A fun thing to do with Wiki - find out what happened on a particular date

Wikipedia is cool. There is an amazing amount of information there. Over at Atypical Homeschool.net Ron pointed out that in Wikipedia Meme you can enter just a day and a month in the search field, and Wikipedia will list out events, births, deaths, Holidays and observances, Liturgical feats, and some times even Fictional Events that happened on that day.

For example, here are just a few of the items listed for today, the 6th of April:

Events:

648 BC - Earliest solar eclipse recorded by the Ancient Greeks.

1865 - American Civil War: Battle of Sayler's Creek - Confederate General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia fights its last major battle while in retreat from Richmond, Virginia.

1930 - Gandhi raises a lump of mud and salt and declares, "With this, I am shaking the foundations of the British Empire." Thus he starts Salt Satyagraha.

1930 - Will Rogers starts broadcasting The Will Rogers Program on radio.

1973 - Launch of Pioneer 11 spacecraft.


Births:

1483 - Raphael, Italian painter and architect (d. 1520)

1671 - Jean-Baptiste Rousseau, French poet (d. 1741)

1892 - Donald Wills Douglas, Sr., American industrialist (d. 1981)

1926 - Gil Kane, Latvian-born cartoonist (d. 2000)

1937 - Merle Haggard, American musician

1937 - Billy Dee Williams, American actor


Deaths:

1199 - King Richard I of England (killed in battle) (b. 1157)

1520 - Raphael, Italian painter and architect (b. 1483)

1992 - Isaac Asimov, Russian-born author (b. 1920)


Enjoy.


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