On April 6, 1483, the artist Raphael was born in Urbino, Italy.
In 1823 Chicago Tribune publisher Joseph Medill, who also was elected the city’s mayor one month after the Great Chicago Fire, was born near St. John, New Brunswick.
In 1830 the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was organized by Joseph Smith in Fayette, N.Y.
In 1862 the Civil War Battle of Shiloh began in Tennessee.
In 1896 the first modern Olympics opened in Athens.
In 1909 explorers Robert Peary and Matthew Henson became the first men to reach the North Pole.
In 1917 Congress authorized war against Germany.
In 1929 composer Andre Previn was born in Berlin.
In 1945 the Japanese warship Yamato and nine other vessels sailed on a suicide mission to attack the U.S. fleet off Okinawa; the fleet was intercepted the next day.
In 1971 composer Igor Stravinsky, 88, died in New York.
In 1992 author Isaac Asimov, 72, died in New York.
In 1994 the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi died in a mysterious plane crash near Rwanda’s capital, setting off widespread violence.
In 1996 actress Greer Garson, 92, died in Dallas.
In 1997 Washington Redskins owner Jack Kent Cooke, 84, died.
In 2000 a private company mapping the human genetic blueprint announced it had decoded all of the DNA pieces that make up the genetic pattern of a single human being.
