Today in History

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1970: Apollo 13 blasts off

NASA today launched Apollo 13, America's third manned moon-landing mission, from Cape Kennedy, Florida. NASA officials had almost postponed the mission when crew member Thomas Mattingly was exposed to the German measles. Instead, Mattingly was replaced less than 24 hours before lift-off by backup astronaut John Swigert, Jr.

"The target for man's third lunar mission is the mountainous Fra Mauro region where the astronauts hope to find rocks dating perhaps five billion years to the beginning of the moon. In the most difficult space maneuver ever attempted, [James] Lovell and [Fred] Haise are to steer their lunar lander toward a precision touchdown in a narrow valley surrounded by high hills, ridges, craters and rocks as big as automobiles," reported The News on April 12, 1970.

NOTE: Two days after the launch, an oxygen tank on the spacecraft exploded, forcing the astronauts to abandon their mission. Although they had only a small supply of oxygen, water and power, the Apollo 13 crew managed to safely return to Earth in the spaceship's lunar module.

1968: Johnson signs Civil Rights Act

President Lyndon Baines Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1968 today, which prohibited housing discrimination and provided protection for civil rights workers. "President Johnson, voicing outrage at the slaying of Dr. Martin Luther King and the violence that followed it, has signed an historic open-housing bill," informed The Daily Times-News on April 12, 1968. "The new law will prohibit discrimination in 80 per cent of all housing sales and rentals by 1970, but much of it takes effect next Jan. 1. The law also makes it a federal crime to use threats or violence to interfere with anyone seeking to exercise his civil rights and prohibits the crossing of state lines with intent to incite rioting."

1961: Nazi war crime trial begins

Adolf Eichmann, a high-ranking Nazi accused of playing a central role in the Holocaust, went on trial in an Israeli courthouse today. "After 16 years in hiding and in jail, Eichmann walked into public view when he entered the bullet proof glass defendant's box in the court room at 8:58 a.m.," reported the Middlesboro Daily News on April 11, 1961. "Except for a moment of apparent nervousness as he first looked about the court room through heavy horn-rimmed glasses, the accused mass murderer was still very much the Nazi colonel." NOTE: Eichmann was later convicted on all charges and was hanged in a prison near Tel Aviv.

1947: Dodgers sign Jackie Robinson

Jackie Robinson made history today when the president of the Brooklyn Dodgers, Branch Rickey, announced the purchase of his contract from the Montreal Royals. The purchase made Robinson the first African American to play baseball in the major leagues, breaking baseball's color barrier. "He is confident he can make good in the majors, thus opening the door for others of his race to compete on equal footing as they do in boxing, college and professional football, college and professional basketball and as jockeys," explained The Fresno Bee on April 11, 1947. NOTE: Robinson went on to appear in six World Series with the Dodgers and was named Rookie of the Year in 1947.

1945: U.S. forces liberate Buchenwald

United States forces liberated a concentration camp in Buchenwald, Germany today. "Twenty thousand inmates of one of the most dreaded of German concentration camps were free today after its capture by Berlin-bound American troops unfolded a story of horror dating from the inception of the Nazi regime in 1933," reported The Lowell Sun on April 14, 1945. "In those years approximately 200,000 persons doomed to sadistic death or a living hell passed through the gates of the electrically-charged barbed-wire enclosure as infamous as the camps at Dachau and Oranienburg."

1899: Treaty ends Spanish-American war

"The final ceremony in the re-establishment of peaceful relations between the United States and Spain took place at the White House at 2 o'clock this afternoon, when the president and Ambassador Cambon, the latter acting for Spain, exchanged ratifications of the treaty of peace," informed The News on April 11, 1899. NOTE: The treaty marked the formal end to the Spanish-American war, and in conjunction with the peace agreement, Spain ceded several of its colonies to the United States, including the island of Puerto Rico.