Milestones: April 18, 2024

April 18, 2024 Brooklyn Eagle Staff

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TIANANMEN SQUARE — THOUSANDS OF CHINESE STUDENTS TOOK TO THE PUBLIC STREETS to protest government policies and call for democratic reform, with the largest one taking place on April 18, 1989 in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. They had been encouraged by an apparent loosing of economic strictures by the communist-powered People’s Republic of China. However, as the protests grew, the Chinese government cracked down and arrested several of the demonstration leaders and launched a propaganda campaign against the students. Foreign journalists documented the dramatic events on film. The PRC sent the Chinese army to crush the movement. And on June 3, 1989, thousands of Chinese protesters were killed in what came to be known as the Tiananmen Square Massacre.

The United States, which had believed that China and Russia were moving toward a free market, was shocked at the PRC’s actions and temporarily suspended arms sales to the Asian superpower. However, because of its own diplomatic and trade agenda, America’s response was mild and largely symbolic.

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DESTROYED MUCH OF CITY — AN EARTHQUAKE MEASURING NEARLY 8.0 ON THE RICHTER SCALE devastated San Francisco on the early morning of April 18, 1906. The quake killed about 3,000 and destroyed most of that city’s business district and homes. The quake’s cause was determined to be a slip of the San Andreas Fault over a segment about 275 miles long, and the shock waves stretched beyond the epicenter from southern Oregon to Los Angeles. Not only were San Francisco’s historical Victorian buildings destroyed, but fires broke out and the water mains, also ruptured, preventing firefighters from extinguishing the blazes. It took five days, until April 23, for the fires to be extinguished before civil authorities could begin the task of rebuilding.

The army wound up housing 20,000 refugees in more than 20 military-style tent camps across the city.

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DEADLY AVALANCHE — AN APRIL 18, 2014 AVALANCHE ON MT. EVEREST IN NEPAL KILLED 16 Nepali mountaineering guides, marking the single deadliest accident in the history of the Himalayan peak. Many of the guides were ethnic Sherpas, who knew the region and its topography. Mount Everest, which rises more than 29,000 feet above sea level, borders both Nepal and China. The avalanche, which occurred around 6:30 a.m., swept over the Sherpas in a notoriously treacherous area of Everest known as the Khumbu Icefall, at approximately 19,000 feet. At the time, the Sherpas, accustomed to dangerous risks had been hauling loads of gear for commercial expedition groups. The avalanche reopened questions about risks to the Sherpas in such expeditions embarked mostly by foreigners.

In 1953, New Zealander Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay became the first people to officially reach the summit of Everest, which the British named in 1865 for George Everest, a Welsh-born surveyor general of India.

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BELOVED WAR JOURNALIST — ERNIE PYLE, CONSIDERED AMERICA’S MOST POPULAR WAR CORRESPONDENT DURING WWII for his commitment to the human interest angle, was killed during a Japanese attack on April 18, 1945. He died in the midst of a Japanese machine-gun fire on the island of Ie Shima in the Pacific. The native of Dana, Indiana, Pyle had first begun writing for Scripps-Howard in 1935. Pyle’s column, which placed spotlights on the lives and hopes of typical citizens grew popular and even beloved. After America entered World War II, Pyle initially covered the North Africa campaign, the invasions of Sicily and Italy, and on June 7, 1944, went ashore at Normandy the day after Allied forces landed. He later covered the Pacific theater. But he focused on the lives, challenges and hopes of the soldiers rather than the battles in which they fought.

Commemorating the fallen journalist, President Harry S. Truman said Pyle “told the story of the American fighting man as the American fighting men wanted it told.”

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ACTRESS MARRIES ROYALTY — AMERICAN ACTRESS GRACE KELLY MARRIED PRINCE RAINIER of Monaco in a spectacular ceremony on April 18, 1956. The daughter of a wealthy industrialist and a model, Kelly started her acting career as a child and attended the American Academy for Dramatic Arts in New York City. She supported herself in modeling and appearing in commercials, getting her Broadway break in Swedish playwright August Strindberg’s play, “The Father.” But her big Hollywood break came in 1952 when she starred as Gary Cooper’s wife in “High Noon.” She won the Academy Award for Best Actress in the 1954 movie, “Country Girl,” about the wife of an alcoholic songwriter (Bing Crosby). She also starred with Jimmy Stewart in the Alfred Hitchcock classic “Rear Window.” It was during the filming of another Hitchcock film, “To Catch a Thief,” with the set on the French Riviera, that Grace Kelly met Prince Rainier of Monaco. They began a long correspondence. Upon their marriage, the Oscar winner became Princess Grace of Monaco and retired from acting.

She died in 1982, at age 52 in a tragic accident, when her car plunged from a mountain road by the Cote D’Azur.

See previous milestones, here.