The Titanic starts off on her first and last voyage, leaving Queenstown, now Cobh, Ireland, on April 10, 1912. Why the Titanic fascinates more than other disasters – CNN.com By Stephen D. Cox , Special to CNN 2012-04-06T12:25:02Z CNN.com Editor’s note: Stephen D. Cox is professor of literature at the University of California, San Diego, and author of “The Titanic Story: Hard Choices, Dangerous Decisions.” (CNN) — It was an eerie night on the North Atlantic. The ocean, which is almost never still, was so calm that some stars could be seen reflected in the water. Thousands of stars curtained the sky — backdrop to the immense human drama taking…

According to historical records, the first ancient Olympic Games can be traced back to 776 BC. They were dedicated to the Olympian gods and were staged on the ancient plains of Olympia. They continued for nearly 12 centuries, until Emperor Theodosius decreed in 393 A.D. that all such “pagan cults” be banned. Olympia Olympia, the site of the ancient Olympic Games, is in the western part of the Peloponnese which, according to Greek mythology, is the island of “Pelops”, the founder of the Olympic Games. Imposing temples, votive buildings, elaborate shrines and ancient sporting facilities were combined in a site of unique natural and mystical beauty. Olympia functioned as a…

Apr 4, 1968: Just after 6 p.m. on April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. is fatally shot while standing on the balcony outside his second-story room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. The civil rights leader was in Memphis to support a sanitation workers’ strike and was on his way to dinner when a bullet struck him in the jaw and severed his spinal cord. King was pronounced dead after his arrival at a Memphis hospital. He was 39 years old. In the months before his assassination, Martin Luther King became increasingly concerned with the problem of economic inequality in America. He organized a Poor People’s Campaign to focus on…

Image credit: Courtesy Tom Preston The mystery of the origins of an 87-year-old urn that washed up on the coast of Oregon may have been solved. An Oregon funeral home has been searching for the descendents of the 1925 urn. Alex Reed, 17, of Warrenton, Ore., found the copper-colored urn engraved with, “William George Kennedy, 1870-1925″ wedged between rocks on the coast. The urn is dented in several places and the top is bent to the right. Reed asked for help from the funeral home and a team of volunteers began to search for Kennedy’s descendents. Now, they think they may have found one of Kennedy’s great granddaughters in England…

On this day in 1860, the first Pony Express mail, traveling by horse and rider relay teams, simultaneously leaves St. Joseph, Missouri, and Sacramento, California. Ten days later, on April 13, the westbound rider and mail packet completed the approximately 1,800-mile journey and arrived in Sacramento, beating the eastbound packet’s arrival in St. Joseph by two days and setting a new standard for speedy mail delivery. Although ultimately short-lived and unprofitable, the Pony Express captivated America’s imagination and helped win federal aid for a more economical overland postal system. It also contributed to the economy of the towns on its route and served the mail-service needs of the American West…

Archives bends under rush for 1940 census records; share your family stories By Bill Dedman Investigative Reporter, msnbc.com April 2, 2012, 10:26 am MSN.com Update: The National Archives had said it wasn’t sure whether its computers could handle the load, and delays were reported. In Springfield, Ohio, Facebook user Val Lough commented on our page: “It’s very sweet of them to put all of these records on line. It would be even nicer of them to make the records VISIBLE. None of them will download, I have a browser window opening that’s ‘loading’ the documents and has been for about 20 minutes. You might want to find out what their…

December 14, 1961 OBITUARY Grandma Moses Is Dead at 101; Primitive Artist ‘Just Wore Out’ Special to THE NEW YORK TIMES HOOSICK FALLS, N. Y., Dec. 13–Grandma Moses, the spry, indomitable “genuine American primitive” who became one of the country’s most famous painters in her late seventies, died here today at the age of 101. She died at the Hoosick Falls Health Center, where she had been a patient since August, after a fall at her home in nearby Eagle Bridge. Her physician, Dr. Clayton E. Shaw, said she had died of hardening of the arteries, but the best way to describe the cause of death, he suggested, was to…

Published: March 30, 2012 By: HISTORY.COM STAFF 10 Things You Didn’t Know About the Penny Canada will remove its pennies from circulation this year, following in the footsteps of Australia, Sweden and several other countries, finance minister Jim Flaherty announced yesterday. Is the humble coin’s American cousin next in line to lose its currency? As various groups weigh both sides of the debate, explore the history of the penny in the United States and beyond. (Credit: Tim Boyle/Getty Images) 1. The word “penny” and its variations across Europe—including the German “pfennig” and the Swedish “penning”—originally denoted any sort of coin or money, not just a small denomination. 2. Offa, an…