Subscribe | UPI Odd Newsletter Subscribe Today is April 5. It was on this date in 1951 that Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were sentenced to death in New York for stealing atomic secrets for the Soviet Union. The Rosenbergs were the only married couple ever executed together in the United States. Their execution -- on June 19, 1953, at Sing Sing Prison -- has been a source of controversy since. Advertisement The British fleet weighed anchor and sailed for the South Atlantic on this date in 1982 to recapture the Falkland Islands from invading Argentine forces. Argentina had overrun the islands -- where the sheep far outnumber the humans -- a few days earlier after years of saber-rattling. Reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes died of kidney failure during a flight from Acapulco, Mexico, to Houston on this date in 1976. And it was on this date in 1999 that one of two men charged in the Oct. 1998 beating death of gay University of Wyoming student Matthew Shepard pleaded guilty and was sentenced to two life sentences. Shepard's brutal murder -- he had been hung like a scarecrow from a fence and left to die -- sparked outrage around the world. Advertisement We now return you to the present, already in progress.
