gwmain

April 11: Mary White Ovington, suffragist, journalist, and a founder of the NAACP, was born on this date in 1865.

April 10: In 1866, on this date, the ASPCA, the first humane organization in the Americas, was founded by Henry Bergh.

April 9: On this date in 1913, Ebbets Field, then the new home of the Brooklyn Dodgers, who were owned by Charlie Ebbets, opened.

April 7: Fred Ebb, lyricist of the songwriting team of Kander and Ebb, who wrote “New York, New York,” Caberet, and Chicago, was born on this date in 1928.

April 7: On this day in 1972, mobster Joey Gallo celebrated his 43rd birthday at Umberto’s Restaurant in Little Italy; before the dinner was over, he was shot and killed.

April 6: James Kirke Paulding, who coined the tongue-twister “Peter Piper picked a peck of pickles peppers,” and rose to be Secretary of the Navy, died on this date in 1860.

April 5: Famed painter Eastman Johnson, whose gravestone describes him simply as “ARTIST” and states “HIS WORKS ARE HIS MONUMENT,” died on this date in 1906.

April 4: The Flag Act of 1818, which incorporated the proposal of War of 1812 hero Samuel Chester Reid, that another star be added to the American flag as a new state entered the Union, but that the original 13 stripes remain unchanged, was signed into law by President James Monroe on this date.

April 3: William M. Tweed, “Boss,” whose name became synonymous with civic corruption, was born on this date in 1823.

April 2: On this date in 1872, Samuel Finley Breese Morse, who invented the telegraph and changed the world by creating the first practical means of human communication over a distance, died.