On This Day for April 23 - Voting for Eritrea's independence , William Shakespeare is featured, and more

Created: 2020-04-23 10:03 Updated: 2020-04-23 10:03 Notebook: On this Day in History

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April 23

FEATURED BIOGRAPHY

William Shakespeare

FEATURED EVENT

1993

Voting for Eritrea's independence

MORE EVENTS ON THIS DAY

2007: Russian politician Boris Yeltsin—who became in 1991 the first popularly elected leader in his country's history and guided Russia through a stormy decade of political and economic retrenching until his resignation on the eve of 2000—died in Moscow. [Sort fact from fiction in our Russia quiz.]

2005: The first video—which was of YouTube cofounder Jawed Karim's visit to the San Diego Zoo—was uploaded on the YouTube Web site; approximately one year later the site had some 100 million videos. [ Take our computers and technology quiz.]

1998: James Earl Ray, convicted assassin of Martin Luther King, Jr., died in prison in Nashville, Tennessee.

1985: The Coca-Cola Company introduced New Coke, a reformulated soft drink meant to replace its flagship beverage; due to public outrage, however, the previous version of Coke was brought back as “Coca-Cola Classic” less than three months later.

1936: American singer-songwriter Roy Orbison, known for his soaring voice and for his carefully crafted ballads of loneliness and heartache, was born in Vernon, Texas. [Test your knowledge of songwriters.]

1906: Russian Tsar Nicholas II promulgated the Fundamental Laws, which marked the end of unlimited autocracy but fell short of the reforms promised in the October Manifesto. [ Discover more about Nicholas II's reign.]

SEE ALL EVENTS ON THIS DAY

ALSO BORN ON THIS DAY

1954

Michael Moore
American filmmaker and author

1968

Timothy McVeigh
American militant

1936

Roy Orbison
American singer and songwriter

1928

Shirley Temple
American actress and diplomat

1791

James Buchanan
president of United States