Today in history—April 23

303: A senior military aide to the Emperor Diocletian admits that he is a Christian and is decapitated at Nicomedia (now Izmit) in what is now Turkey.  As St. George, he will be venerated as the patron of England.

1348; King Edward III founds the Order of the Garter.  “I like the Garter,” Lord Melbourne will say some few centuries later, “There’s no damned merit to it.”

1533: The Church of England annuls the marriage between Catherine of Aragon and Henry VIII of England, thus turning Princess Mary (later Mary I) into a bastard.  This doesn’t increase her fondness for Protestantism.

1791: Lawyer James Buchanan is born in a log cabin at Cove Gap, Pennsylvania.  In his inaugural address as President of the U.S. in 1857, he predicts that the Supreme Court shortly will settle the slavery question “speedily and finally” in its Dred Scott decision.

1813: Stephen Arnold Douglas, the lawyer and land speculator whose Kansas-Nebraska Act will ignite the fuse that will touch off the Civil War, is born at Brandon, Vermont.

1951: Charles Gates Dawes (Cincinnati Law 1886) dies at Evanston, Illinois.  He is the only U.S. Vice President to both win the Nobel Peace Prize (1925) and to write the music for a hit song (It’s All in the Game).

1968: The United Kingdom produces its first decimal coins, a 5p and a 10p coin.

1982: At Key West, Florida, the Conch Republic declares independence and declares war on the United States.  It immediately surrenders and requests $1 billion in foreign aid.

1985: The Coca-Cola Co. announces the future of soft drinks:  New Coke.

2001: Intel Corp. introduces the Pentium 4 Processor.