Today is Saturday, April 12, the 102nd day of 2025. There are 263 days left in the year. In 1861, the U.S. Civil War began as Confederate forces opened fire on Fort Sumter in South Carolina.

In 1945, President Franklin D. Roosevelt died of a cerebral hemorrhage in Warm Springs, Georgia, at age 63; he was succeeded by Vice President Harry S. Truman.

In 1954, Bill Haley and His Comets recorded “Rock Around the Clock,” a song often cited as bringing rock ’n’ roll music into the mainstream when it was popularized in the film “The Blackboard Jungle” the following year.

In 1955, the polio vaccine developed by Jonas Salk was declared safe and effective after nearly a year of field trials undertaken by about 1.8 million American child volunteers dubbed “polio pioneers.”

In 1961, Soviet cosmon

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