April 8, tennis great Arthur Ashe announces AIDS diagnosis

Today is Tuesday, April 8, the 98th day of 2025. There are 267 days left in the year.

Today in history:

On April 8,1992, tennis great Arthur Ashe announced at a New York news conference that he had AIDS, having contracted HIV from a blood transfusion in 1983.

Also on this date:

In 1820, the Venus de Milo statue, likely dating to the 2nd century B.C.E., was discovered by a farmer on the Greek island of Milos.

In 1864, the U.S. Senate passed, 38-6, the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolishing slavery. (The House of Representatives passed it in January 1865; the amendment was ratified and adopted in December 1865.)

In 1911, an explosion at the Banner Coal Mine in Littleton, Alabama, claimed the lives of 128 men, most of them convicts leased out from prisons.

In 1913, the 17th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified, providing for election of U.S. senators by state residents as opposed to state legislatures.

In 1962, Cuba announced that 1,200 Cuban exiles tried for their roles in the failed Bay of Pigs invasion were convicted of treason and sentenced to 30 years in prison.

In 1974, Hank Aaron of the Atlanta Braves hit his 715th career home run in a game against the Los Angeles Dodgers, breaking Babe Ruth’s home run record that had stood since 1935.

In 1990, Ryan White, the teenager whose battle with AIDS drew national attention and led to greater understanding and de-stigmatization of those suffering from the disease, died in Indianapolis at age 18.

In 2010, President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev signed the New START nuclear arms reduction treaty in Prague.

In 2020, a 76-day lockdown was lifted in the Chinese city of Wuhan, where the global COVID-19 pandemic began.