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On This Day: Winston Churchill resigns for second time

On April 5, 1955, following rumors of failing health, Winston Churchill resigned as prime minister of the United Kingdom.

By UPI Staff
On April 5, 1955, following rumors of failing health, Winston Churchill resigned as prime minister of the United Kingdom. File Photo courtesy Cecil Beaton/Imperial War Museums
On April 5, 1955, following rumors of failing health, Winston Churchill resigned as prime minister of the United Kingdom. File Photo courtesy Cecil Beaton/Imperial War Museums

April 5 (UPI) -- On this date in history:

In 1614, Pocahontas, daughter of a chief, married English tobacco planter John Rolfe in Jamestown, Va. It was a marriage that ensured peace between the settlers and the Powhatan Indians for several years.

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In 1768, the first U.S. Chamber of Commerce was founded in New York City.

In 1792, President George Washington exercised veto power, the first time it was done in the United States.

In 1933, Executive Order 6101 establishing the Civilian Conservation Corps was issued by President Franklin Roosevelt. The public work relief program would run from 1933 to 1942 and provide employment for unemployed and unmarried men as part of the New Deal.

In 1951, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were sentenced to death in New York for stealing atomic secrets for the Soviet Union. They were executed on June 20, 1953.

In 1955, following rumors of failing health, Winston Churchill resigned as prime minister of the United Kingdom.

In 1976, reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes died of kidney failure during a flight from Acapulco, Mexico, to Houston. He was 71.

In 1991, former Sen. John Tower, R-Texas, and 22 others were killed in a commuter plane crash in Brunswick, Ga.

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In 1992, Sam Moore Walton, founder of Walmart, died of cancer at 74.

In 1994, Nirvana's Kurt Cobain killed himself at his home in Seattle. He was 27. It would be three days before his body was discovered.

In 1999, Russell Henderson, one of two men charged in the October 1998 beating death of gay University of Wyoming student Matthew Shepard, pleaded guilty and was given two life prison sentences. The second man, Aaron McKinney, who delivered the fatal blows, also received two life terms.

In 2000, Lee Petty, the winner of the first Daytona 500 and a pioneer of a NASCAR racing family, died at a North Carolina hospital from complications of an abdominal aneurysm. He was 86.

In 2007, Iran released a 15-member British naval crew seized in the Persian Gulf and held for 13 days. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who accused the crew of trespassing in Iranian waters, said the pardons were a "gift" to the British.

In 2010, an explosion in a coal mine near Montcoal, in West Virginia's Raleigh County, killed 29 workers.

In 2013, South Korean President Park Geun-hye called for tougher laws to ensure that people don't avoid punishment or get light sentences "just because they are rich or influential."

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In 2014, Peter Matthiessen, the only writer to win the National Book Award in fiction and non-fiction, died at his home in Sagaponack, N.Y. He was 86.

In 2016, San Francisco became the first U.S. city to mandate six weeks of fully paid leave for new parents.

In 2016, Icelandic Prime Minister Sigmundur Davio Gunnlaugsson resigned in response to public outcry after the release of the Panama Papers showed he owned an offshore company, which he had kept secret from the public.

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