TODAY IN HISTORY

MONDAY APR 5, 2021

2010

An explosion at the Upper Big Branch mine near Charleston, West Virginia, killed 29 workers. In a televised rescue, 115 Chinese coal miners were freed after spending eight days trapped in a flooded mine, surviving an accident that had killed 38.

1621

The Mayflower sailed from Plymouth Colony in presentday Massachusetts on a monthlong return trip to England.

1792

President George Washington cast his first veto, rejecting a congressional measure for apportioning representatives among the states.

1887

In Tuscumbia, Alabama, teacher Anne Sullivan achieved a breakthrough as her 6-year-old deaf-blind pupil, Helen Keller, learned the meaning of the word “water” as spelled out in the Manual Alphabet.

1976

Reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes died in Houston at age 70.

1987

Fox Broadcasting Co. made its prime-time TV debut by airing the situation comedy “Married with Children” followed by “The Tracey Ullman Show,” then repeating both premiere episodes two more times in the same evening.

1991

Former Sen. John Tower, R-texas, his daughter Marian and 21 other people were killed in a commuter plane crash near Brunswick, Georgia.

1997

Allen Ginsberg, the counterculture guru who shattered conventions as poet laureate of the Beat Generation, died in New York City at age 70.

2015

Rolling Stone magazine apologized and officially retracted its discredited article about an alleged gang rape at the University of Virginia.

2019

Inspecting a refurbished section of fencing at the Mexican border in California, President Donald Trump declared that “our country is full,” and that illegal crossings must be stopped.