Today’s highlight

On April 7, 1984, the Census Bureau reported Los Angeles had overtaken Chicago as the nation’s “second city” in terms of population.

On this date

1862: Union forces led by Gen. Ulysses S. Grant and Maj. Gen. Don Carlos Buell defeated the Confederates at the Battle of Shiloh in Tennessee.

1915: Jazz singer-songwriter Billie Holiday, also known as “Lady Day,” was born in Philadelphia.

1945: During World War II, American planes intercepted and effectively destroyed a Japanese fleet, which included the battleship Yamato, that was headed to Okinawa on a suicide mission.

1962: Nearly 1,200 Cuban exiles tried by Cuba for their roles in the failed Bay of Pigs invasion were convicted of treason.

1994: Civil war erupted in Rwanda, a day after a mysterious plane crash claimed the lives of the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi; in the months that followed, hundreds of thousands of minority Tutsi and Hutu moderates were slaughtered by Hutu extremists.

2020: Acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly resigned after lambasting the officer he’d fired as the captain of the USS Theodore Roosevelt, which had been stricken by a coronavirus outbreak; James McPherson was appointed as acting Navy secretary.