Nixon signs law requiring strong health warnings on cigarette packs (1970), and Singapore comes under direct British rule (1867). Born on this day: Otto von Bismarck, Mifune Toshirō and Wangari Maathai. Died: Lev Davidovich Landau, Val Kilmer and Marvin Gaye.
25 events, 68 births and 61 deaths on this date.
Richard Nixon signed the Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act, which obliged manufacturers to print a prominent warning from the surgeon general on every pack. It was one of the first federal steps to tell smokers plainly about the health risks of the habit.
Department of Defense. Department of the Army. Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations. U.S. Army Audiovisual Center. (ca. 1974 - 05/15/1984) · Public domainSingapore had been a British trading post since Stamford Raffles founded it in 1819, but from this point it was governed directly by Britain as part of the Straits Settlements. Britain kept the island under that setup until Japan occupied it in 1942.
In New York City, the new House gathered enough members to conduct business for the first time and chose Frederick Muhlenberg of Pennsylvania as its inaugural Speaker. It was the first step in making the new federal legislature operational under the Constitution.
Justin I, ruling from Constantinople, raised his nephew Justinian to joint rule and marked him out as the next emperor. Justinian later became one of the most influential rulers of the Byzantine state, known for his law codes and building projects.
Alexios's troops plundered Constantinople for three days after he seized power, and he was crowned only on 4 April. He would go on to steady a shrinking empire and, in 1095, asked Western Europe for help that sparked the First Crusade.
Alexios1komnenos.jpg : Unknown Unknown derivative work: Constantine ✍ · Public domain
American Motors launched the Gremlin, sold as the country's first subcompact, to join its existing small cars. The company, known for inventive styling on a tight budget, was one of several independent carmakers squeezed by the Big Three.
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Prussian statesman who unified Germany into one empire and then served as its first chancellor. Nicknamed the Iron Chancellor, he was known for hard-edged power politics and for creating the first welfare state.
André Bockmann · Public domain
Japanese actor best known for sixteen films with director Akira Kurosawa, including Seven Samurai and Yojimbo. He also won Best Actor at Venice twice and later made films in Hollywood.
映画世界社 (Eiga Sekai Publications, Inc.) · Public domain
Kenyan environmentalist who founded the Green Belt Movement, an organisation focused on planting trees and protecting the land. Her conservation and women's rights work earned her the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize, the first ever given to an African woman.
Kingkongphoto & www.celebrity-photos.com from Laurel Maryland, USA · CC BY-SA 2.0
Landau was a Soviet physicist whose theory of superfluidity, explaining how liquid helium flows without friction at very low temperatures, won him the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physics. He is remembered as one of the last physicists to work across nearly every branch of the field.
Nobel foundation · Public domain
Val Kilmer was an American actor who started on stage and became a leading man in films such as Top Gun, Willow and Heat. Throat cancer later left him struggling to speak, and he wrote about that struggle in a memoir.
Georges Biard · CC BY-SA 3.0
Marvin Gaye was a Motown and soul singer and songwriter, known for hits such as I Heard It Through the Grapevine and the album What's Going On. He was shot dead by his father during a family argument at their Los Angeles home.
Photograph by Jim Britt, whose other (copyrighted) photos of Gaye from the same session—many of them in full color—can be seen at his website . Originally distributed by Motown Records . · Public domain
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