.S—the People avoided the disease by self-limiting their presence at various public gatherings until Salk’s vaccine, which also was never mandated.
April 12, 1961 – Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space. He traveled aboard the Soviet spacecraft Vostok I to an altitude of 187 miles (301 kilometers) above the earth and completed a single orbit in a flight lasting 108 minutes.
April 12, 1999 – Democrat President Bill Clinton is cited for contempt of court for giving “intentionally false statements” in a sexual harassment civil lawsuit.
April 13, 1742 – Handel’s famous oratorio Messiah premieres in Dublin’s Fishamble Street Musick Hall and is met with critical praise.
April 13, 1743 – Thomas Jefferson was born in Albermarle County, Virginia. He was an author, inventor, lawyer, politician, architect, and one of the finest minds of the 1700’s. He authored the American Declaration of Independence and later served as the 3rd U.S. President from 1801 to 1809.
April 13, 1824 – Death in England of Christian poet Jane Taylor, just forty years old. One of her best known hymns has the words “Ye tempting sweets, forbear, Ye dearest idols, fall, My heart ye can not share, For Jesus must have all.” She also wrote the nursery rhyme “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.”
April 13, 1986 – Pope John Paul II visits a Jewish synagogue in Rome, marking the first such visit by a pope in recorded history.
April 14, 1805 – Pine City, MN, records a high temperature of 108 degrees.
April 14, 1828 – The first dictionary of American-style English was published by Noah Webster as the American Dictionary of the English Language.
April 14, 1861 – Minnesota is the first state to offer troops at the outbreak of the Civil War.
April 14, 1865 – President Abraham Lincoln was shot and mortally wounded while watching a performance of Our American Cousin at Ford’s Theater in Washington. He was taken to a nearby house and died the following morning at 7:22 a.m.
April 14, 1902 – J. C. Penney opens his first store, The Golden Rule Store, in Kemmerer, WY , committing himself to the highest ethical standards. He seeks to run his business on biblical principles: giving each customer only quality merchandise at a fair price, taking no more than a fair profit, and transacting business for cash only.
April 14, 1986 – U.S. warplanes, on orders from President Ronald Reagan, bombed the Libyan cities of Tripoli and Benghazi in retaliation for the April 5th terrorist bombing of a discotheque in West Berlin in which two American soldiers were killed. The raid on Libya and Benghazi effectively ended anti-U.S. terrorism and anti-U.S. rhetoric by Libya’s head of state, Muammar Qaddafi, until Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton inflamed Islamic politics in the region almost 30 years later.
April 14, 1993 – Death from lymphoma of Joseph C. Wong, Chinese-born pastor in Minnesota, founder of the North Central Chinese Winter Conference, and general secretary of the Chinese Christian Mission. He once wrote “The Gospel is not designed to be expressed by the culture in which it blossoms, but its purpose is to transform the very culture in which it blooms.”
April 15, 1452 – Italian painter and scholar Leonardo da Vinci is born in Florence, Italy. Among his most famous works are the Virgin of the Rocks, The Last Supper, and St. John the Baptist.
April 15, 1817 – The first American school for the deaf was founded by Christians Thomas H. Gallaudet and Laurent Clerc in Hartford, CT.
April 15, 1878 – Harley Procter introduces Ivory Soap.
April 15, 1892 – Christian Dutch writer Corrie ten Boom is born. With her family, ten Boom was sent to a Nazi concentration camp for hiding Jewish refugees in her home during World War II (an act dramatized in the 1971 film, The Hiding Place). She also died on this date in 1983.
April 15, 1912 – In the icy waters off Newfoundland, the luxury liner Titanic with 2,224 persons on board sank at 2:27 a.m. after striking an iceberg just before midnight. Over 1,500 persons drowned while 700 were rescued by the liner Carpathia which arrived about two hours after Titanic went down.
April 15, 1916 – The first regulated trout season opens in Minnesota.
April 15, 1944 – The Farmer-Labor Party and Minnesota’s Democratic Party agree to merge at their joint convention, and a slate of candidates is quickly chosen to meet the filing deadline two days later. The Democratic-Farmer-Labor (DFL) Party is unique to Minnesota. However, the interests of farmers and rank-and-file labor have since been all but abandoned in favor of the interests of environmental extremism and globalist billionaires.
April 15, 1955 – Ray Kroc opens first McDonald’s fast food restaurant in Des Plaines, IL.
April 16, 1521 – German reformer Martin Luther arrives at the Diet of Worms, convinced he would get the hearing he requested in 1517 to discuss the abuse of indulgences and his “95 Theses.” He was astounded when he discovered it would not be a debate, but rather a judicial hearing to see if he wished to recant his words. In defending himself the next day, Luther said, “Unless I can be instructed and convinced with evidence from the Holy Scriptures…then I cannot and will not recant, because it is neither safe nor wise to act against conscience. Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me! Amen!” When negotiations over the next few days failed to reach any compromise, Luther was condemned.
April 16, 1705 – Queen Anne of England knights Isaac Newton—a Christian mathematician, physicist, astronomer, theologian, and author—who is widely recognized as one of the greatest mathematicians, most influential scientists of all time, and a key figure in the Scientific Revolution of the 17th century.
April 16, 1867 – American aviation pioneer Wilbur Wright was born in Millville, IN. On December 17, 1903, along with his brother Orville, the Wright brothers made the world’s first successful flight of a motor driven aircraft. It flew for 12 seconds and traveled 120 feet. By 1905, they had built a plane that could stay airborne for half an hour, performing figure eights and other aerial maneuvers. Wilbur died of typhoid fever in 1912.
April 16, 1901 – While in Seattle on business, St. Paul rail tycoon James J. Hill learns that Edward H. Harriman, in New York, is buying up shares of the Northern Pacific Railroad, trying to wrest control of the company from Hill. Hill orders all trains to give right of way to his express train and heads east for New York, making the 1,800-mile trip from Seattle to St. Paul in 45 hours and 50 minutes, 21 hours under the average time. From there Hill continues to New York and thwarts the deal. During the buying frenzy, Northern Pacific shares rise from under $100 to a peak of $1,000 on May 9.
April 16, 1927 – The Mesaba Railway Coach Company stops providing streetcar service between the towns of Hibbing and Gilbert.
April 17, 1492 – Spain’s King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella give Christopher Columbus a commission to seek a westward ocean passage to Asia. Columbus saw himself as a “Christ-bearer” who would carry Christ across the ocean to people who had never heard the Gospel.
April 17, 1837 – American financier John Pierpont (J.P.) Morgan was born in Hartford, CT. He displayed extraordinary management skills, reorganizing and consolidating a number of failing companies to make them profitable. His extensive interests included banking, steel, railroads, and art collecting. In 1895, he aided the failing U.S. Treasury by carrying out a private bond sale among fellow financiers to replenish the treasury.
April 17, 1937 – With Mussolini’s troops occupying Ethiopia, Sudan Interior Mission missionaries, who had started a small church among the previously devil-worshiping Wallamo tribe, are forced to leave the country. “We knew God was faithful,” one missionary wrote. “But still we wondered—if we ever come back, what will we find?” The missionaries returned in July 1943 to find that, despite severe persecution by Italian soldiers, the Christian community had grown from 48 members to 18,000.
April 17, 1989 – The Polish labor union Solidarity was granted legal status after nearly a decade of struggle, paving the way for the downfall of the Polish Communist Party. In elections that followed, Solidarity candidates won 99 out of 100 parliamentary seats and eventually forced the acceptance of a Solidarity government led by Lech Walesa.