April 26, 2012

1478 – The Pazzi family’s plot to overthrow the Medici in Florence failed

1954 – Studio 54 opened in NYC

1954 – Polio vaccine trials began in the Franklin Sherman Elementary School in McLean, Virginia

1986 – The world’s worst nuclear accident to date occurs at the Chernobyl nuclear plant near Kiev in Ukraine

2005 – Syria’s 29-year military presence in Lebanon ended as Syrian soldiers completed a withdrawal brought about by international pressure and Lebanese street protests

2012 – Ex-Liberia President Charles Taylor guilty in ‘watershed’ war-crimes case

April 24, 2012

1800 - Library of Congress established

1863 – The Union army issues General Orders No. 100, which provided a code of conduct for Federal soldiers and officers when dealing with Confederate prisoners and civilians.

1922 – Forensic evidence is introduced in Australia, 1922

1953 – Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill, the British leader who guided Great Britain and the Allies through the crisis of World War II, is knighted by Queen Elizabeth II

2012 – Sudan has declared war on us, says South Sudan president

April 23, 2012

1014 – Brian Boru, the high king of Ireland, is assassinated by a group of retreating Norsemen shortly after his Irish forces defeated them

1564 – William Shakespeare born

1778 – American Revolution: John Paul Jones burns Whitehaven, England

1967 – Soviet cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov is killed when his parachute fails to deploy during his spacecraft’s landing

1987 – Chrysler buys luxury automaker Lamborghini

2012 – Zimmerman released on bail in Martin shooting case

April 19, 2012

1775 – The American Revolution begins

1861 – Baltimoreans attack Union troops

1897 – First Boston Marathon held

1902 – Earthquake rocks Guatemala

1964 – Mario Andretti competes in first Indy car event

1989 – Central Park jogger attack shocks New York City

2012 – Dick Clark died of a heart attack yesterday

April 17, 2012

1790 – Benjamin Franklin dies

1850 – Tambora volcano eruption in Indonesia kills 80,000

1945 – U.S. commandeers over half a ton of uranium at Strassfut, Germany, in an effort to prevent the Russians from developing an A-bomb.

1964 – Ford Mustang debuts at World’s Fair

1970 – Apollo 13 returns to Earth

2012 – The space shuttle Discovery, NASA’s fleet leader and the world’s most flown spacecraft, lifted off for the last time to be delivered to the Smithsonian for its permanent display.

April 13, 2012

1360 – Hail kills English troops

1745 – Thomas Jefferson is born

1919 – The Amritsar Massacre

1945 – Hitler bluffs from bunker as Russians advance and atrocities continue

1970 - Apollo 13 oxygen tank explodes

1990 – Soviets admit to Katyn Massacre

1997 – Tiger Woods wins his first Masters

2012 – The recall of more than a ton of beef potentially contaminated with dangerous E. coli bacteria — including mechanically tenderized sirloin steaks — is renewing calls for better labeling.

April 12, 2012

1204 – Constantinople, Christian capital of Byzantium, fell to the armies of the Fourth Crusade

1633 – Physicist and astronomer Galileo Galilei was accused of heresy by the Catholic Church for holding the belief that the Earth revolves around the Sun

1861 – The US Civil War began as Confederate forces fired on Fort Sumter in South Carolina

1961 – Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human to orbit the earth in space and return safely

1981 – The space shuttle Columbia is launched from Cape Canaveral, FL becoming the first reusable manned spacecraft to travel into space

1992 – Euro-Disney opens in France

2012 – Zimmerman in custody, charged with second-degree murder

April 11, 2012

1689 – William III and Mary II were crowned as joint sovereigns of Britain

1862 – The Confederates surrendered Fort Pulaski

1945 – The American Third Army liberates the Buchenwald concentration camp, near Weimar, Germany

1961 – Bob Dylan played his first major gig in NYC

1970 – Apollo 13 was launched to the moon

2006 – Israel’s Cabinet declared Prime Minister Ariel Sharon permanently incapacitated

2012 – Tsunami alerts after powerful 8.6 quake hit off Indonesia

April 9, 2012

1881 – Billy the Kid convicted of murder

1918 – WWI: Battle of the Lys begins

1940 – Germany invades Norway

1947 – Tornado reduces Oklahoma town to rubble

1959 – First astronauts introduced: Scott Carpenter, L. Gordon Cooper Jr., John H. Glenn Jr., Virgil “Gus” Grissom, Walter Schirra Jr., Alan Shepard Jr., and Donald Slayton

2009 – Honda wins World Green Car award

2012 – ’60 Minutes’ veteran Mike Wallace dies

April 5, 2012

1614 – Pocahontas married John Rolfe

1887 – British historian Lord Acton wrote in a letter, “All power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

1951 – Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were sentenced to death for their roles in passing atomic secrets to the Soviets

1955 – Winston Churchill resigned as Prime Minister of Britain

1994 – Kurt Cobain committed suicide

2009 – President Barack Obama, visiting Prague, launched an effort to rid the world of nuclear weapons, calling them “the most dangerous legacy of the Cold War”

2012 – Wolves, no longer endangered in Wyoming, now labeled ‘predators’