April 12 in History

Confederate batteries opened fire on Fort Sumter at 4:30 AM on April 12, 1861, after weeks of negotiation over the federal garrison's resupply. Edmund Ruffin, a Virginia secessionist, is often credited with firing the first shot, but the actual first round was a signal shell fired by Captain George S. James. The bombardment lasted 34 hours, with over 3,000 shells striking the fort. Major Robert Anderson surrendered on April 13 after the fort's wooden barracks caught fire and the magazine was threatened. Remarkably, no one died during the bombardment. The only fatality came during the surrender ceremony, when a cannon exploded during a salute, killing Private Daniel Hough. Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers the next day.

Franklin Roosevelt died of a massive cerebral hemorrhage at 3:35 PM on April 12, 1945, at the Little White House in Warm Springs, Georgia. He was sitting for a portrait when he said "I have a terrific pain in the back of my head" and slumped forward. He was 63 and had been president for 12 years and 39 days. Vice President Harry Truman was not informed about the Manhattan Project until after taking the oath of office. Within four months, Truman would decide to drop atomic bombs on Japan, a weapon Roosevelt had authorized but Truman knew nothing about. Roosevelt's death came just 25 days before Germany's surrender and 118 days before Japan's. He had led the nation through the Depression and nearly all of World War II.

Yuri Gagarin launched aboard Vostok 1 at 9:07 AM Moscow time on April 12, 1961, completing one orbit of Earth in 108 minutes. He ejected from the capsule at 7,000 meters and parachuted separately to the ground, landing near the Volga River in the Saratov region. Soviet authorities kept the ejection secret for years because FAI rules at the time required the pilot to land inside the aircraft for the record to count. Gagarin was 27 years old and had been selected from over 3,000 candidates partly because of his short stature, 5'2", which fit the tiny capsule. He never flew in space again. He died in a routine training jet crash on March 27, 1968, at age 34. The cause has never been definitively established.

On April 12, 1955, Dr. Thomas Francis Jr. of the University of Michigan announced the results of the largest medical field trial in history: Jonas Salk's polio vaccine was safe, effective, and potent. The trial had involved 1.8 million children across 44 states. Church bells rang. Factory whistles blew. Parents wept. Polio had been the most feared disease in America, paralyzing an average of 35,000 children annually in the early 1950s. Salk became an instant national hero but refused to patent the vaccine, saying "Could you patent the sun?" He estimated this decision cost him $7 billion. Within two years of mass vaccination, US polio cases dropped 85-90%. The disease was effectively eliminated from the Western Hemisphere by 1994.

Franklin Roosevelt died in Warm Springs, Georgia, on April 12, 1945, while sitting for a portrait. He had a sudden cerebral hemorrhage. He was 63. Germany surrendered 26 days later. He never knew the war he'd led America through for four years would be won in the weeks after his death. He'd been visibly failing for months — the photos from Yalta in February show a man who looks like a ghost of himself. Stalin reportedly told his advisers after Yalta that Roosevelt wouldn't live much longer. Harry Truman, who had been Vice President for 82 days and had been kept almost completely uninformed about the war, learned about the atomic bomb the day he was sworn in. Two of them were used four months later.

The Roman Inquisition summoned Galileo Galilei on April 12, 1633, to answer charges of heresy for defending the Copernican heliocentric model in his Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems. Pope Urban VIII, once a supporter, felt personally mocked by a character in the book. Galileo was 69, ill, and under no illusion about the stakes. After months of interrogation, he formally abjured heliocentrism on June 22, reportedly murmuring "Eppur si muove" (And yet it moves), though this is likely apocryphal. He spent the remaining eight years of his life under house arrest in Arcetri, where he went blind and wrote his greatest scientific work, Discourses on Two New Sciences. The Church formally acknowledged his correctness in 1992.

The Fourth North Carolina Provincial Congress passed the Halifax Resolves on April 12, 1776, becoming the first colonial government to explicitly authorize its Continental Congress delegates to vote for independence from Britain. The resolution stated that delegates were "empowered to concur with the delegates of the other Colonies in declaring Independency." This was politically explosive: it broke the tacit agreement among colonies to seek reconciliation with the Crown. The Halifax Resolves gave political cover to other hesitant colonial legislatures. Virginia followed with its own independence instructions on May 15, and Richard Henry Lee introduced the resolution for independence on June 7. North Carolina commemorates the date on its state flag.