Wikipedia:Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/April
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| An archive of historical anniversaries that appeared on the Main Page 2010 day arrangement |
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April 1: Maundy Thursday (Christianity, 2010); April Fools' Day; Assyrian New Year; National Day in Iran (1979)
- 1293 – Robert Winchelsey left England for Rome to be consecrated by the Pope, only to find that there was none.
- 1572 – Spanish general and governor Fernando Álvarez de Toledo, 3rd Duke of Alba lost his glasses in the town of Brielle, enabling sea beggars to gain the first foothold on what would become the Dutch Republic.
- 1918 – The British Armed Forces started to grant personnel the power to fly.
- 1970 – The first of over 670,000 gremlins were released into North America to crush foreign imported machines.
- 1976 – Apple Computer was originally founded to sell "do-it-yourself" kits (example of a completed kit pictured).
- 2006 – As mandated by a 2005 Act of the British Parliament, several British policing agencies joined together to become very serious.
More anniversaries: March 31 – April 1 – April 2
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April 2: Good Friday (Christianity, 2010); Malvinas Day in Argentina
- 1513 – Spanish conquistador Juan Ponce de León set foot on Florida, becoming the first European known to do so, purportedly while searching for the Fountain of Youth in the New World.
- 1792 – By the Coinage Act, the United States Mint was founded and the U.S. currency was decimalized.
- 1801 – War of the Second Coalition: British forces led by Vice Admiral Horatio Nelson (pictured) defeated the Dano-Norwegian fleet at the Battle of Copenhagen off the coast of Copenhagen.
- 1982 – Argentine special forces invaded the Falkland Islands, sparking the Falklands War.
- 1992 – John Gotti, the crime boss of the Gambino crime family, was convicted of racketeering, murder, conspiracy to commit murder, loansharking, obstruction of justice, illegal gambling and tax evasion.
- 2002 – Operation Defensive Shield: Approximately 200 Palestinians fled advancing Israeli forces into the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, starting a month-long standoff.
More anniversaries: April 1 – April 2 – April 3
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April 3: Holy Saturday (Christianity, 2010)
- 1882 – Jesse James, an outlaw in the American Old West, was shot in the back and killed for a bounty of US$5,000.
- 1895 – The libel trial instigated by Irish author Oscar Wilde began, eventually resulting in Wilde's arrest, trial and imprisonment on charges of homosexuality.
- 1948 – The Marshall Plan (poster pictured), an economic recovery program established by U.S. Secretary of State George Marshall to assist the post-World War II re-building of Europe, was signed into law.
- 1973 – On a New York City street, Motorola researcher Martin Cooper made the first public call on a handheld mobile phone.
- 1996 – A U.S. Air Force CT-43 crashed into a mountainside while attempting an instrument approach to Dubrovnik Airport in Dubrovnik, Croatia, killing U.S. Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown and all the other 34 people on board.
More anniversaries: April 2 – April 3 – April 4
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April 4: Easter (Christianity, 2010); Children's Day in Taiwan and Hong Kong
- 1721 – Robert Walpole took office as First Lord of the Treasury, Chancellor of the Exchequer and Leader of the House of Commons, becoming what would later be recognised as the first British Prime Minister.
- 1859 – Bryant's Minstrels premiered the popular American song "Dixie" in New York City as part of their blackface minstrel show.
- 1949 – Twelve nations signed the North Atlantic Treaty, creating NATO, an organization that constitutes a system of collective defense whereby its member states agree to mutual defense in response to an attack by any external party.
- 1968 – American civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. (pictured) was assassinated on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, USA.
- 1969 – Surgeons Denton Cooley and Domingo Liotta implanted the first total artificial heart.
- 1975 – Bill Gates and Paul Allen founded Microsoft in Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA, to develop and sell BASIC interpreters for the Altair 8800.
More anniversaries: April 3 – April 4 – April 5
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April 5: Easter Monday (Christianity, 2010); Qingming Festival in the Chinese calendar; Hansik in South Korea; Feast Day of Vincent Ferrer
- 1242 – Northern Crusades: In the Battle of the Ice, Novgorod forces led by Alexander Nevsky rebuffed an invasion attempt by the Teutonic Knights at Lake Peipus on the present-day border of Estonia and Russia.
- 1614 – Native American Pocahontas (pictured) married English colonist John Rolfe in Virginia, and was christened Lady Rebecca.
- 1862 – American Civil War: Union Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan's Army of the Potomac engaged Confederate forces led by Maj. Gen. John B. Magruder at the Battle of Yorktown in Yorktown, Virginia.
- 1879 – A decades-long border dispute between Chile and Bolivia over control of the saltpeter-rich Atacama Desert and other territories escalated into the War of the Pacific.
- 1976 – The Tiananmen Incident, a protest against the repression of the Chinese regime nearing the end of the Cultural Revolution, took place in Tiananmen Square in Beijing.
- 1992 – Bosnian War: Serb gunmen killed two people while firing upon a large crowd of anti-war protesters in Sarajevo, marking the start of the Siege of Sarajevo.
More anniversaries: April 4 – April 5 – April 6
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- 1652 – Dutch sailor Jan van Riebeeck (pictured) established the first permanent European settlement in South Africa at what eventually became known as Cape Town.
- 1782 – Rama I succeeded King Taksin of Siam, founding the Chakri Dynasty.
- 1830 – Joseph Smith, Jr., Oliver Cowdery, David Whitmer and others formally organized the Church of Christ, starting the Latter Day Saint movement.
- 1886 – Vancouver, one of British Columbia's youngest cities, was incorporated.
- 1896 – The first modern Olympic Games opened in Athens.
- 1994 – The airplane carrying Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana and Burundian President Cyprien Ntaryamira was shot down as it prepared to land in Kigali, Rwanda, marking the beginning of the Rwandan Genocide.
More anniversaries: April 5 – April 6 – April 7
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- 529 – Byzantine Emperor Justinian I (pictured) issued the first draft of the Corpus Juris Civilis, a first attempt to codify Roman law.
- 1348 – King Charles of Bohemia issued a Golden Bull to establish Charles University in Prague, the first university in Central Europe.
- 1805 – German composer Ludwig van Beethoven premiered his Third Symphony, sometimes cited as marking the beginning of musical Romanticism and the end of the Classical Era, at the Theater an der Wien in Vienna.
- 1868 – D'Arcy McGee, a Canadian Father of Confederation, was assassinated – to date, the only Canadian political assassination at the federal level.
- 1953 – Josip Broz Tito became President for life of Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
- 1954 – Cold War: U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower introduced the domino theory, speculating that if one nation in a region came under the influence of communism, then its surrounding countries would follow in a domino effect.
More anniversaries: April 6 – April 7 – April 8
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April 8: Hanamatsuri in Japan
- 217 – Roman Emperor Caracalla (bust pictured) was assassinated at a roadside near Harran.
- 1093 – Winchester Cathedral at Winchester in Hampshire, one of the largest cathedrals in England, was dedicated by Bishop Walkelin.
- 1341 – Italian scholar and poet Petrarch took the title poet laureate at a ceremony in Rome.
- 1886 – British Prime Minister William Gladstone introduced the first Irish Home Rule Bill into the British House of Commons.
- 1904 – France and the United Kingdom signed the entente cordiale, agreeing to a peaceful coexistence after centuries of intermittent conflict.
- 1904 – British occultist and writer Aleister Crowley began transcribing The Book of the Law, a Holy Book in Thelema.
More anniversaries: April 7 – April 8 – April 9
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April 9: Araw ng Kagitingan in the Philippines
- 1865 – With their supply trains destroyed by Union troops one day earlier, Confederate forces under Robert E. Lee finally surrendered to Union General Ulysses S. Grant at the McLean House near the Appomattox Court House in Virginia, effectively ending the American Civil War.
- 1917 – World War I: The Canadian Corps began the first wave of attacks at the Battle of Vimy Ridge in Vimy, France.
- 1959 – NASA announced the selection of the Mercury Seven (pictured), the first astronauts in Project Mercury.
- 1967 – The first Boeing 737 took its maiden flight, eventually becoming the most ordered and produced commercial passenger jet airliner in the world.
- 1989 – An anti-Soviet demonstration in Tbilisi, Georgia, was quashed by the Soviet army, resulting in 20 deaths and hundreds of injuries.
- 2005 – Charles, Prince of Wales, married his long-time mistress Camilla Parker Bowles, culminating the controversial romantic relationship between the two.
More anniversaries: April 8 – April 9 – April 10
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- 1606 – The Charter of the Virginia Company of London was established by Royal Charter by King James I of England with the purpose of establishing colonial settlements in North America.
- 1741 – War of the Austrian Succession: Prussia defeated Austria at the Battle of Mollwitz in present-day Małujowice, Poland, cementing Prussian King Frederick II's authority over the newly conquered territory of Silesia.
- 1815 – Mount Tambora in Indonesia began one of the most violent volcanic eruptions in recorded history, killing at least 71,000 people.
- 1919 – Mexican Revolutionary leader Emiliano Zapata (pictured) was shot to death near Ciudad Ayala, Morelos.
- 1941 – World War II: The Independent State of Croatia was established, with Ustaše leader Ante Pavelić as head of the puppet government.
- 1998 – The Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom signed the Belfast Agreement in Belfast, a major step in the Northern Ireland peace process.
More anniversaries: April 9 – April 10 – April 11
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April 11: Juan Santamaría Day in Costa Rica
- 1713 – The main agreements of the Treaty of Utrecht were signed in the Dutch city of Utrecht, helping to end the War of the Spanish Succession.
- 1814 – The Treaty of Fontainebleau was signed, ending the War of the Sixth Coalition, and forcing Napoleon to abdicate as ruler of France and sending him into exile on Elba.
- 1888 – The Concertgebouw concert hall in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, was inaugurated.
- 1965 – Almost 50 confirmed tornadoes struck six states in the Midwestern United States during the Palm Sunday tornado outbreak, killing over 270 people and injuring 1,500 others.
- 1979 – Ugandan–Tanzanian War: The Uganda National Liberation Army and Tanzanian forces captured Kampala, forcing Ugandan President Idi Amin to flee.
- 2002 – In a coup attempt, members of the Venezuelan military detained President Hugo Chávez (pictured) and demanded his resignation.
More anniversaries: April 10 – April 11 – April 12
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April 12: Yom HaShoah (2010); Cosmonautics Day in Russia; Yuri's Night
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- 467 – Anthemius was proclaimed Western Roman Emperor at the third or twelfth mile from Rome.
- 1204 – Alexius V Ducas fled Constantinople as forces under Boniface the Marquess of Montferrat and Enrico Dandolo the Doge of Venice entered and sacked the Byzantine capital, effectively ending the Fourth Crusade.
- 1606 – A royal decree established the Union Flag (pictured) to symbolise the Union of the Crowns, merging the designs of the Flag of England and the Flag of Scotland.
- 1861 – Confederate forces began firing at Fort Sumter in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina, starting the American Civil War.
- 1927 – Chinese Civil War: A large-scale purge of communists from the nationalist Kuomintang began in Shanghai.
- 1961 – Aboard Vostok 3KA-2, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first man to enter outer space, completing one orbit in a time of 108 minutes.
More anniversaries: April 11 – April 12 – April 13
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- 1598 – King Henry IV of France (pictured) issued the Edict of Nantes, allowing freedom of religion to the Huguenots.
- 1873 – In the wake of a contested election for local political offices in Colfax, Louisiana, USA, armed white supremacists overpowered freedmen and the African American state militia trying to control the parish courthouse, killing over 100 of them.
- 1919 – British Indian Army troops massacred hundreds of unarmed men, women and children who were attending a peaceful gathering at the Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar, Punjab, India.
- 1956 – The Vietnamese National Army captured Ba Cut, military commander of the Hoa Hao religious sect, which ran a de facto state in southern Vietnam in opposition to Prime Minister Ngo Dinh Diem.
- 1984 – Indian forces launched a preemptive attack on the disputed Siachen Glacier region of Kashmir, triggering a military conflict with Pakistan.
More anniversaries: April 12 – April 13 – April 14
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April 14: Pohela Baishakh in Bengal; Vaisakhi in India; N'Ko Alphabet Day in West Africa
- 1471 – Wars of the Roses: The Yorkists under Edward IV defeated the Lancastrians near the town of Barnet, killing Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick.
- 1894 – The first ever commercial motion picture house opened in New York City using ten Kinetoscopes (pictured), a device for peep-show viewing using photographs that flip in sequence, a precursor to movies.
- 1978 – Thousands of Georgians demonstrated in Tbilisi against an attempt by the Supreme Soviet of the Georgian SSR to change the constitutional status of the Georgian language.
- 1994 – In an American friendly fire incident during Operation Provide Comfort in northern Iraq, two United States Air Force aircraft mistakenly shot down two United States Army helicopters, killing 26 people.
- 1999 – A storm dropped an estimated 500,000 tonnes of hailstones in Sydney and along the east coast of New South Wales, causing about A$2.3 billion in damages, the costliest natural disaster in Australian insurance history.
More anniversaries: April 13 – April 14 – April 15
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April 15: Tax Day in the United States; Father Damien Day in Hawaii; Birthday of the Great Leader in North Korea
- 1715 – The Yamasee War between colonial South Carolina and various Native American Indian tribes began.
- 1755 – A Dictionary of the English Language by Samuel Johnson was first published, becoming one of the most influential dictionaries in the history of the English language.
- 1912 – The passenger liner RMS Titanic sank about two hours and forty minutes after colliding with an iceberg (pictured), killing over 1,500 people.
- 1947 – Jackie Robinson, the first African American to break the baseball color line, played his first game in Major League Baseball.
- 1989 – Ninety-six people died in a deadly human crush during a FA Cup semi-final match between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest at Hillsborough Stadium in Sheffield, England, the deadliest stadium-related disaster in British history.
More anniversaries: April 14 – April 15 – April 16
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April 16: Emancipation Day in Washington, D.C.
- 1853 – The first passenger line of what would become Indian Railways, the state-owned railway company of India, opened between Bombay and Thane.
- 1912 – American Harriet Quimby (pictured) became the first woman to fly across the English Channel.
- 1947 – American financier and presidential adviser Bernard Baruch first described the post-World War II tensions between the Soviet Union and the United States as a "cold war".
- 2003 – The Treaty of Accession was signed in Athens, admitting ten new member states into the European Union, including several countries of the former Eastern Bloc.
- 2007 – In one of the deadliest shooting incidents in United States history, a gunman killed 32 people and wounded over 20 more before committing suicide at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, Virginia.
More anniversaries: April 15 – April 16 – April 17
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- 1797 – French Revolutionary Wars: British Lieutenant General Ralph Abercromby and a force of over 6,000 men invaded Spanish-controlled Puerto Rico.
- 1895 – The Empire of Japan and the Qing Empire of China signed the Treaty of Shimonoseki to end the First Sino-Japanese War, with China agreeing to renounce its claims on Korea; cede the Liaodong Peninsula, Penghu and Taiwan to Japan; open various ports and rivers to Japanese trade; and pay Japan a war indemnity of 200 million Kuping taels.
- 1907 – Brazil's Minas Geraes (pictured) was laid down, making the country the third in the world to have a dreadnought battleship under construction and sparking a South American naval arms race.
- 1961 – Armed Cuban exiles backed by the CIA invaded Cuba, landing in the Bay of Pigs, with the aim of overthrowing the Cuban government under Fidel Castro.
- 1975 – The Khmer Rouge under Pol Pot captured Phnom Penh, ending the Cambodian Civil War, and established the Democratic Kampuchea.
- 1982 – A new patriated Constitution of Canada, including the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, a bill of rights intended to protect certain political and civil rights of people in Canada from the policies and actions of all levels of government, was signed into law by Elizabeth II, Queen of Canada.
More anniversaries: April 16 – April 17 – April 18
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April 18: Independence Day in Zimbabwe (1980)
- 1025 – Bolesław I Chrobry became the first King of Poland.
- 1506 – Construction of the current St. Peter's Basilica (interior pictured) in Vatican City, to replace the old St. Peter's Basilica built in the 4th century, began.
- 1906 – A major earthquake and resulting fires devastated San Francisco, killing at least 3,000 people and leaving more than half of the city's population homeless.
- 1942 – World War II: Sixteen B-25 Mitchell bombers from the aircraft carrier USS Hornet carried out the Doolittle Raid, the first Allied attack on the Japanese home islands.
- 1983 – A suicide bomber destroyed the United States Embassy in Beirut with a car bomb, killing over 60 people.
- 1996 – Israeli forces shelled Qana, Lebanon during Operation Grapes of Wrath, killing over 100 civilians and injuring over 110 others at a UN compound.
More anniversaries: April 17 – April 18 – April 19
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April 19: Yom Hazikaron (Israel, 2010); Patriots' Day (Massachusetts and Maine, 2010); Feast of Saint Alphege (Western Christianity)
- 1713 – With no living male heirs, Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI issued the Pragmatic Sanction to ensure one of his daughters would inherit the Habsburg lands.
- 1775 – The American Revolutionary War began with the Battles of Lexington and Concord in the British colony of Massachusetts.
- 1943 – Nazi German troops entered the Warsaw Ghetto to round up the remaining Jews (pictured), sparking the first mass uprising in Poland against the Nazi occupation during the Holocaust.
- 1971 – The first space station, Salyut 1, was launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome near Tyuratam, Kazakh SSR, USSR.
- 1989 – A gun turret onboard the United States Navy battleship Iowa exploded, killing 47 sailors.
- 1995 – A car bomb was detonated in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, USA, killing 168 people and injuring over 800 others.
More anniversaries: April 18 – April 19 – April 20
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April 20: Yom Ha'atzmaut (Israel, 2010); Ridván begins at sunset (Bahá'í Faith); 4/20 (cannabis culture)
- 1653 – Oliver Cromwell dissolved the Rump Parliament of the Commonwealth of England by force, eventually replacing it with the Barebone's Parliament.
- 1862 – French chemist Louis Pasteur (pictured) and physiologist Claude Bernard completed the first test on pasteurization.
- 1884 – Pope Leo XIII published the encyclical Humanum Genus, denouncing Freemasonry as well as a number of beliefs and practices purportedly associated with it such as popular sovereignty and the separation of church and state.
- 1968 – British Member of Parliament Enoch Powell made his controversial "Rivers of Blood" speech in opposition to immigration and anti-discrimination legislation, resulting in his removal from the Shadow Cabinet.
- 1999 – Students Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold embarked on a massacre, killing 13 people and wounding over 20 others before committing suicide at Columbine High School in Columbine, Colorado, USA.
More anniversaries: April 19 – April 20 – April 21
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April 21: Administrative Professionals' Day (2010); Grounation Day in the Rastafari movement; First day of Ridván in the Bahá'í Faith; Tiradentes Day in Brazil
- 900 - A debt is pardoned by the Datu of Tondo (ruling class pictured) in the island of Luzon as inscribed in the Laguna Copperplate Inscription.
- 1509 – Henry VIII became King of England, following the death of his father Henry VII, eventually becoming a significant figure in the history of the English monarchy.
- 1894 – Norway formally adopted the Krag-Jørgensen, a repeating bolt action rifle designed by the Norwegians Ole Herman Johannes Krag and Erik Jørgensen, as the main firearm of its armed forces.
- 1960 – Brasília, a planned city primarily designed by architect and urban planner Lúcio Costa, was officially inaugurated, replacing Rio de Janeiro as the capital of Brazil.
- 1970 – In response to a long-running dispute over wheat quotas, the Principality of Hutt River proclaimed their secession from Western Australia.
More anniversaries: April 20 – April 21 – April 22
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April 22: Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day (United States, 2010); Earth Day
- 1864 – The U.S. Congress passed the Coinage Act, authorizing the minting of a two-cent coin (pictured), the first U.S. coin to bear the phrase "In God We Trust".
- 1889 – Over 50,000 people rushed to claim a piece of the available two million acres (8,000 km2) in the Unassigned Lands, the present-day U.S. state of Oklahoma. Within hours, both Oklahoma City and Guthrie had established cities of around 10,000 people.
- 1915 – The Germans released chlorine gas as a chemical weapon in the Second Battle of Ypres, killing over 5,000 soldiers within ten minutes by asphyxiation in the first large-scale successful use of poison gas in World War I.
- 1945 – About 600 prisoners of the Jasenovac concentration camp in the Independent State of Croatia revolted, but only 80 managed to escape while the other 520 were killed by the Croatian Ustaše regime.
- 1993 – The first version of Mosaic, created by computer programmers Marc Andreessen and Eric Bina at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, was released, becoming the first popular World Wide Web browser and Gopher client.
More anniversaries: April 21 – April 22 – April 23
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April 23: World Book and Copyright Day; St George's Day in various countries; Children's Day in Turkey.
- 1348 – The first-ever appointments of the Order of the Garter, an order of chivalry, founded by King Edward III of England, that is today presently bestowed on recipients in the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth realms, were announced.
- 1661 – Charles II was crowned King of England, Ireland, and Scotland at Westminster Abbey.
- 1827 – Irish mathematician and physicist William Rowan Hamilton (pictured) presented his Theory of Systems of Rays.
- 1954 – Batting against Vic Raschi of the St. Louis Cardinals, Hank Aaron of the Milwaukee Braves hit the first of his then-record 755 home runs in Major League Baseball.
- 1961 – Dressed in his 1940s-vintage general's uniform, President Charles de Gaulle delivered a televised speech calling on the military personnel and civilians of France to oppose the Algiers putsch, a coup d'état attempt against him.
More anniversaries: April 22 – April 23 – April 24
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April 24: Republic Day in the Gambia (1970); Genocide Remembrance Day in Armenia
- 1479 BC – Thutmose III became the sixth Pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt according to the official chronology, although during the first 22 years of the reign he was co-regent with his aunt, Hatshepsut.
- 1800 – The Library of Congress (pictured), today the de facto national library of the United States, was established as part of an act of Congress providing for the transfer of the nation's capital from Philadelphia to Washington, D.C.
- 1877 – Unable to resolve a series of disputes over the Balkans in the aftermath of the 1876 Bulgarian April Uprising, Russia declared war on the Ottoman Empire, starting the Russo-Turkish War.
- 1915 – The Armenian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire began with the arrest and deportation of hundreds of prominent Armenians in Constantinople.
- 1916 – Irish republicans led by teacher and political activist Patrick Pearse began the Easter Rising, a rebellion against British rule in Ireland, and proclaimed the Irish Republic an independent state.
- 1990 – The Hubble Space Telescope was launched aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery in mission STS-31.
More anniversaries: April 23 – April 24 – April 25
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April 25: ANZAC Day in Australia and New Zealand; Liberation Day in Italy; Red Hat Society Day
- 1719 – Robinson Crusoe, a novel by English author Daniel Defoe about a castaway who spends 28 years on a remote tropical island near Venezuela, was first published.
- 1898 – Spanish–American War: The United States retroactively declared war on Spain, stating that a state of war between the two countries had already existed for the past couple of days.
- 1915 – World War I: Australian and New Zealand Army Corps landed at Anzac Cove while British and French troops landed at Cape Helles to begin the Allied invasion of the Gallipoli peninsula in the Ottoman Empire.
- 1953 – Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids by molecular biologists James Watson and Francis Crick was first published in the scientific journal Nature, describing the discovery of the double helix structure of DNA (diagram pictured).
- 1974 – The song "Grândola, Vila Morena" by Zeca Afonso was broadcast on radio, signalling the start of the Carnation Revolution, a bloodless coup against the Estado Novo regime in Portugal.
More anniversaries: April 24 – April 25 – April 26
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April 26: Feast Day of Our Lady of Good Counsel (Roman Catholic Church)
- 1865 – American Army soldiers cornered and fatally shot John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln, in rural northern Virginia, ending a twelve-day manhunt.
- 1937 – Spanish Civil War: The Bombing of Guernica by the Condor Legion of the German Luftwaffe resulted in a devastating firestorm that caused widespread destruction and civilian deaths in the Basque town.
- 1964 – Tanganyika and Zanzibar merged to form Tanzania.
- 1986 – The Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant (pictured) near Chernobyl, Ukrainian SSR, suffered a steam explosion, resulting in a fire, a nuclear meltdown, and the evacuation and resettlement of over 336,000 people around Europe.
- 2007 – Controversy surrounding the relocation of the Bronze Soldier of Tallinn in Tallinn, Estonia, a Soviet Red Army World War II memorial, erupted into mass protests and riots.
More anniversaries: April 25 – April 26 – April 27
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April 27: Independence Day in Togo (1960) and Sierra Leone (1961); Freedom Day in South Africa
- 1521 – Filipino natives led by chieftain Lapu-Lapu killed Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan and over forty Spanish soldiers at the Battle of Mactan.
- 1565 – Conquistador Miguel López de Legazpi and 500 armed soldiers arrived at Cebu and established the first Spanish settlement in the Philippines.
- 1805 – First Barbary War: U.S. Marines engaged forces of the Barbary Coast at the Battle of Derne in Tripoli, marking the first recorded land battle by the United States on foreign soil.
- 1909 – After the government was restored following the 31 March Incident and the Adana massacre, Abdul Hamid II, the last Sultan of the Ottoman Empire to rule with absolute power, was overthrown by Mehmed V.
- 1967 – The Expo 67 World's Fair opened in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, with over 50 million visitors and 62 nations participating.
More anniversaries: April 26 – April 27 – April 28
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April 28: International Workers' Memorial Day
- 1192 – Third Crusade: Conrad of Montferrat, the elected King of Jerusalem, was fatally stabbed by members of the Hashshashin.
- 1611 – The University of Santo Tomas in Manila, one of the oldest existing universities in Asia and one of the world's largest Catholic universities in terms of enrollment, was founded.
- 1789 – Fletcher Christian led a mutiny aboard the Royal Navy ship HMAV Bounty against its commander William Bligh (pictured).
- 1923 – London's Wembley Stadium, then known as Empire Stadium, was opened to the public for the first time and held the 1923 FA Cup Final between Bolton Wanderers and West Ham United football clubs.
- 1952 – The Treaty of San Francisco entered into force, ending the occupation of Japan by the former Allied Powers of World War II.
- 1997 – The 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention went into effect, outlawing the production, stockpiling and use of chemical weapons in those countries that ratified the arms control agreement.
More anniversaries: April 27 – April 28 – April 29
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April 29: Shōwa Day in Japan; International Dance Day
- 1770 – British explorer James Cook and the crew of HMS Endeavour made their first landfall on Australia on the coast of Botany Bay near present-day Sydney.
- 1862 – American Civil War: Union forces under David Farragut captured New Orleans, securing access into the Mississippi River.
- 1882 – German inventor Ernst Werner von Siemens (pictured) began operating his Elektromote, the world's first trolleybus, in a Berlin suburb.
- 1916 – World War I: Khalil Pasha of the Ottoman Army accepted the surrender of Major-General Charles Townshend and the British Mesopotamian Expeditionary Force, ending the Siege of Kut.
- 1968 – The controversial musical Hair, a product of the hippie counter-culture and sexual revolution of the 1960s, opened at the Biltmore Theatre on Broadway, with its songs becoming anthems of the anti-Vietnam War movement.
- 1992 – The acquittal of policemen who had beaten African-American motorist Rodney King sparked civil unrest in Los Angeles that lasted for six days and killed over 50 people.
More anniversaries: April 28 – April 29 – April 30
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April 30: Arbor Day in the United States (2010); National Persian Gulf Day in Iran; Queen's Day in the Netherlands; Walpurgis Night in various European countries; Reunification Day in Vietnam
- 1006 – SN 1006, the brightest supernova in history, first appeared in the constellation Lupus, and was then seen by observers in Switzerland, Egypt, China, Japan, and possibly North America within the next day.
- 1789 – George Washington (pictured) took the oath of office as the first President of the United States at Federal Hall in New York City.
- 1945 – World War II: As Allied forces were closing in on Berlin, Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun committed suicide in the Führerbunker after being married for one day.
- 1975 – North Vietnamese troops captured Saigon, ending the Vietnam War with the unconditional surrender of South Vietnam.
- 2004 – The New Yorker magazine posted an article and supporting pictures online, postdated May 10, detailing accounts of torture and abuse by American personnel of prisoners held at the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad, Iraq.
More anniversaries: April 29 – April 30 – May 1
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It is now 16:43 on Saturday, March 20, 2010 (UTC) – Purge cache for this page
