1 April 1976

Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak found Apple Computer, Inc.

The history of Apple computers dates back to 1976 when Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak founded the company in Cupertino, California. The first Apple computer, called the Apple I, was sold as a circuit board kit for hobbyists and was not yet a fully assembled personal computer. The following year, Apple released the Apple II, which was the company’s first commercially successful product and the first personal computer to come with color graphics.

In 1984, Apple released the Macintosh, which was the first personal computer to use a graphical user interface (GUI) and a mouse, making it more user-friendly than previous computers that relied on command-line interfaces. The Macintosh was a hit with consumers and helped to establish Apple as a major player in the computer industry.

However, despite early successes, Apple struggled in the mid to late 1990s due to competition from Microsoft and other PC manufacturers. In 1997, Steve Jobs returned to Apple as CEO, and under his leadership, the company underwent a major turnaround. Jobs introduced a series of successful products, including the iMac, iPod, iPhone, and iPad, which helped to make Apple one of the most valuable companies in the world.

Today, Apple is known for its sleek, innovative products, including Mac computers, iPhones, iPads, and Apple Watches. The company has also expanded into other areas, such as music and video streaming with Apple Music and Apple TV+. Apple is known for its strict control over both its hardware and software, which has helped to ensure a high level of quality and a consistent user experience across its products.

1 April 1924

Adolf Hitler is sentenced to five years imprisonment for his participation in the “Beer Hall Putsch” but spends only nine months in jail. He is released at the end of 1924.

The “Beer Hall Putsch” took place on November 8-9, 1923, in Munich, Germany. Adolf Hitler, who was the leader of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP or Nazi Party), and his supporters attempted to overthrow the Weimar Republic government by launching a coup. During the coup attempt, they tried to seize key locations in Munich, but the coup failed, resulting in several deaths and injuries.

Hitler was arrested on November 11, 1923, and subsequently put on trial. During the trial, Hitler used it as a platform to gain publicity for his nationalist and anti-Semitic views. Despite being found guilty of treason, Hitler received a relatively lenient sentence of five years in prison, along with a fine.

While in prison, Hitler used his time to write his autobiography and political manifesto titled “Mein Kampf” (“My Struggle”). The book later became a central piece of Nazi ideology.

Hitler’s early release from prison was due to political considerations. The Weimar government, facing numerous political challenges and unrest, believed that keeping Hitler in prison could lead to further radicalization of his followers. As a result, Hitler was released on December 20, 1924, after serving only about nine months of his five-year sentence.

After his release, Hitler resumed his political activities and eventually rose to power, becoming the Chancellor of Germany in 1933. His regime led to one of the darkest chapters in human history, with the outbreak of World War II and the Holocaust, resulting in the genocide of millions of people, including six million Jews.

1 April 1867

Singapore becomes a British crown colony.

The Straits Settlements, which comprised Singapore, Malacca and Penang, became a crown colony under direct British control on 1 April 1867.

The impetus for the conversion of the Straits Settlements into a crown colony was prompted by growing dissatisfaction with the Indian administration over issues such as piracy, port duties, currency, the transportation of convicts, as well as delays in judicial reforms. The sentiment then was that the Indian government based in Calcutta had failed to give adequate attention to the affairs of the Straits Settlements.

Discontent came to a head in August 1857 when Singapore merchants not only backed the petition by European merchants in Calcutta for the abolition of the East India Company, but also requested that the Straits Settlements be separated from India and administered directly by the Colonial Office in London.

After a series of protracted negotiations, an act was eventually passed on 10 August 1866 to authorise the administrative transfer to the Colonial Office and provide for the creation of the government of the Straits Settlements. The act came into effect on 1 April the following year, when a ceremony was held at the Town Hall in Singapore to mark the formal transfer of the Straits Settlements from the jurisdiction of British India to the direct administration of the Crown. Harry St. George Ord was appointed the first governor of the new crown colony.

1 April 1924

The Royal Canadian Air Force is formed.

The history of the Royal Canadian Air Force begins in 1920, when the air force was created as the Canadian Air Force (CAF). In 1924 the CAF was renamed the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) when it was granted the royal title by King George V. The RCAF existed as an independent service until 1968.[1] Prior attempts at forming an air force for Canada were the Canadian Aviation Corps that was attached to the Canadian Expeditionary Force, and a two-squadron Canadian Air Force that was attached to the Royal Air Force.

The modern Royal Canadian Air Force, formerly known as Canadian Forces Air Command, traces its history to the unification of Canada’s armed services in 1968, and is one of three environmental commands of the Canadian Forces. The Royal Canadian Air Force has served in the Second World War, the Korean War, and several United Nations peacekeeping missions and NATO operations. The force maintained a presence in Europe through the second half of the 20th century.

Efforts toward the creation of a Canadian air element continued at the beginning of 1920s. The Canadian government established an Air Board of seven members to regulate and control commercial and civil aviation throughout the Dominion in 1919. The Board was also charged with defending the country from the sky. This included the organization and administration of the Canadian Air Force (CAF), authorized on 18 February 1920. The new organization was given a provisional establishment of 1,340 officers and 31,905 airmen, but it remained as a non-permanent air force. Its only function was to give a 28-day refresher courses every other year to officers and airmen who had served in the RAF during the war. A small headquarters was set up in Ottawa, under the Air Board, and Camp Borden was taken over to serve as the CAF training centre. Operations began there in October 1920, with all equipment, aircraft and hangars donated by the British government.

By the end of March 1922, when refresher training at Camp Borden was suspended, 550 officers and 1,271 airmen had completed the 28-day course.gallery-ww21By 1922, a transition plan for the future organization of the Air Force was needed. It was a period of reorganization for the Canadian forces that culminated with legislation passing on 1 January 1923; the Militia, the Naval Service, and the Air Board were thus incorporated under one Ministry of National Defence.

1 April 2004

Google releases Gmail.

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If you wanted to pick a single date to mark the beginning of the modern era of the web, you could do a lot worse than choosing Thursday, April 1, 2004, the day Gmail launched.

Scuttlebutt that Google was about to offer a free email service had leaked out the day before: Here’s John Markoff of the New York Times reporting on it at the time. But the idea of the search kingpin doing email was still startling, and the alleged storage capacity of 1GB—500 times what Microsoft’s Hotmail offered—seemed downright implausible. So when Google issued a press release date-stamped April 1, an awful lot of people briefly took it to be a really good hoax.

Gmail turned out to be real, and revolutionary. And a decade’s worth of perspective only makes it look more momentous.The first true landmark service to emerge from Google since its search engine debuted in 1998, Gmail didn’t just blow away Hotmail and Yahoo Mail, the dominant free webmail services of the day. With its vast storage, zippy interface, instant search and other advanced features, it may have been the first major cloud-based app that was capable of replacing conventional PC software, not just complementing it.

Even the things about Gmail that ticked off some people presaged the web to come: Its scanning of messages to find keywords that could be used for advertising purposes kicked off a conversation about online privacy that continues on to this day. Within Google, Gmail was also regarded as a huge, improbable deal. It was in the works for nearly three years before it reached consumers; during that time, skeptical Googlers ripped into the concept on multiple grounds, from the technical to the philosophical. It’s not hard to envision an alternate universe in which the effort fell apart along the way, or at least resulted in something a whole lot less interesting.