On April 30, 1803, representatives of the United States and
Napoleonic France completed negotiations for the Louisiana
Purchase, a massive land sale that doubles the size of the
young American republic.

On April 30, 1789, George Washington was sworn in as the first
American president and delivered the first inaugural speech at
Federal Hall in New York City. Elements of the ceremony set
tradition; presidential inaugurations have deviated little in the
two centuries since Washington’s inauguration.

Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee (69).

On April 30, 1993, four years after publishing a proposal for
“an idea of linked information systems,” computer scientist
Tim Berners-Lee released the source code for the world’s
first web browser and editor. 

The browser, originally called Mesh, that he dubbed World
Wide Web became the first royalty-free, easy-to-use means
of browsing the emerging information network that soon
developed into the internet as we know it today.

The average American now spends 24 hours a week online.

2024

This NeXT Computer was used by Berners-Lee at CERN and became the world’s first web server.

The auctioned-off letter was dated April 10 and postmarked
April 12 – just days before disaster struck.

(FOX NEWS) – A "prophetic" letter written aboard the ill-fated RMS
Titanic ocean liner has been auctioned in England for a stunning
sum.

The letter was sold by Wiltshire-based Henry Aldridge & Son Ltd.
on April 26. It was written by Archibald Gracie IV on April 10, 1912
– just five days before the ship sank on April 15.

Gracie penned the note on April 10, when the ship left Southampton, England. The letter was postmarked in London two days later, on
April 12.

"It is a fine ship but I shall await my journey’s end before I pass
judgment on her," Gracie wrote compellingly in the letter.

"The Oceanic is like an old friend and while she does not possess
the elaborate style and varied amusement of this big ship, still her seaworthy qualities and yacht-like appearance make me miss her,"
he added.

"As dawn broke, Col Gracie returned to New York City aboard the
rescue ship Carpathia, where he began writing about what he had
been through."

Originally predicted to fetch the equivalent of $80,000, the
103-year-old piece of paper was sold for an eye-popping 
$399,000.

Auctioneer Andrew Aldridge called the letter "one of the
finest of its type known."

Though Gracie survived the shipwreck, his health was
severely impacted by the disaster. He suffered from
hypothermia and various physical injuries on the day
of the sinking. In Dec. 1912, he fell into a coma before
dying of complications from diabetes.

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