On April 11…

1803 – John Stevens patented a twin-screw propeller steamboat. The boat was 25 feet long and four feet wide.

 

1814 – Napoleon Bonaparte was exiled to the island of Elba.

 

1908 – Jane Bolin, the first Black female graduate of Yale School of Law and the first Black female judge in the nation was born in Poughkeepsie, NY.

 

1921 – KDKA radio in Pittsburgh broadcast the first live sports event, a lightweight boxing match between Johnny Ray and Johnny Dundee.

 

1945 – The U.S. Army liberated the Buchenwald concentration camp near Weimar, Germany.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3SCSouI8WE

 

1947 – Jackie Robinson became the first Black player in major-league baseball history when he played in an exhibition game for the Brooklyn Dodgers.

 

1956 – Elvis Presley reached the top spot on the Billboard music chart with his first double-sided hit: Heartbreak Hotel and I Was the One.  The RCA Victor record stayed at number one for eight weeks.  Elvis also made the country and R&B charts.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olqe-JnHzjU

 

1970 – The third lunar mission, Apollo 13, was launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida.  The mission was aborted when an oxygen tank exploded aboard the spacecraft.

 

1979 – Ugandan dictator Idi Amin fled the capital of Kampala, as forces from Tanzania and the Uganda National Liberation Front approached.