April 18- 1980: Zimbabwe achieved its independence from the United Kingdom.
1966: American basketball star Bill Russell became the first black coach of a major professional sports team (the Boston Celtics) in the United States.
1955: Albert Einstein died in Princeton, New Jersey.
1945: American war correspondent Ernie Pyle was killed during the U.S. forces' campaign on Okinawa during World War II.
1775: American patriot Paul Revere rode from Charlestown, Massachusetts, to Lexington to warn colonists of the approach of British troops.
1506: Pope Julius II laid the first stone of the new St. Peter's Basilica in Rome.
San Francisco damaged in earthquake
1906: Early this morning, San Francisco was rocked by an earthquake caused by slippage along the San Andreas Fault. The earthquake started a fire that destroyed the central business district of the city. Damage was also severe in other towns situated near the fault. Most of the approximately 700 people killed were in San Francisco.
Clarence Darrow
Clarence Darrow, born this day in 1857, was well-known as a defense lawyer, public speaker, debater, and writer. Among Darrow's high-profile court appearances were the trial of Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold for the murder of 14-year-old Robert Franks in Chicago and the Scopes Trial, in which Darrow defended a Tennessee high-school teacher who had broken a state law by presenting the Darwinian theory of evolution.
"To think is to differ."
Clarence Darrow, remark during the Scopes Trial, 1925
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