Moments in Time – March 22, 2023

#MiddleburyCT

• On April 6, 1896, the first modern Olympic Games opened in Athens more than 1,500 years after the last Games, which originated in Olympia in southwestern Greece. Two hundred and forty-one athletes from 14 countries took part.
• On April 5, 1955, Winston Churchill, who was instrumental in initiating the alliance between the U.K., the U.S. and the Soviet Union against Nazi Germany, resigned as prime minister of the U.K. His political career spanned half a century.
• On April 3, 1973, Motorola employee Martin Cooper made the first public mobile telephone call, on a Manhattan sidewalk, to Joel Engel of Bell Labs. Cooper later told the BBC that his first words were, “Joel, I’m calling you from a ‘real’ cellular telephone. A portable handheld telephone.”
• On April 8, 1974, Hank Aaron, aka “Hammerin’ Hank,” of the Atlanta Braves struck his 715th career home run, smashing Babe Ruth’s legendary record of 714 homers.Over the preceding winter, Aaron had endured death threats and hate mail from people who didn’t want to see that record broken by a Black man.
• On April 7, 2003, the U.S. Supreme Court voted 6-3 to uphold a 50-year-old Virginia law making it a crime to burn a cross as an act of intimidation. The practice is widely associated with the Ku Klux Klan and is still protected by the First Amendment at Klan rallies.
• On April 9, 2009, the U.S. stopped running its global network of secret prisons used to detain and interrogate terrorism suspects, sometimes with “torturous” methods. CIA Director Leon Panetta added that any remaining sites would be decommissioned. President Barack Obama had promised to shut the facilities down shortly after taking office.
• On April 4, 2013, American film critic Roger Ebert died of cancer just two days after announcing he would write fewer reviews due to the disease’s recurrence. His thumbs up/thumbs down rating system with fellow critic Gene Siskel turned the pair into household names and became a popular part of American culture.

© 2023 King Features Synd., Inc.