On This Day

April 23

0303 - Perseus was arrested, tortured, and put to death.

1348 - The first English order of knighthood was founded. It was the Order of the Garter.

1500 - Pedro Cabal claimed Brazil for Portugal.

1521 - The Comuneros were crushed by royalist troops in Spain.

1759 - The British seized Basse-Terre and Guadeloupe in the Antilies from France.

1789 - U.S. President George Washington moved into Franklin House, New York. It was the first executive mansion.

1789 - "Courier De Boston" was published for the first time. It was the first Roman Catholic magazine in the U.S.

1826 - Missolonghi fell to Egyptian forces.

1861 - Arkansas troops seized Fort Smith.

1872 - Charlotte E. Ray became the first black woman lawyer.

1895 - Russia, France, and Germany forced Japan to return the Liaodong peninsula to China.

1896 - The Vitascope system for projecting movies onto a screen was demonstrated in New York City.

1900 - The word "hillbilly" was first used in print in an article in the "New York Journal." It was spelled "Hill-Billie".

1908 - U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt signed an act creating the U.S. Army Reserve.

1915 - The A.C.A. became the National Advisory Council on Aeronautics (NACA).

1920 - The Turkish Grand National Assembly had its first meeting in Ankara.

1921 - Charles Paddock set a record time in the 300-meter track event when he posted a time of 33.2 seconds.

1924 - The U.S. Senate passed the Soldiers Bonus Bill.

1940 - About 200 people died in a dance-hall fire in Natchez, MS.

1945 - The Soviet Army fought its way into Berlin.

1948 - Johnny Longden became the first race jockey to ride 3,000 career winners.

1950 - Chaing evacuated Hainan, leaving mainland China to Mao and the communists.

1951 - The Associated Press began use of the new service of teletype setting.

1954 - Hank Aaron of the Milwaukee Braves hit his first major-league home run on this day.

1963 - Pete Rose of the Cincinnati Reds got his first hit in the major leagues.

1964 - Ken Johnson of the Houston Astros threw the first no-hitter for a loss. The game was lost 1-0 to the Cincinnati Reds due to two errors.

1967 - The Soyuz 1 was launched by Russia.

1968 - The Methodist Church and the Evangelical United Brethren Church merged to form the United Methodist Church.

1969 - Sirhan Sirhan was sentenced to death for killing U.S. Senator Robert Kennedy. The sentence was later reduced to life in prison.

1971 - The Soyuz 10 was launched.

1985 - The Coca-Cola Company announced that it was changing its 99-year-old secret formula. New Coke was not successful, which resulted in the resumption of selling the original version.

1985 - The U.S. House rejected $14 million in aid to Nicaragua.

1987 - An apartment complex being built in Bridgeport, Connecticut collapsed. 28 construction workers were killed.

1988 - A U.S. federal law took effect that banned smoking on flights that were under two hours.

1988 - Kanellos Kanelopoulos set three world records for human-powered flight when he stayed in the air for 74 miles and four hours in his pedal-powered "Daedalus".

1989 - It was reported that 277 had been killed in the most recent rebel attack in Afghanistan.

1989 - Kareem Abdul-Jabbar played his last regular season game in the NBA.

1996 - A New York civil-court jury ordered Bernhard Goetz to pay $43 million to Darrell Cabey. Cabey was paralyzed when he was shot in subway car in 1984.

1996 - An auction of the late Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis' possessions began at Sotheby's in New York City.

1997 - An infertility doctor in California announced that a 63-year-old woman had given birth in late 1996. The child was from a donor egg. The woman is the oldest known woman to give birth.

1998 - James Earl Ray died, at age 70, while serving a life sentence for the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Ray had confessed to the crime and then later insisted he had been framed.

1999 - In Washington, DC, the heads of state and government of the 19 NATO nations celebrated the organization's 50th anniversary.

2003 - U.S. President Bush signed legislation that authorized the design change of the 5-cent coin (nickel) for release in 2004. It was the first change to the coin in 65 years. The change, to commemorate the 200th annivesary of the Louisiana Purchase, was planned to run for only two years before returning to the previous design.