This thread is intended to be used for users to post important events which took place on this day in the past. It'll be a good thing for users browsing civfanatics to learn about events which took place in history, by learning some new ones every day.

If the thread is filled in every day, everyone of the most important, dated events in history should be on the thread. :)

Maybe this should be a sticky?!? :cool:

PS, the first post is not necessarily the form to follow, but contains alot of info just to get the thread started!

But Please put the date in the post title if you can, so that it is clear!

1896: OLYMPIAD "REBORN"

On April 6, 1896, the Olympic Games, a long-lost tradition of ancient Greece, are reborn in Athens 1,500 years after being banned by Roman Emperor Theodosius I. At the opening of the Athens Games, King Georgios I of Greece and a crowd of 60,000 spectators welcomed athletes from 13 nations to the international competition.

The first recorded Olympic Games were held at Olympia in the Greek city-state of Elis in 776 B.C., but it is generally accepted that the Olympics were at least 500 years old at that time. The ancient Olympics, held every four years, occurred during a religious festival honoring the Greek god Zeus. In the eighth century B.C., contestants came from a dozen or more Greek cities, and by the fifth century B.C. from as many as 100 cities from throughout the Greek empire. Initially, Olympic competition was limited to foot races, but later a number of other events were added, including wrestling, boxing, horse and chariot racing, and military competitions. The pentathlon, introduced in 708 B.C., consisted of a foot race, the long jump, discus and javelin throws, and wrestling. With the rise of Rome, the Olympics declined, and in 393 A.D. the Roman Emperor Theodosius I, a Christian, abolished the Games as part of his efforts to suppress paganism in the Roman Empire.

With the Renaissance, Europe began a long fascination with ancient Greek culture, and in the 18th and 19th centuries some nations staged informal sporting and folkloric festivals bearing the name "Olympic Games." However, it was not until 1892 that a young French baron, Pierre de Coubertin, seriously proposed reviving the Olympics as a major international competition that would occur every four years. At a conference on international sport in Paris in June 1894, Coubertin again raised the idea, and the 79 delegates from nine countries unanimously approved his proposal. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) was formed, and the first Games were planned for 1896 in Athens, the capital of Greece.

In Athens, 280 participants from 13 nations competed in 43 events, covering track-and-field, swimming, gymnastics, cycling, wrestling, weightlifting, fencing, shooting, and tennis. All the competitors were men, and a few of the entrants were tourists who stumbled upon the Games and were allowed to sign up. The track-and-field events were held at the Panathenaic Stadium, which was originally built in 330 B.C. and restored for the 1896 Games. Americans won nine out of 12 of these events. The 1896 Olympics also featured the first marathon competition, which followed the 25-mile route run by a Greek soldier who brought news of a victory over the Persians from Marathon to Athens in 490 B.C. In 1924, the marathon was standardized at 26 miles and 385 yards. Appropriately, a Greek, Spyridon Louis, won the first marathon at the 1896 Athens Games.

Pierre de Coubertin became IOC president in 1896 and guided the Olympic Games through its difficult early years, when it lacked much popular support and was overshadowed by world's fairs. In 1924, the first truly successful Olympic Games were held in Paris, involving more than 3,000 athletes, including more than 100 women, from 44 nations. The first Winter Olympic Games were also held that year. In 1925, Coubertin retired. The Olympic Games have come to be regarded as the foremost international sports competition. At the 2000 Summer Olympic in Sydney, more than 10,000 athletes from 200 countries competed, including nearly 4,000 women.



1830: Mormon Church established

In Fayette Township, New York, Joseph Smith, founder of the Mormon religion, organizes the Church of Christ during a meeting with a small group of believers.

Born in Vermont in 1805, Smith claimed in 1823 that he had been visited by a Christian angel named Moroni who spoke to him of an ancient Hebrew text that had been lost for 1,500 years. The holy text, supposedly engraved on gold plates by a Native American historian in the fourth century, related the story of Israelite peoples who had lived in America in ancient times. During the next six years, Smith dictated an English translation of this text to his wife and other scribes, and in 1830 The Book of Mormon was published. In the same year, Smith founded the Church of Christ--later known as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints--in Fayette Township.

The religion rapidly gained converts, and Smith set up Mormon communities in Ohio, Missouri, and Illinois. However, the Christian sect was also heavily criticized for its unorthodox practices, such as polygamy, and on June 27, 1844, Smith and his brother were murdered in a jail cell by an anti-Mormon mob in Carthage, Illinois.

Two years later, Smith's successor, Brigham Young, led an exodus of persecuted Mormons from Nauvoo, Illinois, along the western wagon trails in search of religious and political freedom. In July 1847, the 148 initial Mormon pioneers reached Utah's Valley of the Great Salt Lake. Upon viewing the valley, Young declared, "This is the place," and the pioneers began preparations for the tens of thousands of Mormon migrants who would follow them and settle there.



1909: Peary's expedition reaches North Pole?


On April 6, 1909, American explorer Robert Peary accomplishes a long elusive dream, when he, assistant Matthew Henson, and four Eskimos reach what they determine to be the North Pole. Decades after Peary's death, however, navigational errors in his travel log surfaced, placing the expedition in all probability a few miles short of its goal.

Peary, a U.S. Navy civil engineer, made his first trip to the interior of Greenland in 1886. In 1891, Henson, a young African-American sailor, joined him on his second arctic expedition. Their team made an extended dogsled journey to the northeast of Greenland and explored what became known as "Peary Land." In 1893, the explorers began working toward the North Pole, and in 1906, during their second attempt, they nearly reached latitude 88 degrees north--only 150 miles from their objective.

In 1908, the pair traveled to Ellesmere Island by ship and in 1909 raced across hundreds of miles of ice to reach what they calculated as latitude 90 degrees north on April 6, 1909. Although their achievement was widely acclaimed, Dr. Frederick A. Cook challenged their distinction of being the first to reach the North Pole. A former associate of Peary, Cook claimed he had already reached the pole by dogsled the previous year. A major controversy followed, and in 1911 the U.S. Congress formally recognized Peary's claim.

In recent years, further studies of the conflicting claims suggest that neither expedition reached the exact North Pole, but that Peary and Henson came far closer, falling perhaps 30 miles short. On May 3, 1952, U.S. Lieutenant Colonel Joseph O. Fletcher of Oklahoma stepped out of a plane and walked to the precise location of the North Pole, the first person to undisputedly do so.

1917: America enters World War I


Two days after the U.S. Senate voted 82 to 6 to declare war against Germany, the U.S. House of Representatives endorses the declaration by a vote of 373 to 50, and America formally enters World War I.

When World War I erupted in 1914, President Woodrow Wilson pledged neutrality for the United States, a position that the vast majority of Americans favored. Britain, however, was one of America's closest trading partners, and tension soon arose between the United States and Germany over the latter's attempted quarantine of the British Isles. Several U.S. ships traveling to Britain were damaged or sunk by German mines, and in February 1915 Germany announced unrestricted warfare against all ships, neutral or otherwise, that entered the war zone around Britain. One month later, Germany announced that a German cruiser had sunk the William P. Frye, a private American vessel. President Wilson was outraged, but the German government apologized and called the attack an unfortunate mistake.

On May 7, the British-owned Lusitania ocean liner was torpedoed without warning just off the coast of Ireland. Of the 1,959 passengers, 1,198 were killed, including 128 Americans. The German government maintained that the Lusitania was carrying munitions, but the U.S. demanded reparations and an end to German attacks on unarmed passenger and merchant ships. In August, Germany pledged to see to the safety of passengers before sinking unarmed vessels, but in November sunk an Italian liner without warning, killing 272 people, including 27 Americans. With these attacks, public opinion in the United States began to turn irrevocably against Germany.

In 1917, Germany, determined to win its war of attrition against the Allies, announced the resumption of unrestricted warfare in war-zone waters. Three days later, the United States broke diplomatic relations with Germany, and just hours after that the American liner Housatonic was sunk by a German U-boat. On February 22, Congress passed a $250 million arms appropriations bill intended to make the United States ready for war. In late March, Germany sunk four more U.S. merchant ships, and on April 2 President Wilson appeared before Congress and called for a declaration of war against Germany. Four days later, his request was granted.

On June 26, the first 14,000 U.S. infantry troops landed in France to begin training for combat. After four years of bloody stalemate along the western front, the entrance of America's well-supplied forces into the conflict marked a major turning point in the war and helped the Allies to victory. When the war finally ended, on November 11, 1918, more than two million American soldiers had served on the battlefields of Western Europe, and some 50,000 of them had lost their lives.

(The Above are pastes from the History Channel)

Other Events:

In 648 -BC- Earliest total solar eclipse; chronicled by Greeks
In AD 610, "Lailat-ul Qadr", the night the koran "descended to Earth" - this seems to be controversial
In 1327 Italian poet Petrarch 1st sets eyes on his beloved Laura
In 1199 Richard I the Lion-hearted, King of England (1189-99), dies at 41, killed by his favorite weapon, the crossbow.
In 1483 Raphael [Raffaello Sanzio], artist (Sistine Madonna), born
In 1520 Raphael artist dies on his 37th birthday
In 1663 King Charles II signs Carolina Charter
In 1712 Slave revolt in New York
In 1789 1st US Congress begins regular sessions, Federal Hall, NYC
In 1848 Jews of Prussia granted equality
In 1866 Butch Cassidy, famous entrepreneur, born.
In 1868 Brigham Young marries number 27, his final wife.
In 1874 Erich Weiss (aka Harry Houdini), escapist, born.
In 1890 Anthony Herman Gerard Fokker, Dutch aircraft pioneer, born.
In 1893 Longest bout in boxing history ends after 7 hrs in St Louis
In 1906 First animated cartoon is copyrighted.
In 1926 Four planes take off on first successful around-the-world flight.
In 1941 Italian-held Addis Ababa capitulates to British & Ethiopian forcese
In 1957 NYC ends trolley car service
In 1965 Intelsat 1 ("Early Bird") first commercial geosynchronous communication satellite
In 1968 94.5% of East German voters approve new socialist constitution.
In 1973 Pioneer 11 launched. First spacecraft to flyby Saturn.
In 1975 Nationalist Chinese leader Chiang Kai-Shek died at the age of 87.
In 1984 Eleventh Space Shuttle Mission - Challenger 5 is launched.


Sources:

Scope Systems (http://www.scopesys.com/anyday/)

History Channel: This Day In History (http://www.historychannel.com/thisday/)

Yarra Net (http://www.yarranet.net.au/onthisday/0406.htm)

In 30 Scholars' reckon Jesus crucified by Roman troops in Jerusalem

In 1652 Dutch establish settlement at Cape Town, S Africa

In 1788 1st settlement in Ohio, at Marietta

In 1798 Territory of Mississippi organized

In 1831 Dom Pedro abdicates to son, Dom Pedro II crowned emperor of Brazil

In 1862 Grant defeats Confederates at Battle of Shiloh, Tenn

In 1963, a new Yugoslav constitution proclaims Tito the president for life of the newly named Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

In 1994, Rwandan massacres begin

In 563 BC, on this day, Buddhists celebrate the commemoration of the birth of Gautama Buddha, the founder of Buddhism, thought to have lived in India from 563 B.C. to 483 B.C. Actually, the Buddhist tradition that celebrates his birthday on April 8 originally placed his birth in the 11th century B.C., and it was not until the modern era that scholars determined that he was more likely born in the sixth century B.C., and possibly in May rather than April.

In 217 AD, Caracalla [Marcus Aureiius Antoniius], Roman emperor, dies

In, 1143 John II Byzantine emperor, dies in an accident

In 1460 Ponce de Le¢n searched for fountain of youth, found Florida

In 1546, at its fourth session, the Council of Trent adopted Jerome's "Latin Vulgate" as the official Bible of the Roman Catholic Church. (Included in the Vulgate O.T. were the 15 apocryphal books which Protestants reject in their biblical canon.)

In 1789 House of Representives 1st meeting

In 1904 Entente Cordiale signed by France & England

In 1946 League of Nations assembles for last time

In 1947 Largest recorded sunspot (7,000) observed

In 1968 New socialist constitution of East Germany takes effect