April 9
2003:
Fall of Baghdad.
Baghdad fell to U.S.-led forces on this day in 2003, several weeks after the start of the Iraq War, a conflict begun to oust Iraqi Pres. Ṣaddām Ḥussein because of his supposed possession of weapons of mass destruction.
2001:
American Airlines officially completed its acquisition of Trans World Airlines and became the world's largest airline.
1965:
The Astrodome, an indoor stadium, opened in Houston, Texas, hosting its first baseball game.
1963:
An act of Congress conferred honorary U.S. citizenship on Sir Winston Churchill.
1939:
African American contralto Marian Anderson sang to an Easter Sunday crowd of 75,000 at the Lincoln Memorial after the Daughters of the American Revolution refused to allow her to sing at Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C.
1898:
Paul Robeson, a celebrated American singer, actor, and political activist, was born.
1865:
General Robert E. Lee, commander of the Army of Northern Virginia of the Confederate States of America, signed a treaty of surrender at Appomattox Court House, ending the American Civil War.
1682:
René-Robert Cavelier, sieur (lord) de La Salle, claimed the Mississippi River basin for France, naming it Louisiana.
1388:
The Battle of N鋐els culminated in a major victory for the Swiss Confederation in the first century of its struggle for self-determination against Habsburg overlordship.
April 10
1938:
Anschluss approved in Austria.
In a controlled plebiscite in Austria this day in 1938, soon after Adolf Hitler's invasion of the country, 99.7 percent of Austrians approved the Anschluss (German: “Union”)—the political unification of Austria and Germany.
2003:
Haiti officially recognized Vodou as a religion.
2001:
The Netherlands passed a bill permitting euthanasia, the first such national law in the world.
1988:
After taking a decade to build, the Seto Great Bridge, spanning the Inland Sea in Japan, was opened to traffic.
1973:
Pakistan adopted its third constitution, shifting the role of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto from president to prime minister.
1972:
The development, production, and stockpiling of biological weapons were outlawed by the Biological Weapons Convention, signed by more than 150 countries.
1925:
The first government led by French premier 蒬ouard Herriot, a Radical Party leader who had been put into office by the left-wing coalition Cartel des Gauches, fell.
1583:
Hugo Grotius, the Dutch jurist and scholar whose legal masterpiece, De Jure Belli ac Pacis (1625; On the Law of War and Peace), was one of the first great contributions to modern international law, was born.
April 11
1814:
Napoleon's abdication at Fontainebleau.
On this day in 1814, during the French revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, Napoleon was facing an invasion of France by forces bent on his overthrow and, pressed by his own officers, abdicated unconditionally at Fontainebleau.
1986:
Halley's Comet reached its perigee (point nearest the Earth) during its most recent passage near the planet.
1953:
Mathematician Andrew John Wiles, deviser of a proof of Fermat's last theorem, was born in Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, England.
1951:
U.S. President Harry S. Truman relieved General Douglas MacArthur of his command of United Nations and U.S. forces during the Korean War.
1895:
Cuban patriot José Julián Martí landed in Cuba at the head of an invading force whose goal was to win independence from Spain.
1893:
Dean Acheson—U.S. secretary of state from 1949 to 1953, adviser to four presidents, and the principal creator of U.S. foreign policy in the Cold War period following World War II—was born.
1848:
Emperor Ferdinand I of Austria confirmed the March Laws, which formed the foundation of the modern state of Hungary.
1815:
The eruption of Mount Tambora, a volcano on the island of Sumbawa, Indonesia, killed about 10,000 people.
April 12
1981:
Launch of first space shuttle.
On this day in 1981, NASA launched the first space shuttle, Columbia, which was designed to orbit Earth, transport people and cargo to and from orbiting spacecraft, and glide to a runway landing on its return to Earth.
1981:
American Joe Louis, world heavyweight boxing champion from 1937 to 1949, died in Las Vegas, Nevada.
1961:
Russian cosmonaut Yury Alekseyevich Gagarin became the first human in outer space.
1945:
U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt died in Warm Springs, Georgia.
1861:
Fort Sumter, one of the few military installations in the South still in Federal hands, came under fire from Confederate guns in Charleston, South Carolina, thus initiating the American Civil War.
1777:
American statesman Henry Clay was born in Hanover county, Virginia.
1606:
The Union Flag, precursor to the Union Jack, was adopted as the national flag of Great Britain.
1204:
Alexius V, the last Greek emperor of a united Byzantium, fled Constantinople in the face of the Fourth Crusade.
April 13
1895:
Alfred Dreyfus imprisoned on Devils Island.
Accused of selling military secrets to Germany and convicted in an irregular trial against a backdrop of anti-Semitism, French officer Alfred Dreyfus was imprisoned this day in 1895 on Devils Island, off French Guiana.
2002:
The military coup that a day before had installed businessman Pedro Carmona Estanga as interim president of Venezuela collapsed this day, and the following morning Hugo Chávez was restored to the presidency.
1943:
The Thomas Jefferson Memorial was dedicated in East Potomac Park on the south bank of the Tidal Basin in Washington, D.C.
1941:
Japan concluded a neutrality pact with the Soviet Union in World War II.
1909:
American short-story writer and novelist Eudora Welty, whose work is mainly focused with great precision on the regional manners of people inhabiting a small Mississippi town that resembles her own birthplace and the Delta country, was born.
1906:
Nobel Prize-winning playwright and critic Samuel Beckett is believed to have been born this day in Ireland.
1640:
King Charles I of England convened the Short Parliament, the first to be summoned in 11 years.
1598:
King Henry IV of France promulgated the Edict of Nantes in Brittany, granting a large measure of religious liberty to his Protestant subjects, the Huguenots.
April 14
1865:
Abraham Lincoln shot.
On this day in 1865, just after the American Civil War ended, U.S. President Abraham Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth while attending a production at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C., and died the next morning.
2004:
Bartholomew I, ecumenical patriarch of the Eastern Orthodox church, formally accepted the apology offered by Pope John Paul II in 2001 for the sacking of Constantinople (now Istanbul) by Crusader armies in the early 13th century.
1986:
A force of U.S. warplanes based in Britain bombed several sites in Libya, killing or wounding several of Muammar al-Qaddafi's children and narrowly missing Qaddafi himself.
1924:
American architect Louis Sullivan, the father of modern American architecture, died in Chicago.
1904:
Sir John Gielgud, an English actor, producer, and director considered one of the greatest performers of his generation on stage and screen, particularly as a Shakespearean actor, was born.
1902:
American businessman J.C. Penney opened his first dry-goods store in Kemmerer, Wyoming.
1866:
Anne Sullivan Macy, Helen Keller's teacher, was born near Springfield, Massachusetts.
1471:
The deposed and exiled king of England, Edward IV, defeated King Henry VI's forces at the Battle of Barnet, near London, enabling him to retake the throne.
April 15
1955:
First McDonald's opened by Ray Kroc.
On this day in 1955, American fast-food pioneer Ray Kroc opened the first McDonald's franchise in Des Plaines, Illinois, launching an enterprise that would eventually become the world's largest fast-food chain.
2003:
U.S. President George W. Bush declared that the government of Ṣaddām Ḥussein in Iraq had fallen as a result of the Iraq War and the following day asked the United Nations to lift sanctions against Iraq.
2000:
U.S. President Bill Clinton established the Giant Sequoia National Monument, a preserve near Sequoia National Park covering more than 500 square miles (1,300 square km) of Sequoia National Forest in the Sierra Nevada of California.
1947:
Jackie Robinson, who broke baseball's racial barrier, played in his first major league game for the Brooklyn Dodgers at Ebbets Field.
1926:
Robertson Aircraft, one of the companies that later developed into American Airlines, flew its first mail route, between Chicago and St. Louis, Missouri, with Charles A. Lindbergh as the pilot.
1920:
Two men were murdered in South Braintree, Massachusetts, leading to the Sacco-Vanzetti case and the still-controversial conviction of the two Italian immigrants.
1912:
The British luxury passenger liner Titanic sank en route to New York City from Southampton, Hampshire, England, during its maiden voyage.
April 16
1912:
Harriet Quimby's flight across the English Channel.
On this day in 1912, American aviator Harriet Quimby became the first woman to fly across the English Channel, guiding her French Blériot monoplane through heavy overcast from Dover, England, to Hardelot, France.
2003:
At age 40, Michael Jordan, widely regarded as the best player in the history of basketball, played his last game in the National Basketball Association.
1948:
In order to restore the economy of Europe after World War II, 16 European countries formed the Organisation for European Economic Co-operation (later the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development).
1922:
British author Sir Kingsley Amis, who created in his first novel, Lucky Jim (1954), a comic figure that became a household word in Great Britain in the 1950s, was born.
1917:
Vladimir Ilich Lenin ended his 17-year exile and returned to Russia to form a provisional government.
1838:
French forces occupied the Mexican city of Veracruz during the Pastry War.
1755:
Painter 蒷isabeth Vigée-Lebrun, known for her portraits of Queen Marie-Antoinette, was born in Paris.
1746:
An English army defeated a Scottish force under Charles Edward Stuart (Bonnie Prince Charlie) at the Battle of Culloden, ending the Jacobite effort to restore the Stuarts to England's throne.
1646:
Architect Jules Hardouin-Mansart, who redesigned and expanded the Palace of Versailles, was born in Paris.
April 17
1982:
Canada Act proclaimed.
The Canada Act, also known as the Constitution Act, took effect on this day in 1982, establishing certain individual rights, preserving parliamentary supremacy, and making Canada a wholly independent, fully sovereign state.
2003:
Anneli J滗tteenm鋕i was sworn in as prime minister of Finland, which thereby became the second country (after New Zealand) to install a woman as head of both state and government.
1975:
Cambodia's ruling Lon Nol government collapsed, and the communist forces of the Khmer Rouge, led by Pol Pot, entered Phnom Penh and forcibly dispersed its citizenry into rural areas.
1961:
Cuban leader Fidel Castro's forces repelled the Bay of Pigs invasion, which was led by recent Cuban exiles and financed by the U.S. government during the Cold War.
1956:
Cominform, the international Communist Information Bureau founded in 1947, was disbanded as part of a Soviet program of reconciliation with Yugoslavia.
1895:
The Treaty of Shimonoseki concluded the first Sino-Japanese War, which ended in China's defeat.
1521:
Martin Luther appeared before the Diet of Worms to defend his ideas on church reform.
1194:
Richard I (the Lion-Heart) was crowned king of England for the second time, after earlier surrendering his kingdom to the Holy Roman emperor Henry VI.
April 18
1775:
The midnight ride of Paul Revere.
Paul Revere, a renowned silversmith, is better remembered as a folk hero of the American Revolution who this night in 1775 made a dramatic ride on horseback to warn Boston-area residents of an imminent British attack.
2002:
After 29 years in exile, the former king of Afghanistan, Mohammad Zahir Shah, returned to the capital city of Kabul in the aftermath of the U.S. invasion of the country and toppling of the Taliban government.
1980:
Zimbabwe achieved its independence from the United Kingdom.
1945:
During the U.S. invasion of the Japanese island of Okinawa in World War II, American war correspondent Ernie Pyle was killed on nearby Ie Island by Japanese gunfire.
1906:
San Francisco was rocked by an earthquake caused by slippage along the San Andreas Fault.
1857:
American defense lawyer, public speaker, debater, and writer Clarence Darrow—among whose high-profile court appearances was the Scopes Trial, in which he defended a Tennessee high-school teacher who had broken a state law by presenting the Darwinian theory of evolution—was born.
1506:
Pope Julius II laid the first stone of the new St. Peter's Basilica in Rome.
April 19
1775:
American Revolution begun.
Launched this day in 1775 with the Battles of Lexington and Concord, the American Revolution was an effort by 13 British colonies in North America (with help from France, Spain, and the Netherlands) to win their independence.
1995:
In what was the worst act of terrorism in U.S. history up to that time, a truck bomb nearly destroyed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, killing 168 and injuring more than 500 people.
1993:
After a 51-day standoff with U.S. federal agents, some 80 members of the millennialist Branch Davidian religious group perished in a fire at their compound near Waco, Texas.
1975:
Aryabhata, the first unmanned Earth satellite built by India, was launched from the Soviet Union by a Russian-made rocket.
1956:
American actress Grace Kelly married Prince Rainier of Monaco, becoming Princess Grace.
1943:
The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, an act of resistance by Polish Jews under Nazi occupation, began this day and was quelled four weeks later, on May 16.
1772:
English economist David Ricardo, who gave systematized and classical form to the rising social science of economics in the 19th century, is believed to have been born on or about this day.
April 20
1968:
Trudeau sworn in as prime minister of Canada.
Pierre Elliott Trudeau of the Liberal Party, who became prime minister of Canada this day in 1968, discouraged the French separatist movement, oversaw the formation of a new constitution, and established relations with China.
1999:
Two disgruntled and heavily armed students entered Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, and murdered 13 people before killing themselves.
1924:
Finalizing the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, Turkey's Grand National Assembly voted to adopt a full republican constitution, with General Mustafa Kemal, who had first proclaimed the Turkish republic about six months earlier, becoming the first president of the republic.
1920:
U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens was born in Chicago.
1919:
In an ongoing dispute over the possession of Vilnius, Polish forces drove out Russia's Red Army—which had previously ousted the newly established Lithuanian government—and occupied the city.
1871:
Japan's first government-operated postal service opened between Tokyo and Ōsaka.
1840:
French Symbolist painter Odilon Redon was born in Bordeaux.
1808:
Napoleon III, president of the Second Republic (1850–52) and emperor of France (1852–70), was born in Paris.
1653:
England's Rump Parliament was dissolved by Oliver Cromwell and later replaced by the nominated Barebones Parliament, which was dissolved in the same year, leading to the declaration of the Protectorate.
April 21
2002:
French elections held.
French President Jacques Chirac faced a reelection challenge on this day in 2002 from extremist Jean-Marie Le Pen in the first round of presidential voting but two weeks later handily defeated him to win a second term.
1918:
Manfred, Freiherr (baron) von Richthofen, Germany's top flying ace in World War I, was shot down and killed during a battle near Amiens, France.
1836:
General Sam Houston led 800 Texans to victory over a Mexican army of 1,500 under General Antonio López de Santa Anna in the Battle of San Jacinto, ensuring the Texans' independence from Mexico.
1830:
James Starley, an inventor and the father of the bicycle industry, was born in Albourne, Sussex, England.
1800:
French forces under General Jean-Baptiste Kléber recaptured Cairo and initiated the brief French occupation of Egypt.
1782:
Friedrich Froebel, German educational reformer and the founder of kindergarten, was born in Oberweissbach, Thuringia.
1526:
Bābur, the ruler of Kabul, led Mughal forces in victory against Sultan Ibrāhīm Lodī, establishing the Mughal dynasty in India.
April 22
1970:
First Earth Day.
First celebrated on this day in 1970 in the U.S., Earth Day—founded by American politician and conservationist Gaylord Anton Nelson—helped spark the environmental movement and quickly grew into an international event.
1994:
Former U.S. president Richard M. Nixon died.
1915:
During World War I, German forces introduced the systematized use of chemical warfare when they released chlorine gas along a 4-mile (6-km) front at the Second Battle of Ypres.
1889:
At noon, by federal decree, white settlers were allowed into Indian Territory, sparking a land rush involving tens of thousands in what became Oklahoma Territory.
1870:
Vladimir Ilich Lenin—who founded the Bolshevik political faction (1912–17), inspired and led the Bolshevik Revolution (1917), headed (1917–24) the Soviet state, and founded the organization known as the Comintern (Communist International)—was born.
1724:
German philosopher Immanuel Kant was born in K鰊igsberg, Prussia (now Kaliningrad, Russia).
1500:
Portuguese explorer Pedro 羖vares Cabral, while on a voyage tracing Vasco da Gama's 1497–99 water route to India, sighted the mainland of South America near the present-day city of P魊to Seguro, Brazil.
1370:
Construction began on the Bastille, the medieval fortress that came to symbolize French despotism.
1073:
Gregory VII (later canonized) was elected by acclamation to succeed Alexander II as pope.
April 23
1993:
Voting for Eritrea's independence .
On this day in 1993, after a long history of foreign rule and decades of war, the small East African country of Eritrea began three days of voting on a referendum to make official its independence from Ethiopia.
1998:
James Earl Ray, convicted assassin of Martin Luther King, Jr., died in prison in Nashville, Tennessee.
1906:
Russian Tsar Nicholas II promulgated the Fundamental Laws, which marked the end of unlimited autocracy but fell short of the reforms promised in the October Manifesto.
1858:
German physicist Max Planck, who originated quantum theory, was born in Kiel.
1791:
James Buchanan, the 15th U.S. president, was born near Mercersburg, Pennsylvania.
1016:
Upon the death of King Ethelred II of England, his son claimed the throne as Edmund II.
April 24
2005:
Installation of Pope Benedict XVI.
On this day in 2005, Pope Benedict XVI (Joseph Ratzinger), successor to John Paul II, formally assumed his position as the new leader of the Roman Catholic Church during a mass in St. Peter's Square in Vatican City.
2003:
Officials of North Korea informed U.S. diplomats that it had nuclear weapons and was making bomb-grade plutonium.
1967:
Soviet cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov became the first man to die during a space mission when his spacecraft became entangled in its parachute during an attempted landing.
1949:
Communist forces occupied the Chinese capital, Nanking (Nanjing), after crossing the Yangtze River virtually unopposed by adherents to the Nationalist government under President Chiang Kai-shek.
1916:
Members of the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Citizen Army seized strategic points in Dublin during the Easter Rising, which heralded the end of British power in Ireland.
1904:
Painter Willem de Kooning, one of the leading exponents of Abstract Expressionism, was born in Rotterdam, Netherlands.
1898:
Spain declared war on the United States.
1877:
War broke out between Russia and the Ottoman Empire at the conclusion of the Serbo-Turkish War, resulting in independence for Serbia and Montenegro.
1792:
French army officer Claude-Joseph Rouget de Lisle composed "La Marseillaise," the French national anthem.
April 25
1990:
Hubble Space Telescope sent into orbit.
The Hubble Space Telescope, a sophisticated optical observatory built in the United States under the supervision of NASA, was placed into operation this day in 1990 by the crew of the space shuttle Discovery.
1926:
Giacomo Puccini's uncompleted opera Turandot was performed posthumously at La Scala under the direction of Arturo Toscanini.
1915:
The Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) landed at Gallipoli in western Turkey during the Dardanelles Campaign of World War I.
1874:
Guglielmo Marconi, an Italian physicist who invented a successful system of radio telegraphy (1896) and received the Nobel Prize for Physics (1909), was born.
1809:
The Treaty of Amritsar, which settled Indo-Sikh relations for a generation, was concluded between Charles T. Metcalfe, representing the British East India Company, and Ranjit Singh, head of the Sikh kingdom of Punjab.
1792:
The first guillotine was erected, on the Place de Grève in Paris, to execute a highwayman.
1781:
Petersburg, Virginia, was captured by British troops under William Phillips and Benedict Arnold during the American Revolution.
April 26
1986:
Chernobyl nuclear accident.
A devastating environmental catastrophe occurred early this morning in 1986 when an explosion and fire at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine released large amounts of radioactive material into the atmosphere.
1964:
The United Republic of Tanzania was founded with the merger of Tanganyika and Zanzibar, Julius Nyerere serving as president.
1865:
Twelve days after assassinating U.S. President Abraham Lincoln, John Wilkes Booth was killed at a Virginia farm either by a Federal soldier or by his own hand.
1785:
John James Audubon, an American ornithologist who became well known for his drawings and paintings of North American birds, was born in Les Cayes, Saint-Domingue, West Indies (now in Haiti).
1768:
The prestigious English Royal Academy of Arts, led by its first president, Sir Joshua Reynolds, hosted its first art opening.
1607:
The first permanent English settlers in North America landed at Cape Henry, Chesapeake Bay, and they later formed Jamestown.
1478:
The Pazzi family of Florence led an unsuccessful plot to overthrow the ruling Medici family.
April 27
1937:
Bombing of Guernica.
During the Spanish Civil War, the Condor Legion of the German air force, supporting the Nationalists, bombed the Basque city of Guernica on this day in 1937, an event memorialized in Pablo Picasso's painting Guernica.
1961:
Sierra Leone achieved independence within the British Commonwealth.
1960:
After several years as an autonomous republic in the French Union, the West African country of Togo became independent.
1828:
The London Zoo opened in Regent's Park.
1791:
Samuel F.B. Morse, an American painter and the inventor of an electric telegraph and the Morse Code, was born in Charlestown, Massachusetts.
1521:
Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan was killed during a fight with inhabitants of Mactan Island, Philippines.
1296:
King Edward I of England, seeking suzerainty over the Scots, invaded Scotland and removed the coronation stone of Scone to Westminster, England.
April 28
1945:
Mussolini executed.
Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, “Il Duce,” who, after a series of military misadventures, became unpopular even among his fellow Fascists, was captured while trying to flee Italy and was executed on this day in 1945.
2004:
American television network CBS broadcast photographs depicting harsh treatment of Iraqi inmates at the Abu Ghraib prison in U.S.-occupied Iraq, initiating a national debate on torture and the Geneva Conventions.
1969:
French leader Charles de Gaulle resigned his presidency.
1952:
The Allied occupation of Japan came to an end after seven years of rapid social and economic change following the country's surrender in World War II.
1878:
American actor Lionel Barrymore was born in Philadelphia.
1789:
Captain William Bligh of the British ship Bounty and 18 of his men were set adrift by mutinous sailors led by the master's mate Fletcher Christian.
1758:
James Monroe, who was the fifth president of the United States (1817–25) and who asserted a cornerstone of U.S. foreign policy in the Monroe Doctrine, was born.
1442:
King Edward IV of England was born in Rouen, France.