April 6:  1917 : America enters World War I
Two days after the U.S. Senate voted 82 to 6 to declare war against Germany, the U.S. House of Representatives endorses the declaration by a vote of 373 to 50, and America formally enters World War I.
When World War I erupted in 1914, President Woodrow Wilson pledged neutrality for the United States, a position that the vast majority of Americans favored. Britain, however, was one of America's closest trading partners, and tension soon arose between the United States and Germany over the latter's attempted quarantine of the British Isles. Several U.S. ships traveling to Britain were damaged or sunk by German mines, and in February 1915 Germany announced unrestricted warfare against all ships, neutral or otherwise, that entered the war zone around Britain. One month later, Germany announced that a German cruiser had sunk the William P. Frye, a private American vessel. President Wilson was outraged, but the German government apologized and called the attack an unfortunate mistake.
On May 7, the British-owned Lusitania ocean liner was torpedoed without warning just off the coast of Ireland. Of the 1,959 passengers, 1,198 were killed, including 128 Americans. The German government maintained that the Lusitania was carrying munitions, but the U.S. demanded reparations and an end to German attacks on unarmed passenger and merchant ships. In August, Germany pledged to see to the safety of passengers before sinking unarmed vessels, but in November sunk an Italian liner without warning, killing 272 people, including 27 Americans. With these attacks, public opinion in the United States began to turn irrevocably against Germany.
In 1917, Germany, determined to win its war of attrition against the Allies, announced the resumption of unrestricted warfare in war-zone waters. Three days later, the United States broke diplomatic relations with Germany, and just hours after that the American liner Housatonic was sunk by a German U-boat. On February 22, Congress passed a $250 million arms appropriations bill intended to make the United States ready for war. In late March, Germany sunk four more U.S. merchant ships, and on April 2 President Wilson appeared before Congress and called for a declaration of war against Germany. Four days later, his request was granted.
On June 26, the first 14,000 U.S. infantry troops landed in France to begin training for combat. After four years of bloody stalemate along the western front, the entrance of America's well-supplied forces into the conflict marked a major turning point in the war and helped the Allies to victory. When the war finally ended, on November 11, 1918, more than two million American soldiers had served on the battlefields of Western Europe, and some 50,000 of them had lost their lives.
April 7:  1927 : First telecast of sound and image
The first simultaneous telecast of image and sound takes place on this day in 1927. Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover read a speech in Washington, D.C., which was transmitted to Bell Telephone Laboratories in New York City, where an audience saw and heard a tiny televised image of Hoover, less than 3 inches square.
April 8:  1842 : Elizabeth Bacon Custer is born in Michigan
Elizabeth Bacon Custer, a significant chronicler of the West and the wife of George Custer, is born in Monroe, Michigan.
Elizabeth Custer is best known today for her decades-long effort to celebrate her husband's life and exonerate him for the massacre of the Seventh Cavalry at Little Bighorn in 1876. She was more than her husband's apologist, however, and today her writings provide a rare female perspective on military life in the West of the mid-19th century.

April 9:  1865 : Lee surrenders
Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrenders his army to Union General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House, Virginia.
For more than a week, Lee had tried to outrun Grant to the west of Richmond and Petersburg. After a ten-month siege of the two cities, the Union forces broke through the defenses and forced Lee to retreat. The Confederates moved along the Appomattox River, with Union General Phillip Sheridan shadowing them to the south. Lee's army had little food, and they began to desert in large numbers on the retreat. When Lee arrived at Appomattox, he found that his path was blocked. He had not choice but to request a meeting with Grant. 
They met at a house in Appomattox at 2:00 p.m. on the afternoon of April 9. Lee was resplendent in his dress uniform and a fine sword at his side. Grant arrived wearing a simple soldier's coat that was muddy from his long ride. The great generals spoke of their service in the Mexican War, and then set about the business at hand. Grant offered generous terms. Officers could keep their side arms, and all men would be immediately released to return home. Any officers and enlisted men who owned horses could take them home, Grant said, to help put crops in the field and carry their families through the next winter. These terms, said Lee, would have "the best possible effect upon the men," and "will do much toward conciliating our people." The papers were signed and Lee prepared to return to his men. 
In one of the great ironies of the war, the surrender took place in the parlor of Wilmer McClean's home. McClean had once lived along the banks of Bull Run, the site of the first major battle of the war in July 1861. Seeking refuge from the fighting, McClean decided to move out of the Washington-Richmond corridor to try to avoid the fighting that would surely take place there. He moved to Appomattox Court House only to see the war end in his home. 
Although there were still Confederate armies in the field, the war was officially over. Four years of bloodshed had left a devastating mark on the country: 360,000 Union and 260,000 Confederate soldiers had perished during the Civil War.


April 10: 1970 : McCartney announces Beatles breakup
Paul McCartney releases his first solo album on this day in 1970 and formally announces that the Beatles have broken up. The group had not performed in public since January 1969, when they gave an impromptu concert on the roof of their London recording studio. Their next album, Let It Be, was released just as their breakup was announced.
McCartney was born in 1942 in Liverpool, England, the son of a jazz-band leader. After his mother's death from cancer in 1956, McCartney began playing guitar. The following year, he met another young Liverpool musician, John Lennon, and asked to join Lennon's band, the Quarrymen. He passed his audition and joined the group in 1957. Later that year, he persuaded Lennon to add his friend, guitar player George Harrison, to the group. The three played together under several different names and with several different members until 1960, when they adopted the name the Beatles.
The band toured German beerhouses in 1961 and debuted later that year at the Cavern Club in Liverpool, where they gave more than 300 performances during the next two years. Drummer Ringo Starr joined the group in 1962, just before the group hit the big time. They scored their first U.K. hits in 1963 and launched the Beatlemania tidal wave that hit the United States in 1964. In a little more than 10 years, the group transformed rock and roll, scoring 20 No. 1 hits on the Billboard pop charts, more than any group in history. The group's records spent a total of 59 weeks topping the charts between 1964 and 1970. Repackaged Beatles music continues to sell to this day.
McCartney's first solo album, McCartney, had a softer, homespun quality. That sound would characterize much of his work during the next few years with his new band, Wings, which included his wife, Linda, playing keyboards. Wings released nine albums between 1971 and 1979. In 1980, McCartney released his second solo album, McCartney II, and followed with 10 more during the next decade or so. The most commercially successful of the ex-Beatles, McCartney was also one of the first artists to release an "Unplugged" album, based on his appearance on MTV's acoustic concert series.

April 11: 1970 : Apollo 13 launched to moon
On April 11, 1970, Apollo 13, the third lunar landing mission, is successfully launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, carrying astronauts James A. Lovell, John L. Swigert, and Fred W. Haise. The spacecraft's destination was the Fra Mauro highlands of the moon, where the astronauts were to explore the Imbrium Basin and conduct geological experiments. After an oxygen tank exploded on the evening of April 13, however, the new mission objective became to get the Apollo 13 crew home alive.
April 12:  1861 : Fort Sumter fired upon
The American Civil War begins when Confederates fire on Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor. 
The fort had been the source of tension between the Union and Confederacy for several months. After South Carolina seceded, the state demanded the fort be turned over but Union officials refused. A supply ship, the "Star of the West," tried to reach Fort Sumter on January 9, but the shore batteries opened fire and drove it away. For both sides, Sumter was a symbol of sovereignty. The Union could not allow it to fall to the Confederates, although throughout the Deep South other federal installations had been seized. For South Carolinians, secession meant little if the Yankees still held the stronghold. The issue hung in the air when Abraham Lincoln took the oath of office on March 4, stating in his inauguration address: "You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors."
Lincoln did not try to send reinforcements but he did send in food. This way, Lincoln could characterize the operation as a humanitarian mission, bringing, in his words, "food for hungry men." He sent word to the Confederates in Charleston of his intentions on April 6. The Confederate Congress at Montgomery, Alabama, had decided on February 15 that Sumter and other forts must be acquired "either by negotiation or force." Negotiation, it seemed, had failed. The Confederates demanded surrender of the fort, but Major Robert Anderson, commander of Fort Sumter, refused. 
At 4:30 a.m. on April 12, the Confederate guns opened fire. For thirty-three hours, the shore batteries lobbed 4,000 shells in the direction of the fort. Finally, the garrison inside the battered fort raised the white flag. No one on either side had been killed, although two Union soldiers died when the departing soldiers fired a gun salute, and some cartridges exploded prematurely. It was a nearly bloodless beginning to America's bloodiest war. 
April 13:  1964 : First African-American Best Actor Oscar
On this day in 1964, Sydney Poitier becomes the first African American to win the Academy Award for Best Actor, for his role as a laborer who helps build a chapel in Lilies of the Field (1963).
Poitier was born in 1924 to poor farmers in the Bahamas. He dropped out of school at age 13 and later joined the U.S. Army. After his army stint, he became interested in theater and joined the American Negro Theater but progressed slowly, held back by his strong island accent.
He debuted on Broadway in 1946 in an all-black production of Lysistrata. Three years later, he made his film debut in a U.S. Army documentary, and by 1950 he was appearing in Hollywood films. He became the first prominent black film star in America. His hit films included The Defiant Ones (1958), for which he received an Oscar nomination, In the Heat of the Night (1967), and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner in 1967.
Poitier began directing in the early 1970s, with Buck and the Preacher (1971). In 1992, he won the American Film Institute's Life Achievement Award, the first black actor and director to be so honored.


