Today in history—April 25

1599: Oliver Cromwell is born at Huntington in East Anglia.  He will be 43 when the English Civil War leads him to discover a talent for war and government.

1831: A new play, The Lion of the West, opens in New York City.  Its lead character, Col. Nimrod Wildfire, is based loosely on Tennessee Congressman David Crockett, and marks the start of the “Davy Crockett” legend.

1849: Canadian Governor General Lord Elgin signs the Rebellion Losses Bill, a bill that outrages the English in Lower Canada (Quebec) and triggers the Montreal Riots.

1859: Engineer Ferdinand de Lesseps turns over a spade of earth as the Compagnie universelle du canal maritime de Suez breaks ground for the new Suez Canal,

1901: New York becomes the first American state to require license plates on motor vehicles.

1906: U.S. Supreme Court Justice William Joseph Brennan (Harvard Law 1931) is born at Newark, New Jersey.

1945: Meeting in San Francisco, a group of 50 nations organize the new United Nations.

1953: The journal Nature publishes the Nobel Prize-winning article by James Watson and Francis Crick outlining the structure of DNA.  It’s only one page long.  There’s a lesson there for legal writers.

1959: The first ship passes through the new St. Lawrence Seaway, which links the Great Lakes with the Atlantic.

2000: “The Abominable Showman,” David Merrick (born David Lee Margolois), who gave up a legal career to produce such musicals as Gypsy, Carnival, Oliver!, and Hello, Dolly!, dies at London.