- 419 [Etalius] ends his reign as Catholic Pope
Royal Coronation
1043 Edward the Confessor crowned King of England
Battle of Navarrete
1367 Battle of Navarrete [Nájera], La Rioja, Castile: alliance of King Peter of Castile and the English defeats Count Henry of Castile
Historic Event
1657 English Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell refuses crown
Meeting of Interest
1679 Edmond Halley meets Johannes Hevelius in Danzig
Historic Event
1721 Robert Walpole becomes Britain's 1st Lord of the Treasury - effective Prime Minister, although that term was never officially used (indeed, it was considered an insult) until much later
- 1764 Austrian Archduke Jozef crowned himself Holy Roman Emperor Josef II
Historic Event
1776 George Washington receives honorary Ll.D. degree from Harvard College
Historic Expedition
1848 German explorer Ludwig Leichhardt is seen for the last time at McPherson's Station, Coogoon, before he disappears on the same expedition to reach the Swan River in Australia
- 1848 Thomas Douglas becomes 1st public teacher in San Francisco
- 1856 Palace of the Grand Master of the Knights of Rhodes badly damaged by gunpowder explosion, kills 4,000 on island of Rhodes
Pony Express
1860 Pony Express began between St Joseph, Missouri & Sacramento, California
Historic Event
1882 American outlaw Jesse James is shot in the back of the head and killed by fellow gang member Robert Ford at home in St. Joseph, Missouri
- 1882 Wood block alarm invented, when alarm rang, it dropped 20 wood blocks
- 1889 Savings Bank of Order of True Reformers opens in Richmond, Virginia
- 1893 1st NSW v Queensland F-C game, at Brisbane Exhibition Ground
- 1910 Highest mountain in North America, Alaska's Mt McKinley claimed to have been 1st climbed by 4 local men
- 1911 Harry James Smith's "Mrs Bumsted-Leigh" premieres in NYC
Historic Event
1913 British suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst sentenced to 3 years in jail
Historic Event
1917 Alfred Stieglitz opens 1st one-person show of Georgia O'Keeffee's work at 291 art gallery in New York
Historic Event
1917 Vladimir Lenin arrives in Petrograd from Switzerland [NS=April 16]
Appointment of Interest
1922 Joseph Stalin is appointed General Secretary of the Russian Communist Party by an ailing Vladimir Lenin
Historic Event
1924 Istanbul's Ottoman Topkapi Palace is converted into a museum on orders of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk
Historic Invention
1926 Second flight of a liquid-fueled rocket by Robert Goddard
- 1927 Interstate Commerce Comm transfers Ohio to Eastern time zone
- 1929 Persia agrees to Litvinov Pact
- 1929 RMS Queen Mary is ordered from John Brown & Company Shipbuilding and Engineering by Cunard Line.
- 1933 1st airplane flight over Mt Everest
- 1933 Then longest North American hockey game requires a 1:44:46 overtime as Maple Leaf Ken Doraty scores to beat Canadiens 1-0
Historic Event
1941 British Prime Minister Winston Churchill warns Soviet leader Joseph Stalin that a German invasion is imminent
- 1941 Rasjid al-Gailani forms pro-German regime in Iraq
- 1941 Walton's overture "Scapino" premieres in Chicago
- 1944 British dive bombers attack German battleship Tirpitz at Kåfjorden, Norway
- 1944 US Supreme Court (Smith v Allwright) "white primaries" unconstitutional
- 1945 World War II: Dutch city of Hengelo freed from Nazi control by the Canadian Army
- 1946 Netherlands-German postal relations resume
- 1948 1st US figure skating championships held
- 1948 US female Figure Skating championship won by Gretchen Merrill
- 1948 US male Figure Skating championship won by Richard Button
Historic Event
1948 US President Harry Truman signs Marshall Plan ($5B aid to 16 European countries)
Historic Event
1955 The American Civil Liberties Union announces it will defend Allen Ginsberg's book "Howl" against obscenity charges
- 1956 Bulgarian vice premier Traitsjo Kostov rehabilitated (executed 1949)
- 1956 German war criminals Hinrichsen, Ruhl, Siebens and Viebahn freed
- 1956 Hudsonville-Standale Tornado: The western half of the Lower Peninsula of Michigan is struck by a deadly F5 tornado
Theater Premiere
1957 Samuel Beckett's play "Endgame" premieres in London as a French language production
- 1957 USSR performs atmospheric nuclear test
Historic Event
1958 Fidel Castro's rebels attack Havana
- 1960 Earthquake at Havre, Belgium
- 1961 Connie Mack Stadium in Philadelphia is sold to J Schleifer Properties
- 1962 Lt General Marshall S Carter, USA, becomes deputy director of CIA
- 1964 US & Panama agree to resume diplomatic relations
- 1965 1st atomic powered spacecraft (snap) launched
- 1966 Soviet Luna 10 completes its first orbit of the Moon
- 1967 113 East Europeans attending World Amateur hockey championships in Vienna, ask for political asylum
- 1968 N Vietnam agrees to meet US reps to set up preliminary peace talks
- 1969 Vietnam War: U.S. Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird announces that the United States will start a policy of "Vietnamization", reducing American involvement
- 1970 As part of a new 'get tough' policy in Northern Ireland, Ian Freeland of the British Army, warned that those throwing petrol bombs could be shot dead
- 1970 Miriam Hargrave of England passes her drivers test on 40th attempt
- 1971 The Temptations score their second US No. 1 with "Just My Imagination (Running Away With Me)"
- 1973 1st mobile phone call is made in downtown Manhattan, NYC by Motorola employee Martin Cooper to the Bell Labs headquarters in New Jersey
- 1974 Gold hits record $197 an ounce in Paris
- 1974 The Super Outbreak: 2nd largest tornado outbreak over 24hr period with 148 confirmed tornadoes in 13 US states, killing approximately 315 people and injuring nearly 5,500
- 1976 France performs nuclear test at Mururoa atoll
Historic Event
1977 Egyptian President Anwar Sadat's 1st meeting with US President Jimmy Carter
- 1977 Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg adopt summer time
- 1978 European market & China signs trade agreement
- 1979 Belgium's Martens government forms
- 1979 Jane M Byrne (D), elected 1st woman mayor of Chicago, Illinois
- 1980 France performs nuclear test
- 1980 US performs nuclear test at Nevada Test Site
- 1981 Arnie Boldt of Saskatchewan jumps 6' 8.25," with 1 leg
- 1981 Race riots in London's Brixton area, England
- 1982 UN Security Council demanded Argentina withdraw from Falkland Islands
- 1984 Bombay beat Delhi on 1st innings to win Ranji Trophy
- 1984 Guinea suspends constitution after coup
- 1984 Soyuz T-11 carries 3 cosmonauts (1 Indian-Rakesh Sharma) to Salyut 7
- 1985 French government adopts equal electoral system
- 1985 Players' Association agrees to expand LCS from 5 to 7 games
- 1985 Vic Elliot pockets 15,780 pool balls in 24 hours in London
- 1986 Maureen O'Boyle (future host of "A Current Affair") is raped
- 1986 US national debt hits $2,000,000,000,000
- 1987 Duchess of Windsor's jewels auctioned for £31,380,197
- 1987 USSR performs nuclear test at Eastern Kazakh/Semipalitinsk USSR
- 1988 Somalia & Ethiopia sign accord about Ogaden desert
- 1988 USSR performs nuclear test at Eastern Kazakh/Semipalitinsk USSR
- 1989 "Sunrise" a Gannett newspaper begins publishing for Bronx
- 1989 Mets win 11th consecutive home opener 8-4 over St Louis at Shea Stad
- 1991 Thomas Bos skates world record 3 km (3:65.16)
- 1991 UN Security Council adopts Gulf War truce resolution
- 1997 Thalit massacre begins in Algeria; all but 1 of the 53 inhabitants of Thalit are killed by guerrillas
- 2004 Islamic terrorists involved in the 11 March 2004 Madrid attacks are trapped by the police in their apartment and kill themselves
- 2007 Conventional train world speed record: a French TGV train on the LGV Est high speed line sets an official new world speed record.
- 2009 Australia formally adopts the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
- 2012 Moscow fire kills 17 migrant workers
- 2012 Spanish unemployment reaches record high, youth unemployment stands at 50%
Election of Interest
2012 US President Barack Obama officially secures Democratic presidential nomination
Canonization
2014 Pope Francis canonizes François de Laval, first bishop of Quebec, as a Catholic saint
- 2016 Panama Papers published - 11.5 million confidential documents from offshore law firm Mossack Fonseca expose widespread illegal activities including fraud, kleptocracy, tax evasion and the violation of international sanctions by the world's elite in the world's largest ever data leak
- 2017 Bomb on St Petersburg metro kills 11, 2nd bomb defused
- 2019 Brunei brings into force new Sharia laws punishing gay sex and adultery with death by stoning, prompting widespread condemnation
Historic Event
2019 Ex-Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak goes on trial for the 1MDB corruption scandal in Kuala Lumpur, pleads not guilty
- 2020 27 people swept off a ferry and feared dead in the Solomon Islands during Cyclone Harold
COVID-19 Pandemic
2020 London's Nightingale hospital opened by Prince Charles (remotely) after nine days with 4,000 beds to treat COVID-19 patients at the ExCeL Centre
- 2020 US aircraft carrier captain Brett Crozier cheered off his ship after being fired for a letter demanding more help for his sailors infected with COVID-19
- 2022 The Taliban government bans cultivation of opium in Afghanistan, with consequences for world supply as it produces 80% [1]