Today In History - 5th of April

Saturday April 5, 2014 the 94th day and 14th week of 2014, there 271 days and 38 weeks left in the year.  Highlights of today in world history...

1945 Tito signs "friendship treaty" with Soviet Union

On this day in 1945, Yugoslav partisan leader Tito signed an agreement permitting "temporary entry of Soviet troops into Yugoslav territory."

Josip Broz, alias "Tito," secretary general of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, led a partisan counteroffensive movement against the Axis occupying powers of Germany and Italy in 1941. Recognized by the Allies as the leader of the Yugoslav resistance, he was, in fact, the leader of a power grab meant not only to expel the Axis forces but to wrest control of Yugoslavia in the post-war environment from both royalist and democratic movements. Once the Soviet army liberated Serbia, the fate of Yugoslavia as a communist-dominated nation was sealed. Tito's task now lay in remaining independent of both the U.S.S.R. and the West. To this end, he created a "second Yugoslavia," a socialist federation that became known for its nonalignment stance.

As part of the agreement signed on April 5, 1945, Tito secured a proviso that the Soviets would leave Yugoslavia once its "operational task" was completed. Ensuring compliance with this clause proved problematic, as Stalin tried to maintain a presence in post-war Yugoslavia, attempting to co-opt the Yugoslav Communist Party and create another puppet state. He failed; Tito played the West against the East in a Machiavellian scheme to keep his own Stalin-like grip on his country. Although he permitted cultural and scientific freedom unheard of in Soviet-bloc countries, he was also guilty of purging centrist and democratic forces fighting for reform within Yugoslavia and centralizing all power in one party. But upon Tito's death, in 1980, the center could not hold--chaos was ultimately unleashed in the form of ethnic civil war.

1951 Rosenbergs sentenced to death for spying

The climax of the most sensational spy trial in American history was reached when a federal judge sentenced Julius and Ethel Rosenberg to death for their roles in passing atomic secrets to the Soviets. Although the couple proclaimed their innocence, they died in the electric chair in June 1953.

The Rosenbergs were convicted of playing a central role in a spy ring that passed secret data concerning the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union during and immediately after World War II. Their part in the espionage came to light when British physicist Klaus Fuchs was arrested in Great Britain in early 1950. Under questioning, Fuchs admitted that he stole secret documents while he was working on the Manhattan Project—the top-secret U.S. program to build an atomic bomb during World War II. He implicated Harry Gold as a courier who delivered the documents to Soviet agents. Gold was arrested a short time later and informed on David Greenglass, who then pointed the finger at his sister and brother-in-law, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. Julius was arrested in July and Ethel in August 1950. After a brief trial in March 1951, the Rosenbergs were found guilty of conspiracy to commit espionage. At their sentencing hearing in April, Federal Judge Irving R. Kaufman described their crime as "worse than murder" and charged, "By your betrayal you undoubtedly have altered the course of history to the disadvantage of our country." He sentenced them to death.

The Rosenbergs and their attorneys continued to plead their innocence, arguing that they were "victims of political hysteria." Humanitarian organizations in the United States and around the world pleaded for leniency, particularly since the Rosenbergs were the parents of two young children. The pleas for special consideration were ignored, and Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed on June 19, 1953.

1955 Winston Churchill resigns

Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill, the British leader who guided Great Britain and the Allies through the crisis of World War II, retired as prime minister of Great Britain.

Born at Blenheim Palace in 1874, Churchill joined the British Fourth Hussars upon his father's death in 1895. During the next five years, he enjoyed an illustrious military career, serving in India, the Sudan, and South Africa, and distinguishing himself several times in battle. In 1899, he resigned his commission to concentrate on his literary and political career and in 1900 was elected to Parliament as a Conservative MP from Oldham. In 1904, he joined the Liberals, serving a number of important posts before being appointed Britain's First Lord of the Admiralty in 1911, where he worked to bring the British navy to a readiness for the war he foresaw.

In 1915, in the second year of World War I, Churchill was held responsible for the disastrous Dardanelles and Gallipoli campaigns and was thus excluded from the war coalition government. However, in 1917, he returned to politics as a cabinet member in the Liberal government of Lloyd George. From 1919 to 1921, he was secretary of state for war and in 1924 returned to the Conservative Party, where two years later he played a leading role in the defeat of the General Strike of 1926. Out of office from 1929 to 1939, Churchill issued unheeded warnings of the threat of Nazi and Japanese aggression.

After the outbreak of World War II in Europe, Churchill returned to his post as First Lord of the Admiralty and eight months later replaced Neville Chamberlain as prime minister of a new coalition government. In the first year of his administration, Britain stood alone against Nazi Germany, but Churchill promised his country and the world that Britain would "never surrender." He rallied the British people to a resolute resistance and expertly orchestrated Franklin D. Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin into an alliance that eventually crushed the Axis.

After a post-war Labour Party victory in 1945, he became leader of the opposition and in 1951 was again elected prime minister. In 1953, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II and awarded the Nobel Prize in literature. After his retirement as prime minister, he remained in Parliament until 1964, the year before his death.

1992 Abortion rights advocates march on Washington

A march and rally in support of abortion rights for women drew several hundred thousand people to demonstrations in Washington, D.C. One of the largest protest marches on the nation's capital, the pro-choice rally came as the U.S. Supreme Court was about to consider the constitutionality of a Pennsylvania state law that limited access to abortions. Many abortion rights advocates feared that the high court, with its conservative majority, might endorse the Pennsylvania law or even overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that made abortion legal.

In Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court ruled that women, as part of their constitutional right to privacy, could terminate a pregnancy during the first two trimesters. Only during the last trimester, when the fetus can survive outside the womb, would states be permitted to regulate abortion in a healthy pregnancy. The historic and controversial ruling, essentially reversing a century of anti-abortion legislation in America, was the result of a call by many American women for control over their own reproductive processes.

Although defended by the Supreme Court on several occasions, the legalization of abortion became a divisive and intensely emotional public issue. The debate intensified during the 1980s, and both anti- and pro-choice organizations strengthened their membership and political influence. By 1992, 12 years of Republican rule in the White House had weakened abortion rights, and the Supreme Court threatened to overturn the 1973 ruling. In April 1992, a massive pro-choice rally was held in Washington, and soon after, the high court refused to endorse Pennsylvania's new restrictions and left the Roe v. Wade decision intact.

In January 1993, Democrat Bill Clinton was inaugurated as president and within days of taking office overturned several key pieces of anti-abortion executive legislation that had been signed by his Republican predecessors, Ronald Reagan and George H. Bush. In the 1990s, some extreme opponents of abortion rights turned to violent methods in their campaign to make abortion illegal again.

On April 25, 2005, more than a million abortion-rights activists again hit the Mall in Washington as part of the March for Women's Lives. They protested what they saw as attempts by President George W. Bush's administration to chip away at women's reproductive rights, as well as the U.S. ban on aid to abortion clinics abroad.

With the resignation of frequent swing vote Sandra Day O'Connor from the Supreme Court in 2005, who though conservative had helped block efforts to overturn Roe v. Wade, abortion-rights advocated worried that the landmark ruling might be in jeopardy. With South Dakota's passing of a law to ban nearly all abortions in 2006, many expect to see the issue in front of the U.S. Supreme Court again in the near future.

1994 Kurt Cobain commits suicide

Modern rock icon Kurt Cobain committed suicide on this day in 1994. His body was discovered inside his home in Seattle, Washington, three days later by Gary Smith, an electrician, who was installing a security system in the suburban house. Despite indications that Cobain, the lead singer of Nirvana, killed himself, several sceptics questioned the circumstances of his death and pinned responsibility on his wife, Courtney Love.

At least two books, including one penned by Love's estranged father, and a nationally released documentary, Kurt & Courtney, openly expressed doubt that Cobain killed himself and all but accused Love of having her husband killed. Her volatile reputation and healthy list of enemies helped to circulate the rumors. However, police have concluded that Cobain's death was the result of suicide.

Cobain's downward spiral began taking shape in Italy the previous month. He went into a coma and nearly died after mixing champagne and the drug Rohypnol. The public was led to believe that the coma was induced by an accidental heroin overdose, since Cobain had a well-known problem with the drug.

Back at home in Seattle, the police were called to Cobain and Love's home when he again threatened to kill himself. Although Cobain stated in a 1991 interview that he didn't believe in guns, the officers confiscated four from his possession. As his wife and friends watched him spin out of control, they attempted to intervene. Cobain mostly ignored their concerns but reluctantly checked into a rehabilitation clinic in Los Angeles at the end of March.

On March 30, Cobain walked away from the clinic without informing his family or friends. For the next few days, Love could not locate him and decided to hire a private detective on April 3. The detective made contact with Cobain the following day in Seattle, but Cobain refused to return to Los Angeles.

In the meantime, Cobain had convinced a friend to buy him a gun, claiming he needed it for protection. On April 5, Cobain returned home. He had ingested enough Valium and heroin to reach near-fatal levels. In the apartment above the garage was Cobain's sloppily written suicide note, quoting Neil Young's lyric that it is "better to burn out than to fade away."

2008 Charlton Heston dies

Best known in his later years as the outspoken president of the National Rifle Association (NRA), the actor Charlton Heston first earned a reputation in Hollywood for playing larger-than-life figures in epic movies such as The Ten Commandments and Ben-Hur. He died on this day in 2008, at the age of 84. 

Born on October 4, 1923, and raised in the Midwest, Heston caught the acting bug in high school; he later attended North-western University. He landed his first major role in a 1947 production of Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra on Broadway, and three years later made his film debut in Dark City. Impressed with the young actor’s screen presence, the legendary director Cecil B. DeMille cast Heston as the manager of a circus in The Greatest Show on Earth (1952). Four years later, DeMille gave Heston the role that would make him famous--that of the biblical hero Moses in The Ten Commandments.

With his leading-man status confirmed, Heston went on to star in other notable films for Hollywood’s best directors. In 1958, he played a Mexican narcotics detective in Orson Welles’s Touch of Evil, appearing opposite Welles himself. Another biblical epic, Ben-Hur (1959), directed by William Wyler, won a then-record 11 Academy Awards (a mark that was later tied by Titanic in 1998 and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King in 2004). Heston took home an Oscar for Best Actor for his portrayal of a rebellious young aristocrat in ancient Judea.

In all, Heston would appear in some 100 movies on the big and small screens over the course of his lengthy career. He played the title character in the Spanish medieval epic El Cid (1961), opposite Sophia Loren, and was panned by critics for his turn as Michelangelo in The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965). He portrayed Mark Antony in both Julius Caesar (1970) and Antony and Cleopatra (1973); he also directed the latter film. Heston also made forays into the Western genre (1968’s Willy Penny), science fiction (the 1968 hit The Planet of the Apes and its 1970 sequel, 1971’s Omega Man and 1973’s Soylent Green), and highbrow literary adaptations (1972’s The Call of the Wild and 1973’s The Three Musketeers). His later work for cable television included A Man for All Seasons (1988) and The Avenging Angel (1995). 

Long active in political and social causes, Heston publicly supported the civil rights movement and participated in the historic march on Washington with Martin Luther King Jr. in 1963. In 1966, Heston succeeded his friend and fellow actor Ronald Reagan as president of the Screen Actors Guild, a post he would hold until 1971. He also served as chairman of the American Film Institute from 1973 to 1983. After Reagan won the U.S. presidency in 1980, he appointed Heston as the co-chairman of a task force on arts and humanities. In this role, Heston defended National Endowment for the Arts and proved to be an effective speaker and public figure.

According to his obituary in The New York Times, Heston switched his  political affiliation from Democrat to Republican in 1987, after the Democrats blocked the Supreme Court appointment of Robert Bork, a conservative whom Heston supported. Over the next decade, Heston began increasingly to speak out about what he saw as a decline of morality in American popular culture and entertainment. In 1996, he campaigned on behalf of various Republican candidates. He began focusing specifically on the opposition to gun control. After being elected vice president of the NRA in 1997, he became president the following year.

Heston parlayed his rugged onscreen persona into a forceful role at the head of the NRA’s campaign against what it saw as the federal government’s attempts to encroach on the constitutional right to bear arms. In 2000, he made a memorable speech at the NRA’s annual convention, bringing his audience to their feet with the rousing claim that gun-control advocates would have to pry his gun “from my cold, dead hands!” Meanwhile, Heston continued acting through the 1990s, making one of his final film appearances (unaccredited) in Tim Burton’s 2001 remake of Planet of the Apes.

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