This Week In History: April 15 - April 19
Think you know what happened this week in history? Think again.
April 15, 2013 -- intro: Think you know what happened this week in history? Think again. This week saw a number of heated encounters between the U.S. and Cuba during the Cold War over a number of years in the 1960s. It also saw the beginning of the American Revolutionary War and the death of a great president. Test your history knowledge and find out what happened this week in history.
quicklist: 1title: April 15text: 1865: President Abraham Lincoln died. Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth at Ford's Theatre in D.C. on April 14 and died from a severe head wound the following day. Lincoln's death came just after Confederate army leader Robert E. Lee had surrendered to Union army Gen. Ulysses S. Grant and the North won the American Civil War. Lincoln's funeral was held later that week.
1959: Fidel Castro visited the United States. Castro made his first visit to the U.S. after being invited by the American Society of Newspaper Editors, following his successful revolution in Cuba. The visit lasted 11 days but Castro never met with then President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who went as far as going off to a golf course to avoid a meeting. However, Vice President Richard Nixon did meet with the revolutionary and attempted to convince him to move away from radical policies and anti-American rhetoric. But it didn't work. Several months later, Eisenhower would order the CIA to begin arming and training Cuban exiles to retaliate and attack Cuba. The subsequent incident, known as the Bay of Pigs invasion, was later launched by the Kennedy administration. Relations between the U.S. and Cuba would remain tense throughout the Cold War.
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quicklist: 2title: April 16text: 1862: Slavery was abolished in Washington, D.C. The D.C. Compensated Emancipation Act was signed into law by President Abraham Lincoln and officially abolished slavery in Washington, D.C., while the American Civil War was still going on. Approximately 3,000 slaves were freed as a result of the bill and Union slaveholders were paid for freeing their slaves. April 16 is now officially celebrated as Emancipation Day in D.C., with parades and other events taking place around the city each year.
1947: The term Cold War was officially coined. Millionaire Bernard Baruch coined the term in April 1947. Baruch harped on the "Cold War" tensions between the U.S. and the Soviet Union in a speech he gave during the unveiling of his portrait in the South Carolina House of Representatives. Baruch addressed labor-related issues in the country and stated, "Let us not be deceived -- we are today in the midst of a cold war. Our enemies are to be found abroad and at home. Let us never forget this: Our unrest is the heart of their success. The peace of the world is the hope and the goal of our political system; it is the despair and defeat of those who stand against us. We can depend only on ourselves." Baruch had been a longtime international relations adviser to presidents including Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry Truman.
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