Once Upon A Time – April 12 – 1961 – Soviet Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin Becomes 1st Human To Travel Into Space And Orbit Earth

1204 4th Crusade occupies and plunders Constantinople

1811 1st US colonists on Pacific coast arrive at Cape Disappointment, Washington

1861 Fort Sumter in South Carolina is attacked by the Confederacy, beginning the American Civil War

1872 Jesse James’ gang robs a bank of $1,500 in Columbia, Kentucky, 1 dead

1927 Kuomintang leader Chiang Kai-shek begins counter revolution in Shanghai

1961 Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin becomes the first human to travel into space and orbit Earth, aboard the Vostok 1 spacecraft

Historical Events Today Events in 2023

Today in Film & TV

1932 “Grand Hotel” directed by Edmund Goulding and starring Greta Garbo and John Barrymore premieres in New York, includes the line “I want to be alone” (Best Picture/Production 1932)

Today in Music

1954 Bill Haley and the Comets record “Rock Around Clock”

Today in Sport

1980 US Olympic Committee endorses a boycott of the Moscow Olympic games

More Facts…

1937 Sir Frank Whittle ground-tests the first jet engine designed to power an aircraft at Rugby, England.

1988 Harvard University patents a genetically engineered mouse (1st for animal life)

Famous Weddings

1385 Duke of Burgundy, John the Fearless, marries Margaret of Bavaria in political double wedding with his sister

1385 Willem van Oostervant of Bavaria weds Philip the Bold’s daughter Marguerite (10)

1583 William of Orange marries Louise de Coligny