Once Upon A Time – April 15 – 1877 – Boston-Somerville Installs World’s 1st Telephone In Massachusetts

297 The seven martyrs of Samos are incarcerated for refusing to offer pagan sacrifices and will remain imprisoned until late in June when they will be brought before the Emperor Maximian, reduced to little more than skeletons. Finally they will be crucified.

1755 Samuel Johnson’s “A Dictionary of the English Language” published in London

1861 Federal army (75,000 volunteers) mobilized by US President Abraham Lincoln (US Civil War)

1874 First ‘Impressionist’ exhibition opens in Paris, features Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, Pierre Auguste Renoir, Camille Pissarro and Berthe Morisot

1877 Boston-Somerville installs the world’s 1st telephone in Massachusetts

1912 RMS Titanic sinks at 2:27 AM off Newfoundland as the band plays on, with the loss of between 1,490 and 1,635 people

HISTORICAL EVENTS TODAY

TODAY IN FILM & TV

1990 “In Living Color” premieres on FOX-TV

TODAY IN MUSIC

1729 Johann Sebastian Bach’s “St Matthew Passion” premieres in Leipzig

TODAY IN SPORT

1896 1st modern Summer Olympic Games close in Athens, Greece; USA wins gold medal count, 11; Greece wins total medal count, 46; IOC has retroactively assigned gold, silver & bronze medals to 3 best placed athletes in each event

1947 Jackie Robinson becomes 1st African-American to play in US major league baseball (Dodgers)

1989 96 crushed to death and 766 injured at Hillsborough Football Stadium, Sheffield, England, during FA semi-final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest

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1960 Guy Carawan sings “We Shall Overcome” to a Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in Raleigh – popularising the song as a protest anthem

WOULD YOU BELIEVE THIS FACT ABOUT TODAY?

1955 Ray Kroc opens first McDonald’s Inc. fast food restaurant in Des Plaines, Illinois