12 History Lessons + 5 Births & 5 Deaths for April 16, 2025
Today’s History:
- 73 CE – Masada, the Jewish fortress in Israel, falls to the Romans after a lengthy siege.
- 1521 – Martin Luther appears before the Diet of Worms to defend his writings.
- 1746 – The Battle of Culloden takes place in Scotland, ending the Jacobite uprising.
- 1862 – Slavery is abolished in Washington, D.C., by U.S. President Abraham Lincoln.
- 1912 – Harriet Quimby becomes the first woman to fly across the English Channel.
- 1943 – Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann intentionally takes LSD for the first time, pioneering psychedelic research.
- 1947 – Bernard Baruch coins the term “Cold War” in a speech about U.S.-Soviet tensions.
- 1963 – Martin Luther King Jr. pens his famous Letter from Birmingham Jail.
- 2003 – The Treaty of Accession is signed, paving the way for 10 countries to join the European Union in 2004.
- 2007 – Virginia Tech massacre: 32 people are killed by a gunman on the university campus.
- 2014 – South Korean ferry MV Sewol capsizes, killing over 300 people, mostly high school students.
- 2016 – Ecuador experiences a 7.8-magnitude earthquake, killing hundreds and injuring thousands.
Today’s Birthdays:
- 1947 – Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, NBA Hall of Famer and all-time leading scorer (78)
- 1955 – Jon Cryer, actor (Pretty in Pink, Two and a Half Men) (70)
- 1965 – Martin Lawrence, comedian and actor (Martin, Bad Boys) (60)
- 1975 – Sean Maher, actor (Firefly, Serenity) (50)
- 1982 – Gina Carano, actress and former MMA fighter (The Mandalorian) (43)
Today’s Deaths:
- 1940 – Alfred Butts, American architect and inventor of the board game Scrabble (41)
- 1958 – Rosalind Franklin, British chemist whose X-ray images contributed to the discovery of DNA’s structure (37)
- 2008 – Edward Lorenz, American mathematician and meteorologist, pioneer of chaos theory (90)
- 2012 – Jonathan Frid, Canadian actor best known for Dark Shadows (87)
- 2017 – Allan Holdsworth, influential English guitarist and composer (70)
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