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| Union Admiral David Farragut |
April 24, 1704 – The first regular newspaper in British
Colonial America, The Boston News-Letter, was published in
Boston, Mass.
April 24, 1781 - British General William Phillips landed on
the banks of the James River at City Port, Va. He then combined forces with
British General Benedict Arnold to launch an attack on Petersburg, Va.
April 24, 1800 – The United States Library of Congress was
established when President John Adams signed legislation to appropriate $5,000
to purchase "such books as may be necessary for the use of Congress."
Congress ordered 740 books and three maps from London, and in just over a
decade, the library had more than 3,000 items. Today, the Library of Congress
has 650 miles of shelves, and 150 million items, including more than 35 million
books.
April 24, 1815 – Victorian novelist Anthony Trollope was
born in London, England.
April 24, 1821 – Daniel Bozeman became postmaster at Burnt
Corn Spring, Ala.
April 24, 1844 - Alabama author Clifford Lanier was born in
Griffin, Ga.
April 24, 1861 – The Conecuh Guards mustered at Sparta, Ala.
were presented a flag from the ladies of the community at the Sparta Depot
before departing for Lynchburg, Va.
April 24, 1862 - Seventeen ships under the command of Union
Admiral David Farragut moved up the Mississippi River past two Confederate
forts toward New Orleans. Only one ship was lost.
April 24, 1863 - Union Colonel Benjamin Grierson's troops
tore up tracks and destroyed two trainloads of ammunition headed for Vicksburg,
Miss.
April 24, 1863 - The Union army issued General Orders No.
100. The orders provided the code of conduct for Federal soldiers and officers
when dealing with Confederate prisoners and civilians.
April 24, 1868 - Author William Garrott Brown was born in
Marion, Ala.
April 24, 1877 - Federal troops were ordered out of New
Orleans, bringing an end to the North's post-Civil War rule in the South.
April 24, 1895 – Philadelphia Phillies catcher Douglas
Woolley “Dixie” Parker was born in Forest Home in Butler County, Ala.
April 24, 1895 – Joshua Slocum, the first person to sail
single-handedly around the world, sets sail from Boston, Massachusetts aboard
the sloop "Spray".
April 24, 1898 - Spain declared war on the U.S., rejecting
America's ultimatum for Spain to withdraw from Cuba.
April 24, 1905 – Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and novelist
Robert Penn Warren was born in Guthrie, Ky.
April 24, 1907 - The one-of-a-kind Hersheypark opened its
doors. However, unlike today, back then the amusement park was not for the
general public, instead it was meant to be a leisure center exclusively for
Hershey Candy Company employees.
April 24-25, 1908 - In Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and
Georgia, 310 people were killed by 18 tornadoes.
April 24, 1912 – The Evergreen Courant reported that Prof.
J.T. McKee of Cullman, Ala. had been elected President of the Agricultural School in
Evergreen, Ala., succeeding Prof. H.T. Lile.
April 24, 1915 – On this Saturday afternoon, “quite a crowd
of boys and girls attended the baseball game” in the Brownville community of
Conecuh County, Ala.
April 24, 1916 – Ernest Shackleton and five men of the
Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition launched a lifeboat from uninhabited
Elephant Island in the Southern Ocean to organize a rescue for the ice-trapped
ship Endurance.
April 24, 1918 – The Evergreen Courant reported that Eugene
Binion of Evergreen, Ala. and John Peagler of Conecuh County’s China community
had been wounded by Germans while fighting overseas in World War I.
April 24, 1922 - Alabama’s first radio station, WSY, began
broadcasting. The station was started by Alabama Power Company to help keep in
touch with line crews in isolated areas. In 1925, the station merged with
Auburn’s WMAV to become WAPI.
April 24, 1933 – The season’s shipment of Castleberry, Ala.
strawberries topped the 100-car mark on this day as 10 more cars of
strawberries were loaded. The total number of cars after April 25 stood at 111
cars, which was 78 less than in 1932.
April 24, 1934 - Acclaimed actress and paranormal enthusiast
Shirley MacLaine was born in Richmond, Va.
April 24, 1940 – Mystery novelist Sue Grafton was born in
Louisville, Ky.
April 24, 1948 – Funeral services were held at 11 a.m. on
this Saturday for Sgt. John W. Morgan, who had been killed in Europe during
World War II, at Asbury Church in Conecuh County, Ala. Members of the National
Guard and American Legion acted as pallbearers.
April 24, 1961 - Sandy Koufax of the Los Angeles Dodgers
struck out 18 batters, becoming the first Major League pitcher to do so on two
different occasions.
April 25, 1972 – Major League Baseball third baseman and
left fielder Chipper Jones was born in DeLand, Fla. He would go on to play his
entire career for the Atlanta Braves.
April 24, 1990 - The Hubble Space Telescope, one of NASA's
longest lasting science missions, was launched. Funding for the mission to
build and launch a large space telescope was approved by Congress in 1977. NASA
chose Mashall Space Flight Center in Alabama to manage the design, development,
and construction of telescope. The telescope was officially named in honor of
Edwin P. Hubble, one of America's foremost astronomers, in 1983. Since its
launch, Hubble has beamed hundreds of thousands of images back to Earth and
transformed the way scientists look at the universe.
April 24, 1999 - The first Alabama Bound book fair was held
in Birmingham, Ala.
April 24, 2000 – A ground-breaking ceremony held at the site
of the EverFun playground site at Evergreen Municipal Park in Evergreen, Ala.
Mayor Lomax Cassady and Zebbie Nix unearthed the first two shovelfuls of dirt
and the work began.
April 24, 2003 – Army Sgt. Troy Jenkins, age 25, a graduate
of Hillcrest High School in Evergreen, Ala., died from wounds received as a
result of an explosion April 19, 2003 while on a dismounted patrol with other
soldiers in Iraq. He died at the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany.
He was assigned to B Co., 3rd Bat., 187th Inf. Reg., Ft. Campbell, Ky. He was
buried in Riverside, Calif.
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