On This Day in History - April 5th - Almanac

Today is Friday, April 5, the 95th day of 2019 with 270 to follow.

The moon is new. Morning stars are Jupiter, Mercury, Neptune, Saturn and Venus. Evening stars are Mars and Uranus.

Those born on this date are under the sign of Aries. They include English philosopher Thomas Hobbes in 1588; Elihu Yale, namesake of Yale University, in 1649; English physician Joseph Lister, who introduced antiseptic surgery, in 1827; educator Booker T. Washington in 1856; physicist Hedwig Kohn in 1887; actor Spencer Tracy in 1900; actor Bette Davis in 1908; actor Gregory Peck in 1916; singer/actor Gale Storm in 1922; filmmaker Roger Corman in 1926 (age 93); impressionist Frank Gorshin in 1933; former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell in 1937 (age 82); actor Michael Moriarty in 1941 (age 78); actor Max Gail in 1943 (age 76); actor Jane Asher in 1946 (age 73); astronaut Judith Resnik in 1949; actor Mitch Pileggi in 1952 (age 67); singer Pharrell Williams in 1973 (age 46); actor Sterling K. Brown in 1976 (age 43); actor Hayley Atwell in 1982 (age 37); actor Lily James in 1989 (age 30).

On this date in history:

In 1614, Pocahontas, daughter of a chief, married English tobacco planter John Rolfe in Jamestown, Va. It was a marriage that ensured peace between the settlers and the Powhatan Indians for several years.

In 1768, the first U.S. Chamber of Commerce was founded in New York City.

In 1792, President George Washington exercised veto power, the first time it was done in the United States.

In 1933, Executive Order 6101 establishing the Civilian Conservation Corps was issued by President Franklin Roosevelt. The public work relief program would run from 1933 to 1942 and provide employment for unemployed and unmarried men as part of the New Deal.

In 1951, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were sentenced to death in New York for stealing atomic secrets for the Soviet Union. They were executed on June 20, 1953.

In 1955, following rumors of failing health, Winston Churchill resigned as prime minister of the United Kingdom.

In 1976, reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes died of kidney failure during a flight from Acapulco, Mexico, to Houston. He was 71.

In 1991, former Sen. John Tower, R-Texas, and 22 others were killed in a commuter plane crash in Brunswick, Ga.

In 1992, Sam Moore Walton, founder of Walmart, died of cancer at 74.

In 1994, Nirvana's Kurt Cobain killed himself at his home in Seattle. He was 27. It would be three days before his body was discovered.

In 1999, Russell Henderson, one of two men charged in the October 1998 beating death of gay University of Wyoming student Matthew Shepard, pleaded guilty and was given two life prison sentences. The second man, Aaron McKinney, who delivered the fatal blows, also received two life terms.

In 2000, Lee Petty, the winner of the first Daytona 500 and a pioneer of a NASCAR racing family, died at a North Carolina hospital from complications of an abdominal aneurysm. He was 86.

In 2010, an explosion in a coal mine near Montcoal, in West Virginia's Raleigh County, killed 29 workers.

In 2014, Peter Matthiessen, the only writer to win the National Book Award in fiction and non-fiction, died at his home in Sagaponack, N.Y. He was 86.

In 2016, San Francisco became the first U.S. city to mandate six weeks of fully paid leave for new parents.

In 2017, Pepsi pulled television personality and model Kendall Jenner's first soda ad after facing backlash for appearing to end police brutality with a soft drink.

A thought for the day: "I'd rather be hated for who I am, than loved for who I am not." -- Kurt Cobain