dailyhistoryposts

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On This Day In History

April 25th, 1954: Bell Telephone Laboratories demonstrates the first practical solar cell.

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On This Day In History

April 24th, 1183 BCE: The city-state of Troy falls, marking the end of the Trojan War.

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On This Day In History

April 23rd, 2005: The first YouTube video is published.

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On This Day In History

April 22nd, 1994: American president Richard Nixon dies of a stroke.

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On This Day In History

April 21st, 900: The date of the Laguna Copperplate Inscription, the earliest known written document found in what is now the Philippines. it is written in the Old Malay language using the Kawi script.

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On This Day In History

April 20th, 1657: Freedom of religion is granted to Jewish residents of New Amsterdam (later New York City).

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On This Day In History

April 19th, 797: Empress Irene Sarantapechaina of Athens organizes a conspiracy against her son to maintain power. Her supporters depose him and gouge out his eyes, and he will die of his wounds. Irene proclaims herself basileus (monarch or emperor).

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On This Day In History

April 18th, 1930: The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) announces on their evening report that "there is no news" and played piano music instead.

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On This Day In History

April 17th, 1961: A group of Cuban exiles return to the Bay of Pigs, trained and financed by the CIA, to oust Fidel Castro. The Bay of Pigs Iinvasion will fail in under half a week.

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On This Day In History

April 16th, 1943: Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann accidentally discovers the hallucinogenic effects of LSD.

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On This Day In History

April 15th, 2024: The People of the State of New York v. Donald J. Trump (the Stormy Daniels case) court trial begins. So far, we're working through getting jury selection--they need to find 18 New Yorkers who do not have strong feelings about Donald Trump either way.

On This Day In History

March 30th, 2023: Donald Trump is indicted by the New York grand jury, making him the first US president (current or former) to face criminal charges.

#donald trump

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On This Day In History

April 15th, 1912: The RMS Titanic sinks in the North Atlantic at 2:20am, having hit an iceberg at 11:40pm the night before. Fewer than one-third of those on board will survive.

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The Glamour Boys

Forgotten queer history: the Glamour Boys were a group of gay British politicians in the 1930s. Because they made trips to Berlin, which was then one of the most sexually liberal and liberated places in Europe (note especially Magnus Hirschfeld’s Sexology Institute), they were among the first to notice the warning signs of Germany’s descent into fascism.

They returned to the UK and argued loudly and without stopping for rearmament, against appeasement, and many of the enlisted and were killed in action during World War II.

The term “Glamour Boys” was a derogatory one given to them by Neville Chamberlain, the conservative Prime Minister best known for his failed appeasement of Hitler. He had the Glamour Boys harassed, their phones tapped, and their names slandered in the press. As gay public figures in a time and place where homosexuality was illegal, each faced great potential consequences by coming forward as they did.

Members include the following MPs: Robert Bernays, Ronald Cartland, Victor Cazalet, John Macnamara, and Anthony Muirhead.

Their story was largely untold until The Glamour Boys: The Secret Story of the Rebels who Fought for Britain to Defeat Hitler (2010) by Chris Bryant.

"Churchill gets all the credit all the time because that's what he wrote. He was opposed to the policy of appeasement, and all the rest of it, but what nobody, I guess, would know is that half the time when Churchill and [Anthony] Eden were plotting with the rebels, roughly half the men in the room were 'queer'."

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On This Day In History

April 14th, 1999: NATO mistakenly bombs a convoy of Albanian ethnic refugees, killing 75.

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Hi! It's also Neil banging out the tunes day :)

You’re so right. Happy Neil banging out the tunes day!

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On This Day In History

April 13th, 1953: CIA director Allen Dulles launches the illegal mind-control program Project MKUltra.

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On This Day In History

April 12th, 1980: The Americo-Liberian government of Liberia is deposed in a violent coup.