Today’s Highlights

On April 5, 1933, as part of his New Deal programs, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed an executive order establishing the Civilian Conservation Corps, a Depression-era work relief program for single men aged 18-25; the program employed more than 2.5 million men for federal conservation and safety projects over its nine-year history.

On this date

1614: Pocahontas, the daughter of Tsenacommacah chief Powhatan, married Englishman John Rolfe, a widower, in the Virginia Colony.

1764: The British Parliament passed the American Revenue Act of 1764, also known as the Sugar Act.

1887: In Tuscumbia, Alabama, teacher Anne Sullivan achieved a breakthrough as her 6-year-old deaf-blind pupil, Helen Keller, learned the meaning of the word “water” as spelled out in the Manual Alphabet.

1951: Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were sentenced to death following their conviction in New York on charges of conspiring to commit espionage for the Soviet Union. (They were executed in June 1953.)

1986: Two American servicemen and a Turkish woman were killed in the bombing of a West Berlin discotheque, an incident that prompted a U.S. air raid on Libya nine days later.

1994: Nirvana lead singer Kurt Cobain died by suicide in his Seattle, Washington home at age 27.

Today’s birthdays

Actor Michael Moriarty is 84. Actor Max Gail is 82. Rock musician Mike McCready (Pearl Jam) is 59. Country musician Pat Green is 53. Musician-producer Pharrell Williams is 52. Rapper-producer Juicy J is 50. Actor Sterling K. Brown is 49.