Opening Day welcomes the new spring baseball season each
year, a uniquely American tradition steeped in history and
fanfare.
On this day in history, April 14, 1910, President William Howard
Taft (above) became the first U.S. president to throw out the
first pitch at a Major League Baseball game.
William Howard Taft (1857 – 1930)
Thomas Jefferson (April 13, 1743 – July 4, 1826)
Founding Father Thomas Jefferson served as the third president
of the United States from 1801 to 1809 was the primary author of
the Declaration of Independence.
Benjamin Franklin, John Adams and Thomas
Jefferson reviewing the Declaration of
Independence in 1776.
On this day in 1945, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt passed
away partway through his fourth term in office, leaving Vice
President Harry S. Truman in charge of a country still fighting
the Second World War and in possession of a weapon of
unprecedented and terrifying power.
In the afternoon of April 12, 1945, in Warm Springs, Georgia,
while sitting for a portrait by Elizabeth Shoumatoff, Roosevelt
said: "I have a terrific headache." He then slumped forward in
his chair, unconscious, and was carried into his bedroom.
The president’s attending cardiologist, Howard Bruenn, had
diagnosed a massive intracerebral hemorrhage.
The last photograph of U.S. President Franklin Delano
Roosevelt, taken at Warm Springs, GA by Nicholas
Robbins for Elizabeth Shoumatoff.
Engraving of the Four Freedoms at the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial, dedicated in 1997 in Washington,
D.C.
On April 6, 1841, John Tyler was sworn in as president. Tyler was
elected as William Harrison’s vice president earlier in 1841 and
was suddenly thrust into the role of president when Harrison
died one month into office.
He was the first vice president to immediately assume the role
of president after a sitting president’s untimely exit and set the
precedent for succession thereafter.
Tyler’s death due to a stroke at 71 in 1862 was the only one in
presidential history not to be officially recognized in Washington,
because of his allegiance to the Confederate States of America.
William Henry Harrison (February 9, 1773 – April 4, 1841)
