TODAY IN HISTORY: President dies midway through having portrait painted
President Franklin Roosevelt died midway through having his portrait painted on April 12, 1945.
Roosevelt was being painted by watercolour artist Elizabeth Shoumatoff when he remarked: "I have a terrific headache".
He then fell into unconsciousness, having suffered a massive cerebral hemorrhage.
Shoumatoff never finished the portrait, but painted a completed one from memory.
The two paintings hang side-by-side in the home where he died, his retreat in Warm Springs, Georgia.
Roosevelt's poor health had been a secret for decades. Very few Americans knew the president used a wheelchair, having contracted what was believed to be polio.
But he had taken a turn for the worse the previous year, and feared he would have to resign the presidency.
Nevertheless, he ran for re-election in 1944 for a historic fourth term, believing no-one else was up to the job.
He had come to believe his previous vice president Henry Wallace was a liability, and had replaced him with Harry Truman.
But Roosevelt and Truman did not really know each other, and only met twice during the vice president's time in office.
When Truman was told by First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt that her husband had died, he asked her: "Is there anything I can do for you?"
"Is there anything we can do for you? For you are the one in trouble now!" she replied.
He was sworn in as president later that evening.
Truman had not been told Roosevelt was in terrible health, and only found out about the development of the atomic bomb on the day of his death.
April 12
The USSR took the world by surprise when they announced the first manned mission to space on April 12, 1961.
Yuri Gagarin became a national hero when become the first man in space.
Gagarin was chosen for his physical and psychological endurance, his mathematical nuance, his fantastic memory, and his height.
At 157cm (5ft 2), Gagarin was short enough to fit into the cramped Vostok 1 spacecraft cockpit.
Vostok 1 orbited the Earth once before parachuting down to land in the Lower Volga region of Russia.
The landing took farmers in the region by surprise, especially as Gagarin exited the spacecraft and approached them.
"When they saw me in my space suit and the parachute dragging alongside as I walked, they started to back away in fear," Gagarin said later.
"I told them, don't be afraid, I am a Soviet citizen like you, who has descended from space and I must find a telephone to call Moscow."
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