Subscribe | UPI Odd Newsletter Subscribe Today is April 4. The civil rights leader the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on this date in 1968 in Memphis. He was 39. Much controversy remains to this day about whether he was killed by a lone gunman -- James Earl Ray confessed to shooting King and then later recanted -- or a conspiracy. At the time of his death in 1998, Ray was serving a 99-year sentence for King's murder, although he'd met in prison with members of the King family, who later said they believed his claims of innocence. Advertisement Rioting broke out in cities across America in response to King's assassination. But that night in New York City, Jimi Hendrix, B.B. King and Buddy Guy played an all-night blues show in King's honor. It was on this date in 1841 that President William Henry Harrison died of pneumonia after serving just one month in office. Harrison had caught cold during his long-winded inaugural speech, which was delivered outdoors in nasty weather. He was the ninth U.S. president, and the first to die in office. Advertisement Thar' be gold! The Yukon gold rush began on this date in 1896 with the announcement of a strike in the Northwest Territory of Canada. And the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was created on this date in 1949 when representatives of 11 nations gathered in Washington, D.C., to sign the North Atlantic Treaty, creating the alliance. We now return you to the present, already in progress.
