“I should be glad if I could flatter myself that I came as near to the central idea of the occasion, in two hours, as you did in two minutes” said Edward Everett to President Lincoln.  Everett, born April 11, 1794, and regarded as one of America’s finest orators, spoke just before Lincoln at the dedication of Gettysburg’s national cemetery in November, 1863.

Image via Wikimedia Commons, copyright not renewed public domain in the US.

Airplane manufacture, Dayton Wright Airplane Co., Dayton, Ohio. Plant No. 1, Fuselage – April 11, 1918
via Wikimedia Commons, public domain

“The peril of this Nation is not in any foreign foe! We, the people, are its power, its peril, and its hope!”
A quote from Charles Evans Hughes who was born on April 11, 1862 in Glens Falls, New York.
Hughes was the 36th Governor of New York, the 44th U.S. Secretary of State and the 11th Chief Justice of The United States.
Image: Charles E. Hughes & family in 1916 via Wikimedia Commons, public domain

On today’s date April 11, 1966 Frank Sinatra recorded “Strangers In The Night”
Image: Frank Sinatra in 1966 via Wikimedia Commons, public domain

On April 11, 1945, units of General Patton’s Third Army liberated the Buchenwald concentration camp near Weimar, Germany. Shown is the flag raised over the camp by US troops, and then lowered to half-staff in honor of the 56,000 inmates who died there.
Image from US Holocaust Memorial Museum via Wikimedia Commons, public domain in the US.

On April 11, 1777, a resident of Philadelphia by the name of Joseph Belton sent a letter to newly formed Continental Congress stating that he developed a new flintlock musket that could fire up to eight musket balls in just a few seconds. 
The following month Congress ordered the new muskets, but about two weeks later cancelled their order after they received Belton’s invoice. 
Image of the cover page of Belton’s first letter to Continental Congress on April 11, 1777
via Wikimedia Commons, public domain 

A photo showing the line of children waiting to enter the children’s room at Seward Park Library on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. 
April 11, 1910
Image via NYPL, no known restrictions 

zJim Thorpe at Crosley Field in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1913. 
A year earlier on April 11, 1912, Crosley Field was opened to the public. It was the home of the Cincinnati Reds for nearly 6 decades and was eventually demolished in 1972. 
Image via Wikimedia Commons, public domain

President Lyndon B. Johnson signing the Civil Rights Act of 1968 on April 11th. 

Image via Wikimedia Commons, public domain

Nancy Reagan reading Pennies for Pandas mail in the residence sitting hall

April 11, 1984 

Image via Wikimedia Commons, public domain

On April 11, 1945, the American racehorse Citation was born at Calumet Farm in Lexington, Kentucky.
During his three-year-old season in 1948 Citation won the Triple Crown. He later became the first racehorse to win 1 million dollars.

Launch of Apollo 13 on April 11, 1970. 
While the mission was intended to be the third lunar landing it became a mission to save the lives of the crew after the failure of one of the oxygen tanks.
Image via Wikimedia Commons, public domain 

“The evacuation of Petersburg and Richmond, and the surrender of the principal insurgent army, give hope of a righteous and speedy peace whose joyous expression can not be restrained. In the midst of this, however, He from whom all blessings flow, must not be forgotten.”

Abraham Lincoln from his final public address which was delivered on April 11, 1865.

Image via Wikimedia Commons, public domain