April 160069 - Otho committed suicide after being defeated by Vitellius' troops at Bedriacum. 0556 - Pelagius I began his reign as Catholic Pope. 1065 - The Norman Robert Guiscard took Bari. Five centuries of Byzantine rule in southern Italy ended. 1175 - Frederick I, Holy Roman Emperor, signed the Treaty of Montebello with the Lombard League. 1705 - Queen Anne of England knighted Isaac Newton. 1746 - The Duke of Cumberland defeated Bonnie Prince Charlie (and his Jacobites) at the battle of Culloden. 1818 - The U.S. Senate ratified Rush-Bagot amendment to form an unarmed U.S.-Canada border. 1851 - A lighthouse was swept away in a gale at Minot’s Ledge, MA. 1854 - San Salvador was destroyed by an earthquake. 1862 - Confederate President Jefferson Davis approved conscription act for white males between 18 and 35. 1862 - In the U.S., slavery was abolished by law in the District of Columbia. 1883 - Paul Kruger became president of the South African Republic. 1900 - The first book of postage stamps was issued. The two-cent stamps were available in books of 12, 24 and 48 stamps. 1905 - Andrew Carnegie donated $10,000,000 of personal money to set up the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. 1912 - Harriet Quimby became the first woman to fly across the English Channel. 1917 - Vladimir Ilyich Lenin returned to Russia to start Bolshevik Revolution after years of exile. 1922 - Annie Oakley shot 100 clay targets in a row, to set a women's record. 1922 - The Soviet Union and Germany signed the Treaty of Rapallo under which Germany recognized the Soviet Union and diplomatic and trade relations were restored. 1935 - "Fibber McGee and Molly" premiered. 1940 - The first no-hit, no-run game to be thrown on an opening day of the major league baseball season was earned by Bob Feller. The Cleveland Indians beat the Chicago White Sox 1-0. 1942 - The Island of Malta was awarded the George Cross in recognition for heroism under constant German air attack. 1943 - In Basel, Switzerland, chemist Albert Hoffman accidently discovered the the hallucinogenic effects of LSD-25 while working on the medicinal value of lysergic acid. 1944 - The destroyer USS Laffey survived immense damage from attacks by 22 Japanese aircraft off Okinawa. 1945 - American troops entered Nuremberg, Germany. 1947 - The Zoomar lens, invented by Dr. Frank Back, was demonstrated in New York City. It was the first lens to exhibit zooming effects. 1947 - In Texas City, TX, the French ship Grandcamp, carrying ammonium nitrate fertilizer, caught fire and blew up. The explosions and resulting fires killed 576 people. 1948 - In Paris, the Organization for European Economic Co-operation was set up. 1951 - 75 people were killed when the British submarine Affray sank in the English Channel. 1953 - The British royal yacht Britannia was launched. 1962 - Walter Cronkite began anchoring "The CBS Evening News". 1967 - At the Western Open in El Monte, CA, Ken Barnes Jr. became the first skeet shooter to break a perfect 400 x 400 in all four guns (.410, 28, 20, and 12 gauges). He is also the only shooter to do this with pump action guns. 1968 - The Pentagon announced that troops would begin coming home from Vietnam. 1968 - Major league baseball's longest night game was played when the Houston Astros defeated the New York Mets 1-0. The 24 innings took six hours, six minutes to play. 1972 - Apollo 16 blasted off on a voyage to the moon. It was the fifth manned moon landing. 1972 - Two giants pandas arrived in the U.S. from China. 1975 - The Khmer Rouge Rebels won control of Cambodia after a five years of civil war. They renamed the country Kampuchea and began a reign of terror. 1978 - In Orissa, India, 180 people died when a tornado hit. 1982 - Queen Elizabeth proclaimed Canada's new constitution in effect. The act severed the last colonial links with Britain. 1983 - China shelled the Vietnam border in retaliation for raids. 1983 - Brazil detained four Libyan planes en route to Nicaragua after finding weapons, explosives and ammunition on the planes. 1985 - Mickey Mantle was reinstated after being banned from baseball for several years. 1987 - The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) sternly warned U.S. radio stations to watch the use of indecent language on the airwaves. 1987 - The U.S. Patent Office began allowing the patenting of new animals created by genetic engineering. 1992 - Italian financier Carlo de Benedetti and 32 others were convicted of fraud in connection with the 1982 collapse of Banco Ambrosiano. 1992 - The House ethics committee listed 303 current and former lawmakers who had overdrawn their House bank accounts. 1995 - The European Union and Canada agreed to protect threatened fish stocks in the north Atlantic. 1996 - Britain's Prince Andrew and his wife, Sarah, the Duchess of York, announced that they were in the process of getting a divorce. 1996 - An Italian court found former Prime Minister Bettino Craxi guilty on charges of corruption. He was sentenced to eight years and three months in prison. 1999 - Wayne Gretzky announced his retirement from the National Hockey League (NHL). 2002 - The U.S. Supreme Court overturned major parts of a 1996 child pornography law based on rights to free speech. 2007 - In Blacksburg, VA, a student killed 33 people at Virginia Tech before killing himself. |