- 607 Comet 1P/607 H1 (Halley) approaches within 0.0898 AUs of Earth
- 1012 Martyrdom of Alphege in Greenwich, London
- 1451 Alam Shah of Delhi resigns throne
- 1524 Pope Clemens VII fires Neth inquisitor-general French Van de Holly
- 1529 2nd Parliament of Spiers bans Lutheranism
- 1539 Charles, protestant German monarch, signs Treaty of Frankrfurt
- 1552 Mauritius of Saksen captures Karel
Historic Discovery
1770 British explorer Captain James Cook first sights Australia
James Cook
Event of Interest
1775 Paul Revere, William Dawes and Samuel Prescott are captured by British troops riding from Lexington to Concord, Prescott escapes to warn Concord
Paul Revere
Event of Interest
1782 John Adams secures Dutch Republic's recognition of the United States as an independent government and house he purchased in The Hague, Netherlands became first American embassy.
John Adams
- 1810 Venezuela achieves home rule: Vicente Emparan, Governor of the Captaincy General is removed by the people of Caracas and a Junta is installed.
- 1825 33 patriotic exiles return to Uruguay
- 1836 Nikolai Gogol's "Revisor" premieres in St Petersburg
- 1837 Cheyney University forms as the Institute for Colored Youth
- 1839 Treaty of London constitutes Belgium an independent kingdom & Luxembourg a Grand Duchy
- 1852 California Historical Society forms
- 1853 Netherlands Van Hall government forms
- 1861 Baltimore riots - 4 soldiers, 9 civilians killed
- 1861 Lincoln orders blockade of Confederate ports (Civil War)
- 1863 Union troops and fleet occupy For Huger, Virginia
- 1874 Barracks on Alcatraz Island destroyed in fire
Event of Interest
1890 Henry Morton Stanley inaugurated in Brussels
Henry Morton Stanley
Philippine Revolution
1901 In the Philippines, recently captured insurgent leader Emilio Aguinaldo issues a proclamation advising his countrymen to end their rebellion and use of peaceful means to work with the US toward independence.
Emilio Aguinaldo
Beatification
1909 Joan of Arc receives beatification by the Roman Catholic Church
Joan of Arc
Theater Premiere
1911 George Bernard Shaw's "Fanny's First Play" premieres in London
George Bernard Shaw
- 1916 "Bing Boys are Here" opens in London
- 1916 Italians troops conquer Col di Lana at Merano
- 1916 Alderman Kelly reads the 'Castle Order' to a meeting of Dublin Corporation; this forged document supposedly from Dublin Castle, indicated that there was to be mass arrests of Irish Volunteers to prevent "trouble"
- 1919 French assembly decides on 8 hour work day
- 1919 Leslie Irvin of US makes first premeditated free-fall parachute jump
- 1921 Funeral of last German Emperoress, Augusta Victoria
- 1923 New Egyptian law allows suffrage for men, except soldiers
- 1927 "Vagabond King" opens in London
- 1928 Japanese troops occupies Sjantung-schiereiland
- 1928 Yanks are out of 1st place for 1st time since May 1926
- 1928 The 125th and final fascicle of the Oxford English Dictionary is published.
Event of Interest
1932 President Herbert Hoover suggests 5 day work week
Herbert Hoover
Event of Interest
1932 Bonnie Parker is captured in a failed hardware store burglary, and subsequently jailed. A grand jury fails to indict her, however, and she is released a few months later
Bonnie Parker
Franklin D. Roosevelt
- 1936 First day of the Great Uprising in Palestine, anti-Jewish riots break out
- 1938 Phil Emmett Mueller & Dodger Ernie Koy both homer in their 1st at bat
- 1939 Connecticut finally approves Bill of Rights (148 years late)
- 1940 "Lake Shore Ltd" derails speed killing 34 near Little Falls, New York
- 1940 Dutch prime minister De Geer declares state of siege
- 1941 Bertolt Brecht's play "Mother Courage and her Childeren" premieres in Zurich
- 1941 Bulgarian troops invade Macedonia
- 1941 Milk rationed in Holland
- 1943 Jews refuse to surrender the Warsaw Ghetto to SS officer Jürgen Stroop, who then orders its destruction, beginning the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
- 1943 Bicycle Day - Swiss chemist Dr. Albert Hofmann deliberately takes LSD for the first time.
- 1944 Allied fleet attack Sabang Sumatra
- 1945 US aircraft carrier Franklin heavy damaged in Japanese air raid
- 1945 US offensive against Shuri-barrier on Okinawa
- 1945 Diplomatic relations between the Soviet Union and Guatemala are established
- 1946 Yankees switch from 3rd base to 1st base dug out
- 1947 AAU record for a 25-foot rope climb is set in 4.7 seconds
- 1947 French ship explodes in Texas City harbor, kills about 522
Election of Interest
1948 Chiang Kai-shek elected President of Nationalist China
Chiang Kai-shek
Event of Interest
1951 General Douglas MacArthur ends his military career
Douglas MacArthur
- 1955 The German automaker Volkswagen, after six years of selling cars in the United States, founds Volkswagen of America in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey to standardize its dealer and service network
- 1959 Uprising in La Paz Bolivia, fails
- 1960 Comiskey Park's famed "exploding" scoreboard begins operating
- 1962 NASA civilian pilot Joseph A Walker takes X-15 to 46,900m
- 1964 Rightist coup in Laos, Suvanna Phuma remains premier
- 1965 1st all news radio station (WINS 1010 AM in NYC) begins operating
- 1965 T.A.M.I. Show premieres in London
- 1965 At a cost of $20,000, the outer Astrodome ceiling is painted because of sun's glare, this causes the grass to die
- 1965 "Whipped Cream & Other Delights", fourth full album by Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass Band, is released
- 1966 In 1st regular season game at Anaheim Stadium, Angels lose 3-1 to Chic
- 1967 Yugoslav author Mihaljo Mihaljov sentenced 4½ years
- 1968 Belgian construction workers strike
- 1968 NL owners approve expansion for 2 new teams
- 1969 Serious rioting in the Bogside area of Derry following clashes between Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association marchers and Loyalists and members of the Royal Ulster Constabulary
- 1970 24th Tony Awards: Borstal Boy & Applause win
- 1971 Sierra Leone becomes a republic (National Day)
- 1971 USSR Salyut 1 launched; 1st manned lab in orbit
- 1972 Bangladesh becomes a member of the British Commonwealth
- 1972 Hungary revises its constitution to declare itself a socialist state
- 1972 US performs nuclear test at Nevada Test Site
Event of Interest
1972 British Prime Ministe rEdward Heath confirms that a plan to conduct an arrest operation, in the event of a riot during the march on 30 January 1972, was known to British government Ministers in advance
Edward Heath
- 1973 Steinbrenner replaces Mike Burke with Gabe Paul as Yankee president
- 1973 USSR performs nuclear test at Eastern Kazakh/Semipalitinsk USSR
- 1975 India launches 1st satellite with help of USSR
- 1978 Yitzhak Navron elected 5th president of Israel
- 1979 FCC raids & shuts down pirate radio station WFAT (Brooklyn New York)
- 1982 Guinon Bluford announced as 1st African American NASA astronaut
Event of Interest
1982 Sally Ride is named the 1st American woman astronaut
Sally Ride
- 1982 USSR Salyut 7 space station put into orbit
- 1983 France performs nuclear test
- 1984 Nemesis, death star of dinosaurs 1st appears in print (Nature magazine)
- 1985 16th Space Shuttle Mission (51-D)-Discovery 4 returns to Earth
- 1985 USSR performs nuclear test at Eastern Kazakh/Semipalitinsk USSR
- 1987 Jacqueline Blanc, sets women's downhill ski speed rec (124.902 mph)
- 1987 Last wild condor captured on California wildlife reserve
- 1987 USSR performs underground nuclear test
- 1989 Gun turret explodes on USS Iowa, killing 47 sailors
- 1989 Republic Day in Sierra Leone
- 1989 Violent assault and rape of jogger Trisha Meili in NYC's Central Park. Known as the Central Park jogger incident it became according to the NY Times "one of the most widely publicized crimes of the 1980s."
- 1990 Contra guerrillas, leftist Sandinistas & incoming government agree to truce
- 1990 Marla Maples appears on ABC's Prime-Time
- 1990 Truce in Nicaragua's civil war
- 1991 Greyhound Bus posts $195 million loss for 1990
- 1992 Balki & Mary Ann wed on "Perfect Strangers"
- 1993 After a 51 day siege by the FBI 76 Branch Davidians die in a fire near Waco Texas (accident, suicide, tear gas are disputed causes)
- 1993 Fire in psychiatric institute in South Korea, kills 40
- 1993 South Dakota governor George Mickelson and seven others are killed when a state-owned aircraft crashed lands in Iowa.
- 1994 Inkatha ends boycott of South African multi-racial election
Event of Interest
1994 Rodney King awarded $3,800,000 compensation for his police beating
Rodney King
- 1994 US Supreme Court outlaws excluding people from juries because of gender
- 1995 Oklahoma City bombing - a truck bomb at Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building kills 168 & injures 500
- 1996 South Africa defeat Pakistan to win the Pepsi Cup in Sharjah
- 1997 Renee Slaughter crowned 14th Miss Hawaiian Tropic Intl
- 1999 The German Bundestag returns to Berlin.
Papal Inauguration
2005 Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger elected Pope Benedict XVI on the second day of the Papal conclave.
Benedict XVI
Event of Interest
2011 Fidel Castro resigns from the Communist Party of Cuba's central committee after 45 years of holding the title.
Fidel Castro
- 2013 Boston bombing suspects killed and captured in Boston after 4 days
- 2015 Boat carrying approx. 850 migrants is shipwrecked in the Mediterranean between Italian and Libya, with only 27 migrants rescued.
- 2017 Fox News confirms they would be letting go of Bill O'Reilly after allegations of sexual harassment
Election of Interest
2018 Miguel Diaz-Canel is elected Cuba's new president after former president Raúl Castro steps down
Raúl Castro
- 2018 Senator Tammy Duckworth is the first parent to bring a baby into the US Senate a day after the Senate votes to allow babies on the chamber's floor
April in History
Boxing Match That Went for 42 Rounds
The first "world championship" boxing match was a brutal affair, lasting nearly two and a half hours and stretching over 42 rounds.
April 17, 1860
Wicked or Sinless? The Life of Lucrezia Borgia
Hardly a week went by when Lucrezia Borgia, born on this day, was not accused of some foul deed. But was she just a pawn in the hands of her evil family?
April 18, 1480
Millions Come Up to See Mae West
Mae West, jailed on this day for obscenity, became one of the most successful sex symbols. Fans could not resist the offer: ‘Come up and see me some time.’
April 19, 1927
World's First Motor Race
It was hardly the stuff of today's adrenalin-pumping Formula 1 match ups, but on this day two men climbed aboard their machine for "the world’s first motor race”.
April 20, 1887