April 11:
-Napoleon abdicated at Fontainebleau
1814: Pinned by allied armies bent on his overthrow and pressed by his own officers, French Emperor Napoleon I signed an act of abdication on this day at Fontainebleau. The allies included Austria, Russia, Prussia, and Great Britain, who had cleverly announced that they were fighting not against the French people but against Napoleon alone.
1986: Halley's Comet reached its perigee (point nearest the Earth) during its most recent passage near the planet.
1953: British mathematician Andrew John Wiles, deviser of a proof of Fermat's last theorem, was born in Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, England.
1951: U.S. President Harry S. Truman relieved General Douglas MacArthur of his command of United Nations and U.S. forces during the Korean War.
1895: Cuban patriot José Julián Martí landed in Cuba at the head of an invading force whose goal was to win independence from Spain.
1865: Abraham Lincoln made his last public speech, in which he discussed terms of his planned postwar policy.
1848: Emperor Ferdinand I of Austria confirmed the March Laws, which formed the foundation of the modern state of Hungary.
1815: The eruption of Mount Tambora, a volcano on the island of Sumbawa, Indonesia, killed about 10,000 people.
April 11
Dean Acheson
Dean Acheson, born this day in 1893, was the U.S. secretary of state from 1949 to 1953 and adviser to four presidents. The principal creator of U.S. foreign policy in the Cold War period following World War II, he helped to create the Western alliance in opposition to the Soviet Union and other communist nations.
"I will not turn my back on Alger Hiss."
Dean Acheson, expressing his support of U.S. State Department officer Alger Hiss in the face of Senator Joseph R. McCarthy's probe of subversive activities (1949–50)
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