“I existed from moment to moment, sometimes thinking death would have been preferable. We were in the depths of the abyss, the ultimate horror of war. Men struggled and fought and bled in an environment so degrading I believed we had been flung into hell’s own cesspool.”
~Corporal Eugene Sledge
3rd Battalion, 5th Marines, 1st Marine Division
Battle of Okinawa

1865 – At the Battle of Five Forks, just southwest of Petersburg, VA, Union troops led by Philip Sheridan decisively defeated Confederate troops led by George Pickett, cutting the Army of Northern Virginia’s last supply line.
The Union forces inflicted over 1,000 casualties on the Confederates and took up to 4,000 prisoners while seizing Five Forks, the key to control of the South Side Railroad, a vital supply line and evacuation route.

1873 – RMS Atlantic, a transatlantic ocean liner of the White Star Line that operated between Liverpool, England and New York City, struck rocks and sank off the coast of Nova Scotia, Canada, killing at least 535 people.

1924 – Adolf Hitler was sentenced to five years imprisonment at Landsberg Prison for his participation in the “Beer Hall Putsch” but spent only nine months in jail.
While at Landsberg, Hitler dictated most of the first volume of Mein Kampf (My Struggle). It was originally entitled Four and a Half Years of Struggle against Lies, Stupidity, and Cowardice.

1934 – On Easter Sunday, Clyde Barrow and Henry Methvin killed two young highway patrolmen, H. D. Murphy and Edward Bryant Wheeler, at the intersection of Route 114 and Dove Road near Grapevine (now Southlake), Texas.
Bonnie Parker’s alleged role in the murders – much of which was later discredited – helped turn public perception against the Barrows gang.
Seven weeks later, both Barrow and Parker were ambushed and killed on a rural road in Bienville Parish, LA by a posse of four Texas officers and two Louisiana officers.

1944 – Navigation errors resulted in an accidental American bombing of the Swiss city of Schaffhausen, located in a section of Swiss territory surrounded on three sides by Germany.
Air raid sirens had often sounded in the past, without an actual attack, so many residents ignored the sirens that day. A total of 40 civilians were killed in the raid.
President Franklin Roosevelt sent a personal letter of apology to the mayor of Schaffhausen and the United States quickly offered four million dollars in reparations.

1945 – The 82-day Battle of Okinawa – the last major battle of World War II, and one of the bloodiest – began with the largest amphibious assault in the Pacific Theater of World War II.
The Navy’s Fifth Fleet and more than 180,000 U.S. Army and U.S. Marine Corps troops descended on the Pacific island of Okinawa for a final push towards Japan.
Soldiers and Army brass alike expected the beach landings to be a massacre worse than D-Day. But the Fifth Fleet’s offensive onslaught was almost pointless. There were no Japanese soldiers waiting for them.
What the Americans didn’t know was the Japanese Imperial Army had them just where they wanted them.
Japanese troops had been instructed not to fire on the American landing forces but instead watch and wait for them, mostly in Shuri, a rugged area of southern Okinawa where a triangle of defensive positions known as the Shuri Defense Line had been set up.
The fighting over the next three months was extremely fierce on both sides. Japan used numerous kamikaze attacks in an attempt to sink Allied naval vessels, which assembled in the hundreds for the battle.
Okinawa’s pre-battle population was about 300,000; nearly 150,000 were killed, committed suicide or went missing.
The Americans eventually captured the island, losing between 10-15,000 soldiers, while Japan lost 75-110,000.
When faced with the reality that further fighting was futile, General Mitsuru Ushijima and his Chief of Staff committed ritual suicide on June 22, effectively ending the Battle of Okinawa.
Winning the Battle of Okinawa put Allied forces within striking distance of Japan. Wanting to bring the war to a swift end, and knowing over 2 million Japanese troops were awaiting battle-weary American soldiers, President Harry S Truman chose to drop an atomic bomb on Hiroshima on August 6.

1963 – General Hospital, starring Emily McLaughlin and John Beradino, premiered on ABC.
Set in the fictional city of Port Charles, NY, the daytime medical drama is still on the air.

1970 – President Richard Nixon signed the Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act into law, requiring the Surgeon General’s warnings on tobacco products and banning cigarette advertising on television and radio in the United States, effective January 1, 1971.

1973 – John Lennon and Yoko Ono announced they had formed Nutopia, a conceptual country with no laws or boundaries. Its International Anthem was three seconds of silence.
Lennon said the couple, “as ambassadors of Nutopia, ask for diplomatic immunity and recognition in the United Nations of our country and its people.”
They didn’t get immunity or international recognition but the “anthem” did manage to find its way onto Lennon’s Mind Games album.

1976 – Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs founded Apple Computer in the garage of Jobs’ parent’s house in Cupertino, California.

1976 – Helter Skelter, a two-part miniseries detailing Charles Manson’s cult “family”, the murders they committed, their capture, trial, conviction and aftermath, premiered on CBS.

1978 – The 142nd and final episode of The Bob Newhart Show aired on CBS.
In the show’s final episode, “Happy Trails To You,” Bob gave up his psychology practice in Chicago and accepted a teaching position at a small college in Oregon.

1984 – Singer Marvin Gaye was shot to death by his father, one day before his 45th birthday.
Moments earlier, the two men had been involved in a physical altercation when Gaye intervened in a fight between his parents.
Gaye’s later life had been plagued by cocaine-triggered paranoia and illness, prompting him to move back in with his parents in late 1983.
His father was initially charged with first-degree murder, but the charges were dropped to voluntary manslaughter following a diagnosis of a brain tumor.

1986 – A serious surplus of crude oil caused by falling demand following the 1970s energy crisis resulted in world oil prices dropping from $27 a barrel to under $10.
OPEC reached an accord eight months later that cut production by seven percent for the first six months of 1987, immediately bringing the cost per barrel up to $18.

2003 – American troops rescued Army Pfc. Jessica Lynch from a hospital in Nasiriyah, Iraq, where she had been held prisoner since her unit was ambushed nine days earlier.

2004 – Paul Atkinson, guitarist with The Zombies (She’s Not There, Tell Her No and Time Of The Season) died of liver and kidney disease, complicated by a long-term battle with cancer, at the age of 58.

2010 – Actor John Forsythe died from pneumonia at the age of 92.
Forsythe enjoyed a successful television career, starring in three television series, spanning four decades and three genres: as the single playboy father Bentley Gregg in Bachelor Father, as the unseen millionaire Charles Townsend in Charlie’s Angels, and as patriarch Blake Carrington in Dynasty.

2015 – Cynthia Lennon, the first wife of John Lennon, died of cancer at the age of 75.

Compiled by Ray Lemire ©2019 RayLemire.com / Streamingoldies.com. All Rights Reserved.