On This Day in History

April 5

Historical Events

1242 Russian Prince of Novgorod Alexander Nevsky defeats the Teutonic Knights in the Battle of the Ice.

Two Moai on the Rano Raraku crater on Rapa Nui from a 1914-15 expedition photograph held in the British Museum

1722 Dutch navigator Jacob Roggeveen is the first European to discover Easter Island / Rapa Nui in the southeastern Pacific.

1818 Battle of Maipú: Chile's independence movement led by Bernardo O'Higgins and José de San Martín win a decisive victory over Spain, leaving 2,000 Spaniards and 1,000 Chilean patriots dead.

1847 Birkenhead Park, the first civic public park, opens in Birkenhead, England, designed by Joseph Paxton.

1879 Chile declares war on Bolivia and Peru, starting the War of the Pacific.

1923 Firestone Tire and Rubber Company starts producing inflatable tires.

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Famous Birthdays

Booker T. Washington 1856 - 1915 Bette Davis 1908 - 1989

Agnetha Fältskog 74th Birthday Pharrell Williams 51st Birthday

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Famous Deaths

Douglas MacArthur 1880 - 1964 Kurt Cobain 1967 - 1994

Also Howard Hughes and Allen Ginsberg.

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‘I Do’ Says Pocahontas

Pocahontas, the native American princess regarded by many as the mother of modern America, was married on this day, aged about nineteen, to an English settler

Pocahontas Marries an English Settler