Today in History

[Duke of Buckingham]

April 10

428 – Nestorius becomes Patriarch of Constantinople.
837 – Halley's Comet and Earth experienced their closest approach to one another when their separating distance equalled 0.0342 AU (3.2 million miles).
879 – Louis III and Carloman II become joint Kings of the Western Franks.
1407 – the lama Deshin Shekpa visits the Ming Dynasty capital at Nanjing. He is awarded with the title Great Treasure Prince of Dharma.
1500 – Ludovico Sforza is captured by the Swiss troops at Novara and is handed over to the French.
1606 – The Virginia Company of London is established by royal charter by James I of England with the purpose of establishing colonial settlements in North America.
1710 – The Statute of Anne, the first law regulating copyright, enters into force in Great Britain.
1741 – War of the Austrian Succession: Prussia defeats Austria in the Battle of Mollwitz.
1809 – Napoleonic Wars: The War of the Fifth Coalition begins when forces of the Austrian Empire invade Bavaria.
1815 – The Mount Tambora volcano begins a three-month-long eruption, lasting until July 15. The eruption ultimately kills 71,000 people and affects Earth's climate for the next two years.
1816 – The Federal government of the United States approves the creation of the Second Bank of the United States.
1821 – Patriarch Gregory V of Constantinople is hanged by the Ottoman government from the main gate of the Patriarchate and his body is thrown into the Bosphorus.
1826 – The 10,500 inhabitants of the Greek town Missolonghi start leaving the town after a year's siege by Turkish forces. Very few of them survive.
1856 – The Theta Chi fraternity is founded at Norwich University in Vermont.
1858 – After the original Big Ben, a 14.5 tonne bell for the Palace of Westminster had cracked during testing, it is recast into the current 13.76 tonne bell by Whitechapel Bell Foundry.
1864 – Archduke Maximilian of Habsburg is proclaimed emperor of Mexico during the French intervention in Mexico.
1865 – American Civil War: A day after his surrender to Union forces, Confederate General Robert E. Lee addresses his troops for the last time.
1866 – The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) is founded in New York City by Henry Bergh.
1868 – At Arogee in Abyssinia, British and Indian forces defeat an army of Emperor Tewodros II. While 700 Ethiopians are killed and many more injured, only two die from the British/Indian troops.
1874 – The first Arbor Day is celebrated in Nebraska.
1887 – On Easter Sunday, Pope Leo XIII authorizes the establishment of The Catholic University of America.
1904 – British mystic Aleister Crowley transcribes the third and final chapter of The Book of The Law.
1912 – The Titanic leaves port in Southampton, England for her first and only voyage.
1916 – The Professional Golfers Association of America (PGA) is created in New York City.
1919 – Mexican Revolution leader Emiliano Zapata is ambushed and shot dead by government forces in Morelos.
1925 – The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald is first published in New York City, by Charles Scribner's Sons.
1940 – Katyn massacre Mass execution of 40 thousands Polish officers and intelligentsia approved and signed by USSR leader Joseph Stalin
1941 – World War II: The Axis Powers in Europe establish the Independent State of Croatia from occupied Yugoslavia with Ante Pavelić's Ustaše fascist insurgents in power.
1944 – Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler escape from the Birkenau death camp.
1953 – Warner Brothers premieres the first 3-D film from a major American studio, entitled House of Wax.
1957 – The Suez Canal is reopened for all shipping after being closed for three months.
1959 – Akihito, future Emperor of Japan, weds Michiko.
1963 – 129 American sailors die when the submarine USS Thresher sinks at sea.
1968 – Shipwreck of the New Zealand inter-island ferry TEV Wahine outside Wellington harbour.
1970 – Paul McCartney announces that he is leaving The Beatles for personal and professional reasons.
1971 – Ping Pong Diplomacy: In an attempt to thaw relations with the United States, the People's Republic of China hosts the U.S. table tennis team for a weeklong visit.
1972 – 20 days after he is kidnapped in Buenos Aires, Oberdan Sallustro is murdered by communist guerrillas.
1972 – Vietnam War: For the first time since November 1967, American B-52 bombers reportedly begin bombing North Vietnam.
1972 – Seventy-four nations sign the Biological Weapons Convention, the first multilateral disarmament treaty banning the production of biological weapons.
1973 – A British Vanguard turboprop crashes during a snowstorm at Basel, Switzerland killing 104.
1979 – Red River Valley Tornado Outbreak: A tornado lands in Wichita Falls, Texas killing 42 people.
1991 – Italian ferry Moby Prince collides with an oil tanker in dense fog off Livorno, Italy killing 140.
1991 – A rare tropical storm develops in the South Atlantic Ocean near Angola; the first to be documented by satellites.
1992 – The Maraghar Massacre, killing of ethnic Armenian civil population of the village Maraghar by Azerbaijani troops during the Nagorno-Karabakh War.
2009 – President of Fiji Ratu Josefa Iloilo announces he will suspend the constitution and assume all governance in the country, creating a constitutional crisis.
2010 – Polish Air Force Tu-154M crashes near Smolensk, Russia, killing all 96 people on board including President Lech Kaczyński.


Halley's Comet

Halley's calculations enabled the comet's earlier appearances to be found in the historical record. The following table sets out the astronomical designations for every apparition of Halley's Comet from 240 BCE, the earliest documented widespread sighting. For example, "1P/1982 U1, 1986 III, 1982i" indicates that for the perihelion in 1986, Halley's Comet was the first period comet known (designated 1P) and this apparition was the first seen in "half-month" U (the first half of November) in 1982 (giving 1P/1982 U1); it was the third comet past perihelion in 1986 (1986 III); and it was the ninth comet spotted in 1982 (provisional designation 1982i). The perihelion dates of each apparition are shown. The perihelion dates farther from the present are approximate, mainly because of uncertainties in the modeling of non-gravitational effects. Perihelion dates 1607 and later are in the Gregorian calendar, while perihelion dates of 1531 and earlier are in the Julian calendar.

1P/−239 K1, −239 (25 May 240 BCE)
1P/−163 U1, −163 (12 November 164 BCE)
1P/−86 Q1, −86 (6 August 87 BCE)
1P/−11 Q1, −11 (10 October 12 BCE)
1P/66 B1, 66 (25 January 66 CE)
1P/141 F1, 141 (22 March 141)
1P/218 H1, 218 (17 May 218)
1P/295 J1, 295 (20 April 295)
1P/374 E1, 374 (16 February 374)
1P/451 L1, 451 (28 June 451)
1P/530 Q1, 530 (27 September 530)
1P/607 H1, 607 (15 March 607)
1P/684 R1, 684 (2 October 684)
1P/760 K1, 760 (20 May 760)
1P/837 F1, 837 (28 February 837)
1P/912 J1, 912 (18 July 912)
1P/989 N1, 989 (5 September 989)
1P/1066 G1, 1066 (20 March 1066)
1P/1145 G1, 1145 (18 April 1145)
1P/1222 R1, 1222 (28 September 1222)
1P/1301 R1, 1301 (25 October 1301)
1P/1378 S1, 1378 (10 November 1378)
1P/1456 K1, 1456 (9 June 1456)
1P/1531 P1, 1531 (26 August 1531)
1P/1607 S1, 1607 (27 October 1607)
1P/1682 Q1, 1682 (15 September 1682)
1P/1758 Y1, 1759 I (13 March 1759)
1P/1835 P1, 1835 III (16 November 1835)
1P/1909 R1, 1910 II, 1909c (20 April 1910)
1P/1982 U1, 1986 III, 1982i (9 February 1986)
Next perihelion predicted 28 July 2061


More news on Duke the Menace http://www.free-dc.org/forum/showthr...l=1#post165038

[Duke of Buckingham]

April 11

491 – Flavius Anastasius becomes Byzantine Emperor, with the name of Anastasius I.
1079 – Bishop Stanislaus of Kraków is executed by order of Bolesław II of Poland.
1241 – Batu Khan defeats Béla IV of Hungary at the Battle of Muhi.
1512 – War of the League of Cambrai: French forces led by Gaston de Foix win the Battle of Ravenna.
1544 – French forces defeat a Spanish army at the Battle of Ceresole.
1689 – William III and Mary II are crowned as joint sovereigns of Britain.
1713 – War of the Spanish Succession (Queen Anne's War): Treaty of Utrecht.
1727 – Premiere of Johann Sebastian Bach's St Matthew Passion BWV 244b at the St. Thomas Church, Leipzig
1775 – The last execution for witchcraft in Germany takes place.
1809 – Battle of the Basque Roads Naval battle fought between France and the United Kingdom
1814 – The Treaty of Fontainebleau ends the War of the Sixth Coalition against Napoleon Bonaparte, and forces him to abdicate unconditionally for the first time.
1856 – Battle of Rivas: Juan Santamaria burns down the hostel where William Walker's filibusters are holed up.
1868 – Former Shogun Tokugawa Yoshinobu surrenders Edo Castle to Imperial forces, marking the end of the Tokugawa shogunate.
1876 – The Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks is organized.
1881 – Spelman College is founded in Atlanta, Georgia as the Atlanta Baptist Female Seminary, an institute of higher education for African-American women.
1888 – The Concertgebouw in Amsterdam is inaugurated.
1908 – SMS Blücher, the last armored cruiser to be built by the German Imperial Navy, launches.
1913 – The Nevill Ground's pavilion is destroyed in a suffragette arson attack becoming the only cricket ground to be attacked by suffragettes.
1919 – The International Labour Organization is founded.
1921 – Emir Abdullah establishes the first centralised government in the newly created British protectorate of Transjordan.
1945 – World War II: American forces liberate the Buchenwald concentration camp.
1951 – Korean War: President Harry Truman relieves General of the Army Douglas MacArthur of overall command in Korea.
1951 – The Stone of Scone, the stone upon which Scottish monarchs were traditionally crowned, is found on the site of the altar of Arbroath Abbey. It had been taken by Scottish nationalist students from its place in Westminster Abbey.
1952 – The Battle of Nanri Island takes place.
1954 – The most boring day since 1900 according to the True Knowledge Answer Engine
1955 – The Air India Kashmir Princess is bombed and crashes in a failed assassination attempt on Zhou Enlai by the Kuomintang.
1957 – United Kingdom agrees to Singaporean self-rule.
1961 – The trial of Adolf Eichmann begins in Jerusalem.
1963 – Pope John XXIII issues Pacem in Terris, the first encyclical addressed to all instead of to Catholics alone.
1965 – The Palm Sunday tornado outbreak of 1965: Fifty-one tornadoes hit in six Midwestern states, killing 256 people.
1968 – President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1968, prohibiting discrimination in the sale, rental, and financing of housing.
1970 – Apollo 13 is launched.
1972 – First edition of the BBC comedy panel game I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue is broadcast, one of the longest running British radio shows in history.
1976 – The Apple I is created.
1977 – London Transport's Silver Jubilee buses are launched.
1979 – Ugandan dictator Idi Amin is deposed.
1981 – A massive riot in Brixton, South London, results in almost 300 police injuries and 65 serious civilian injuries.
1987 – The London Agreement is secretly signed between Israeli Foreign Affairs Minister Shimon Peres and King Hussein of Jordan.
1989 – Ron Hextall becomes the first goaltender in NHL history to score a goal in the playoffs.
1990 – Customs officers in Middlesbrough, England, United Kingdom, say they have seized what they believe to be the barrel of a massive gun on a ship bound for Iraq.
1993 – 450 prisoners rioted at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville, Ohio, and continued to do so for ten days, citing grievances related to prison conditions, as well as the forced vaccination of Nation of Islam prisoners (for tuberculosis) against their religious beliefs.
2001 – The detained crew of a United States EP-3E aircraft that landed in Hainan, China after a collision with a J-8 fighter is released.
2002 – The Ghriba synagogue bombing by Al Qaeda kills 21 in Tunisia.
2002 – Over two hundred thousand people marched in Caracas towards the Presidential Palace of Miraflores, to demand the resignation of president Hugo Chávez. 19 of the protesters are killed, and the Minister of Defense Gral. Lucas Rincon announced Hugo Chávez resignation on national TV.
2006 – Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announces that Iran has successfully enriched uranium.
2007 – 2007 Algiers bombings: Two bombings in the Algerian capital of Algiers, kills 33 people and wounds a further 222 others.
2011 – 2011 Minsk Metro bombing
2012 – A magnitude 8.2 earthquake hit Indonesia, off northern Sumatra at a depth of 16.4 km. After that there are still more continuation earthquake. Tsunami had hit the island of Nias at Indonesia.

[Duke of Buckingham]

Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks

The Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks (BPOE; also often known as the Elks Lodge or simply The Elks) is an American fraternal order and social club founded in 1868. It is one of the leading fraternal orders in the U.S., claiming nearly one million members.

The Elks had modest beginnings in 1868 as a social club (then called the "Jolly Corks") established as a private club to elude New York City laws governing the opening hours of public taverns. After the death of a member left his wife and children without income, the club took up additional service roles, rituals and a new name. Desiring to adopt "a readily identifiable creature of stature, indigenous to America," fifteen members voted 8–7 in favor of the elk above the buffalo. Early members were mostly from theatrical performing troupes in New York City. It has since evolved into a major American fraternal, charitable, and service order with more than a million members, both men and women, throughout the United States and the former territories of the Philippines and the Panama Canal.

When founded, membership in the BPOE was denied to blacks. Because of this policy, an unaffiliated, primarily black organization modeled on the BPOE was formed in 1898. This "Improved Benevolent Protective Order of the Elks of the World" (IBPOEW) remains a separate organization to this day. Membership in the BPOE was opened to African Americans in the 1970s, although the Winter Haven, Florida Elks Club was famously segregated as late as 1985, when Boston Red Sox Coach Tommy Harper protested a Red Sox policy of permitting them into the spring training clubhouse to issue lodge clubroom invitations to white players only. Women were permitted to join in the mid-1990s, but currently atheists are excluded. The opening of membership to women was mandated by the Oregon Public Accommodations Act, which was found by an appeals court to apply to the BPOE, and it has been speculated that the religious restriction might be litigated on the same basis. A year after the national organization changed its policy to allow women to join, the Vermont Supreme Court ordered punitive damages of $5,000 for each of seven women whom a local chapter had rejected citing other reasons. Current members are required to be U.S. citizens over the age of 21 and believe in God.


Buchenwald concentration camp

Buchenwald concentration camp (German: Konzentrationslager (KZ) Buchenwald, IPA: [ˈbuːxənvalt]; literally, in English: beech forest) was a German Nazi concentration camp established on the Ettersberg (Etter Mountain) near Weimar, Germany, in July 1937, one of the first and the largest of the concentration camps on German soil.

Camp prisoners from all over Europe and the Soviet Union—Jews, non-Jewish Poles and Slovenes, the mentally ill and physically-disabled from birth defects, religious and political prisoners, Roma and Sinti, Freemasons, Jehovah's Witnesses, criminals, homosexuals, and prisoners of war— worked primarily as forced labor in local armament factories. From 1945 to 1950, the camp was used by the Soviet occupation authorities as an internment camp, known as NKVD special camp number 2.

Today the remains of Buchenwald serves as a memorial and permanent exhibition and museum.


Apollo 13

The mission was launched at the planned time, 02:13:00 PM EST (19:13:00 UTC) on April 11. An anomaly occurred when the second-stage, center (inboard) engine shut down about two minutes early. The four outboard engines and the third-stage engine burned longer to compensate, and the vehicle achieved very close to the planned circular 100 nautical miles (190 km) parking orbit, followed by a normal translunar injection about two hours later. The engine shutdown was determined to be caused by severe pogo oscillations measured at a strength of 68 g and a frequency of 16 hertz, flexing the thrust frame by 3 inches (76 mm). The vehicle's guidance system shut the engine down in response to sensed thrust chamber pressure fluctuations. Pogo oscillations had been seen on previous Titan rockets, and also on the Saturn V during Apollo 6, but on Apollo 13 they were amplified by an unexpected interaction with turbopump cavitation. Later missions implemented anti-pogo modifications that had been under development. These included addition of a helium gas reservoir to the center engine liquid oxygen line to dampen pressure oscillations, an automatic cutoff as a backup, and simplification of the propellant valves of all five second-stage engines.

The crew performed the separation and transposition maneuver to dock the CM Odyssey to the LM Aquarius, and pulled away from the spent third stage, which ground controllers then sent on a course to impact the Moon in range of a seismometer placed on surface by Apollo 12. They then settled in for the three-day trip to Fra Mauro.


Apple I

The original Apple Computer, also known retroactively as the Apple I, or Apple-1, is a personal computer released by the Apple Computer Company (now Apple Inc.) in 1976. They were designed and hand-built by Steve Wozniak. Wozniak's friend Steve Jobs had the idea of selling the computer. The Apple I was Apple's first product, and to finance its creation, Jobs sold his only means of transportation, a VW Microbus and Wozniak sold his HP-65 calculator for $500. It was demonstrated in July 1976 at the Homebrew Computer Club in Palo Alto, California.

The Apple I went on sale in July 1976 at a price of US$666.66, because Wozniak "liked repeating digits" and because they originally sold it to a local shop for $500 plus a one-third markup. About 200 units were produced. Unlike other hobbyist computers of its day, which were sold as kits, the Apple I was a fully assembled circuit board containing about 60+ chips. However, to make a working computer, users still had to add a case, power supply transformers, power switch, ASCII keyboard, and composite video display. An optional board providing a cassette interface for storage was later released at a cost of $72.

The Apple I's built-in computer terminal circuitry was distinctive. All one needed was a keyboard and an inexpensive television set. Competing machines such as the Altair 8800 generally were programmed with front-mounted toggle switches and used indicator lights (red LEDs, most commonly) for output, and had to be extended with separate hardware to allow connection to a computer terminal or a teletypewriter machine. This made the Apple I an innovative machine for its day. In April 1977 the price was dropped to $475. It continued to be sold through August 1977, despite the introduction of the Apple II in April 1977, which began shipping in June of that year. Apple dropped the Apple I from its price list by October 1977, officially discontinuing it. As Wozniak was the only person who could answer most customer support questions about the computer, the company offered Apple I owners discounts and trade-ins for Apple IIs to persuade them to return their computers, contributing to their scarcity. In 1976, Concord High School Junior Wai Lee assembled one of the first 12 Apple Is (no serial number), the first Apple Computer in an aluminum housing.


2012 Indian Ocean earthquakes

The 2012 Indian Ocean earthquakes were magnitude 8.6 and 8.2 Mw undersea earthquakes that struck near the Indonesian province of Aceh on Wednesday, April 11, 2012, at 15:38 local time. Initially, authorities feared that the initial earthquake would cause a tsunami and warnings were issued across the Indian Ocean; however, these warnings were subsequently cancelled. The earthquake was the 13th strongest earthquake since 1900, an unusually strong intraplate earthquake, and the largest strike-slip earthquake ever recorded.

A magnitude 8.2 aftershock struck at a depth of 16.4 kilometres (10.2 mi) about 430 km (267 mi) southwest of Banda Aceh at 10:43 UTC, two hours after the initial earthquake. Many aftershocks with magnitude readings between 5.0 to 6.0 were recorded for several hours after the initial earthquake which hit the west coast of northern Sumatra. Since the initial magnitude 8.6 earthquake, there have been 111 aftershocks over magnitude 4.0 according to USGS, including a magnitude 6.2 on April 15, 2012.

[Duke of Buckingham]

April 12

238 – Gordian II loses the Battle of Carthage against the Numidian forces loyal to Maximinus Thrax and is killed. Gordian I, his father, commits suicide.
467 – Anthemius is elevated to Emperor of the Western Roman Empire.
1204 – The Crusaders of the Fourth Crusade breach the walls of Constantinople and enter the city, which they completely occupy the following day.
1557 – Cuenca is founded in Ecuador.
1606 – The Union Flag is adopted as the flag of English and Scottish ships.
1776 – American Revolution: With the Halifax Resolves, the North Carolina Provincial Congress authorizes its Congressional delegation to vote for independence from Britain.
1820 – Alexander Ypsilantis is declared leader of Filiki Eteria, a secret organization to overthrow Ottoman rule over Greece.
1831 – Soldiers marching on the Broughton Suspension Bridge in Manchester, England cause it to collapse.
1861 – American Civil War: The war begins with Confederate forces firing on Fort Sumter, in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina.
1862 – American Civil War: The Andrews Raid (the Great Locomotive Chase) occurred, starting from Big Shanty, Georgia (now Kennesaw).
1864 – American Civil War: The Fort Pillow massacre: Confederate forces kill most of the African American soldiers that surrendered at Fort Pillow, Tennessee.
1865 – American Civil War: Mobile, Alabama, falls to the Union Army.
1877 – The United Kingdom annexes the Transvaal.
1910 – The SMS Zrinyi, one of the last pre-dreadnoughts built by the Austro-Hungarian Navy, is launched.
1917 – World War I: Canadian forces successfully complete the taking of Vimy Ridge from the Germans.
1927 – April 12 Incident: Chiang Kai-shek orders the Communist Party of China members executed in Shanghai, ending the First United Front.
1928 –The Bremen, a German Junkers W33 type aircraft, takes off for the first successful transatlantic aeroplane flight from east to west.
1934 – The strongest surface wind gust in the world at 231 mph, is measured on the summit of Mount Washington, New Hampshire.
1934 – The U.S. Auto-Lite Strike begins, culminating in a five-day melee between Ohio National Guard troops and 6,000 strikers and picketers.
1935 – First flight of the Bristol Blenheim.
1937 – Sir Frank Whittle ground-tests the first jet engine designed to power an aircraft, at Rugby, England.
1945 – U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt dies while in office; vice-president Harry Truman is sworn in as the 33rd President.
1955 – The polio vaccine, developed by Dr. Jonas Salk, is declared safe and effective.
1961 – The Russian (Soviet) cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin becomes the first human to travel into outer space and perform the first manned orbital flight, in Vostok 3KA-2 (Vostok 1).
1963 – The Soviet nuclear-powered submarine K-33 collides with the Finnish merchant vessel M/S Finnclipper in the Danish straits.
1968 – Nerve gas accident at Skull Valley, Utah.
1970 – Soviet submarine K-8, carrying four nuclear torpedoes, sinks in the Bay of Biscay four days after a fire on board.
1980 – Samuel Doe takes control of Liberia in a coup d'état, ending over 130 years of minority Americo-Liberian rule over the country.
1980 – Terry Fox begins his "Marathon of Hope" at St. John's, Newfoundland.
1981 – The first launch of a Space Shuttle (Columbia) takes place - the STS-1 mission.
1990 – Jim Gary's "Twentieth Century Dinosaurs" exhibition opens at the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C.
1992 – The Euro Disney Resort officially opens with its theme park Euro Disneyland. The resort and its park's name are subsequently changed to Disneyland Paris.
1994 – Canter & Siegel post the first commercial mass Usenet spam.
1998 – An earthquake in Slovenia, measuring 5.6 on the Richter scale occurs near the town of Bovec.
1999 – US President Bill Clinton is cited for contempt of court for giving "intentionally false statements" in a sexual harassment civil lawsuit.
2002 – A female suicide bomber detonated at the entrance to Jerusalem's Mahane Yehuda open-air market, killing 7 and wounding 104.
2007 – A suicide bomber penetrates the Green Zone and detonates in a cafeteria within a parliament building, killing Iraqi MP Mohammed Awad and wounding more than twenty other people.
2009 – Zimbabwe officially abandons the Zimbabwe Dollar as their official currency.
2010 – A train derails near Merano, Italy, after running into a landslide, causing nine deaths and injuring 28 people.


Broughton Suspension Bridge

Broughton Suspension Bridge was a suspended-deck suspension bridge built in 1826 to span the River Irwell between Broughton and Pendleton, now in Salford, Greater Manchester, England. It was one of the first suspension bridges constructed in Europe. On 12 April 1831, the bridge collapsed, reportedly owing to mechanical resonance induced by troops marching over the bridge in step. A bolt in one of the stay-chains snapped, causing the bridge to collapse at one end, throwing about 40 of the men into the river. As a result of the incident, the British Army issued an order that troops should "break step" when crossing a bridge.

The bridge's construction has been attributed to Samuel Brown, but this has been questioned. Some sources have suggested that it may have been built by Thomas Cheek Hewes, a Manchester millwright and textile machinery manufacturer.

The bridge was rebuilt and strengthened after the collapse but was propped with temporary piles whenever a large crowd was expected. In 1924, it was replaced by a Pratt truss footbridge, which is still in use.


Battle of Fort Pillow

The Battle of Fort Pillow, also known as the Fort Pillow Massacre, was fought on April 12, 1864, at Fort Pillow on the Mississippi River in Henning, Tennessee, during the American Civil War. The battle ended with a massacre of surrendered Federal black troops by soldiers under the command of Confederate Major General Nathan Bedford Forrest. Military historian David J. Eicher concluded, "Fort Pillow marked one of the bleakest, saddest events of American military history."


Polio vaccine

Two polio vaccines are used throughout the world to combat poliomyelitis (or polio). The first was developed by Jonas Salk and first tested in 1952. Announced to the world by Salk on April 12, 1955, it consists of an injected dose of inactivated (dead) poliovirus. An oral vaccine was developed by Albert Sabin using attenuated poliovirus. Human trials of Sabin's vaccine began in 1957 and it was licensed in 1962. Because there is no long term carrier state for poliovirus in immunocompetent individuals, polioviruses have no non-primate reservoir in nature, and survival of the virus in the environment for an extended period of time appears to be remote. Therefore, interruption of person to person transmission of the virus by vaccination is the critical step in global polio eradication. The two vaccines have eradicated polio from most countries in the world, and reduced the worldwide incidence from an estimated 350,000 cases in 1988 to 1,652 cases in 2007.


Vostok 1

Vostok 1 (Russian: Восток-1, East 1 or Orient 1) was the first spaceflight in the Vostok program and the first human spaceflight in history. The Vostok 3KA spacecraft was launched on April 12, 1961. The flight took Yuri Gagarin, a cosmonaut from the Soviet Union, into space. The flight marked the first time that a human entered outer space, as well as the first orbital flight of a manned vehicle. Vostok 1 was launched by the Soviet space program, and was designed by Soviet engineers guided by Sergei Korolev under the supervision of Kerim Kerimov and others.

The spaceflight consisted of a single orbit of the Earth (to this date the shortest orbital manned spaceflight). According to official records, the spaceflight took 108 minutes from launch to landing. As planned, Gagarin landed separately from his spacecraft, having ejected with a parachute 7 km (23,000 ft) above ground. Due to the secrecy surrounding the Soviet space program at the time, many details of the spaceflight only came to light years later, and several details in the original press releases turned out to be false.


STS-1

STS-1 was the first orbital flight of NASA's Space Shuttle program. Space Shuttle Columbia launched on 12 April 1981, and returned to Earth on 14 April, having orbited the Earth 37 times during its 54.5-hour mission. Columbia carried a crew of two – mission commander John W. Young and pilot Robert L. Crippen. It was the first American manned space flight since the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project on 15 July 1975. STS-1 was also the only US manned maiden test flight of a new spacecraft system, although it was the culmination of atmospheric testing of the Space Shuttle orbiter.

[Duke of Buckingham]

I will be out for about a week. Come and post something in here please.

[Duke of Buckingham]

April 13

1111 – Henry V is crowned Holy Roman Emperor.
1204 – Constantinople falls to the Crusaders of the Fourth Crusade, temporarily ending the Byzantine Empire.
1598 – Henry IV of France issues the Edict of Nantes, allowing freedom of religion to the Huguenots. (Edict repealed in 1685.)
1612 – Miyamoto Musashi defeats Sasaki Kojirō at Funajima island.
1613 – Samuel Argall captures Native American princess Pocahontas in Passapatanzy, Virginia to ransom her for some English prisoners held by her father. She is brought to Henricus as hostage.
1742 – George Frideric Handel's oratorio Messiah makes its world-premiere in Dublin, Ireland.
1777 – American Revolutionary War: American forces are surprised in the Battle of Bound Brook, New Jersey.
1796 – The first elephant ever seen in the United States arrives from India.
1829 – The Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829 gives Roman Catholics in the United Kingdom the right to vote and to sit in Parliament.
1849 – Hungary becomes a republic.
1861 – American Civil War: Fort Sumter surrenders to Confederate forces.
1868 – The Abyssinian War ends as British and Indian troops capture Maqdala.
1870 – The New York City Metropolitan Museum of Art is founded.
1873 – The Colfax Massacre takes place.
1902 – James C. Penney opens his first store in Kemmerer, Wyoming.
1909 – The Turkish military reverses the Ottoman countercoup of 1909 to force the overthrow of Sultan Abdul Hamid II.
1919 – The establishment of the Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea.
1919 – Jallianwala Bagh massacre: British troops massacre at least 379 unarmed demonstrators in Amritsar, India. At least 1200 are wounded.
1919 – Eugene V. Debs is imprisoned at the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary in Atlanta, Georgia, for speaking out against the draft during World War I.
1941 – Pact of neutrality between the USSR and Japan is signed.
1943 – World War II: The discovery of a mass grave of Polish prisoners of war killed by Soviet forces in the Katyń Forest Massacre is announced, causing a diplomatic rift between the Polish government in exile in London from the Soviet Union, which denies responsibility.
1943 – The Jefferson Memorial is dedicated in Washington, D.C., on the 200th anniversary of Thomas Jefferson's birth.
1944 – Diplomatic relations between New Zealand and the Soviet Union are established.
1945 – World War II: German troops kill more than 1,000 political and military prisoners in Gardelegen, Germany.
1945 – World War II: Soviet and Bulgarian forces capture Vienna, Austria.
1948 – The Hadassah medical convoy massacre: In an ambush, 79 Jewish doctors, nurses and medical students from Hadassah Hospital and a British soldier are massacred by Arabs in Sheikh Jarra near Jerusalem.
1953 – CIA director Allen Dulles launches the mind-control program MKULTRA.
1958 – During the Cold War, American Van Cliburn wins the inaugural International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow.
1960 – The United States launches Transit 1-B, the world's first satellite navigation system.
1964 – At the Academy Awards, Sidney Poitier becomes the first African-American male to win the Best Actor award for the 1963 film Lilies of the Field.
1970 – An oxygen tank aboard Apollo 13 explodes, putting the crew in great danger and causing major damage to the spacecraft while en route to the Moon.
1972 – The Universal Postal Union decides to recognize the People's Republic of China as the only legitimate Chinese representative, effectively expelling the Republic of China administering Taiwan.
1972 – Vietnam War: The Battle of An Lộc begins.
1974 – Western Union (in cooperation with NASA and Hughes Aircraft) launches the United States' first commercial geosynchronous communications satellite, Westar 1.
1975 – Bus massacre in Lebanon: An attack by the Phalangist resistance kills 26 militia members of the P.F.L. of Palestine, marking the start of the 15-year Lebanese Civil War.
1976 – The United States Treasury Department reintroduces the two-dollar bill as a Federal Reserve Note on Thomas Jefferson's 233rd birthday as part of the United States Bicentennial celebration.
1984 – India moves into Siachen Glacier thus annexing more territory from the Line of Control.
1987 – Portugal and the People's Republic of China sign an agreement in which Macau would be returned to China in 1999.
1992 – The Great Chicago Flood.
1997 – Tiger Woods becomes the youngest golfer to win the Masters Tournament.
2009 – Andrew Hussie releases first page of Homestuck, marking the 13th birthday of fictional character John Egbert.


Macau

Macau (Chinese: 澳門), also spelled Macao (pron.: /məˈkaʊ/), is one of the two special administrative regions of the People's Republic of China (PRC), the other being Hong Kong. Macau lies on the western side of the Pearl River Delta across from Hong Kong to the east, bordered by Guangdong province to the north and facing the South China Sea to the east and south.[6] The territory's economy is heavily dependent on gambling and tourism, but also includes manufacturing.

A former Portuguese colony, Macau was administered by Portugal from the mid-16th century until 1999, when it was the last remaining European colony in China. Portuguese traders first settled in Macau in the 1550s. In 1557, Macau was rented to Portugal by the Chinese empire as a trading port. The Portuguese administered the city under Chinese authority and sovereignty until 1887, when Macau became a colony of the Portuguese empire. Sovereignty over Macau was transferred back to China on 20 December 1999. The Sino-Portuguese Joint Declaration and the Basic Law of Macau stipulate that Macau operate with a high degree of autonomy until at least 2049, fifty years after the transfer.

Under the policy of "one country, two systems", the PRC's Central People's Government is responsible for the territory's defense and foreign affairs, while Macau maintains its own legal system, police force, monetary system, customs policy, and immigration policy. Macau participates in many international organizations and events that do not require members to possess national sovereignty.

According to The World Factbook, Macau has the second highest life expectancy in the world. In addition, Macau is one of the very few regions in Asia with a "very high Human Development Index", ranking 23rd or 24th in the world in 2007 (with Japan being the highest in Asia; the other Asian countries/regions within the "very high HDI" category are Taiwan, Hong Kong, Brunei, Qatar, Singapore, Israel and South Korea).

[Duke of Buckingham]

April 14

43 BC – Battle of Forum Gallorum: Mark Antony, besieging Caesar's assassin Decimus Brutus in Mutina, defeats the forces of the consul Pansa, but is then immediately defeated by the army of the other consul, Hirtius.
69 – Vitellius, commander of the Rhine armies, defeats Emperor Otho in the Battle of Bedriacum and seizes the throne.
70 – Siege of Jerusalem: Titus, son of emperor Vespasian, surrounds the Jewish capital, with four Roman legions.
193 – Septimius Severus is proclaimed Roman Emperor by the army in Illyricum (in the Balkans).
966 – After his marriage to the Christian Dobrawa of Bohemia, the pagan ruler of the Polans, Mieszko I, converts to Christianity, an event considered to be the founding of the Polish state.
1028 – Henry III, son of Conrad, is elected king of the Germans.
1205 – Battle of Adrianople between Bulgarians and Crusaders.
1294 – Temür, grandson of Kublai, is elected Khagan of the Mongols and Emperor of the Yuan Dynasty with the reigning titles Oljeitu and Chengzong.
1341 – Sack of Saluzzo (Italy) by Italian-Angevine troops under Manfred V of Saluzzo.
1434 – The foundation stone of Cathedral St. Peter and St. Paul in Nantes, France is laid.
1471 – In England, the Yorkists under Edward IV defeat the Lancastrians under the Earl of Warwick at the Battle of Barnet; the Earl is killed and Edward IV resumes the throne.
1639 – Imperial forces are defeated by the Swedes at the Battle of Chemnitz. The Swedish victory prolongs the Thirty Year's War and allows them to advance into Bohemia.
1699 – Khalsa: The Sikh Religion was formalised as the Khalsa - the brotherhood of Warrior-Saints - by Guru Gobind Singh in Northern India, in accordance with the Nanakshahi calendar.
1715 – The Yamasee War begins in South Carolina.
1775 – The first abolition society in North America is established. The Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage is organized in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania by Benjamin Franklin and Benjamin Rush.
1816 – Bussa, a slave in British-ruled Barbados, leads a slave rebellion and is killed. For this, he is remembered as the first national hero of Barbados.
1828 – Noah Webster copyrights the first edition of his dictionary.
1846 – The Donner Party of pioneers departs Springfield, Illinois, for California, on what will become a year-long journey of hardship, cannibalism, and survival.
1849 – Hungary declares itself independent of Austria with Lajos Kossuth as its leader.
1860 – The first Pony Express rider reaches Sacramento, California.
1865 – U.S. President Abraham Lincoln is shot in Ford's Theatre by John Wilkes Booth (died April 15th).
1865 – U.S. Secretary of State William H. Seward and his family are attacked in his home by Lewis Powell.
1881 – The Four Dead in Five Seconds Gunfight is fought in El Paso, Texas.
1890 – The Pan-American Union is founded by the First International Conference of American States in Washington, D.C.
1894 – The first ever commercial motion picture house opened in New York City using ten Kinetoscopes, a device for peep-show viewing of films.
1906 – The Azusa Street Revival opens and will launch Pentecostalism as a worldwide movement.
1909 – A massacre is organized by Ottoman Empire against Armenian population of Cilicia.
1912 – The British passenger liner RMS Titanic hits an iceberg in the North Atlantic at 11:40pm (sinks morning of April 15th).
1927 – The first Volvo car premieres in Gothenburg, Sweden.
1928 –The Bremen, a German Junkers W33 type aircraft, reaches Greenly Island, Canada - the first successful transatlantic aeroplane flight from east to west.
1931 – Spanish Cortes depose King Alfonso XIII and proclaims the 2nd Spanish Republic.
1931 – First edition of the Highway Code published in Great Britain.
1935 – "Black Sunday Storm", the worst dust storm of the U.S. Dust Bowl.
1939 – The Grapes of Wrath, by American author John Steinbeck is first published by the Viking Press.
1940 – World War II: Royal Marines land in Namsos, Norway in preparation for a larger force to arrive two days later.
1941 – World War II: The Ustashe, a Croatian far-right organization is put in charge of the Independent State of Croatia by the Axis Powers after the Axis Operation 25 invasion.
1941 – World War II: Rommel attacks Tobruk.
1942 – Malta received the George Cross for its gallantry. The George Cross was given by King George VI himself and is now an emblem on the Maltese national flag.
1944 – Bombay Explosion: A massive explosion in Bombay harbor kills 300 and causes economic damage valued then at 20 million pounds.
1945 – Osijek, Croatia, is liberated from fascist occupation.
1956 – In Chicago, Illinois, videotape is first demonstrated.
1958 – The Soviet satellite Sputnik 2 falls from orbit after a mission duration of 162 days.
1967 – Gnassingbé Eyadéma overthrows President of Togo Nicolas Grunitzky and installs himself as the new president, a title he would hold for the next 38 years.
1969 – At the U.S. Academy Awards there is a tie for the Academy Award for Best Actress between Katharine Hepburn and Barbra Streisand.
1978 – 1978 Tbilisi Demonstrations: Thousands of Georgians demonstrate against Soviet attempts to change the constitutional status of the Georgian language.
1981 – STS-1 – The first operational space shuttle, Columbia (OV-102) completes its first test flight.
1986 – In retaliation for the April 5 bombing in West Berlin that killed two U.S. servicemen, U.S. president Ronald Reagan orders major bombing raids against Libya, killing 60 people.
1986 – 1 kilogram (2.2 lb) hailstones fall on the Gopalganj district of Bangladesh, killing 92. These are the heaviest hailstones ever recorded.
1988 – The USS Samuel B. Roberts strikes a mine in the Persian Gulf during Operation Earnest Will.
1988 – In a United Nations ceremony in Geneva, Switzerland, the Soviet Union signs an agreement pledging to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan.
1991 – The Republic of Georgia introduces the post of President after its declaration of independence from the Soviet Union.
1994 – In a U.S. friendly fire incident during Operation Provide Comfort in northern Iraq, two United States Air Force aircraft mistakenly shoot-down two United States Army helicopters, killing 26 people.
1999 – NATO mistakenly bombs a convoy of ethnic Albanian refugees – Yugoslav officials say 75 people are killed.
1999 – A severe hailstorm strikes Sydney, Australia causing A$2.3 billion in insured damages, the most costly natural disaster in Australian history.
2002 – Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez returns to office two days after being ousted and arrested by the country's military.
2003 – The Human Genome Project is completed with 99% of the human genome sequenced to an accuracy of 99.99%.
2003 – U.S. troops in Baghdad capture Abu Abbas, leader of the Palestinian group that killed an American on the hijacked cruise liner the MS Achille Lauro in 1985.
2005 – The Oregon Supreme Court nullifies marriage licenses issued to gay couples a year earlier by Multnomah County.
2007 – At least 200,000 demonstrators in Ankara, Turkey protest against the possible candidacy of incumbent Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
2010 – Nearly 2,700 are killed in a magnitude 6.9 earthquake in Yushu, Qinghai, China.


Human Genome Project

The Human Genome Project (HGP) is an international scientific research project with a primary goal of determining the sequence of chemical base pairs which make up DNA, and of identifying and mapping the approximately 20,000–25,000 genes of the human genome from both a physical and functional standpoint.

The first official funding for the Project originated with the Department of Energy’s Office of Health and Environmental Research, headed by Charles DeLisi, and was in the Reagan Administration’s 1987 budget submission to the Congress. It subsequently passed both Houses. The Project was planned for 15 years.

[Duke of Buckingham]

April 15

769 – The Lateran Council condemned the Council of Hieria and anathematized its iconoclastic rulings.
1071 – Bari, the last Byzantine possession in southern Italy, is surrendered to Robert Guiscard.
1395 – Tokhtamysh–Timur war: Battle of the Terek River: Timur defeats Tokhtamysh of the Golden Horde at the Volga. The Golden Horde capital city, Sarai, is razed to the ground and Timur installs a puppet ruler on the Golden Horde throne. Tokhtamysh escapes to Lithuania.
1450 – Battle of Formigny: Toward the end of the Hundred Years' War, the French attack and nearly annihilate English forces, ending English domination in Northern France.
1632 – Battle of Rain: Swedes under Gustavus Adolphus defeat the Holy Roman Empire during the Thirty Years' War.
1638 – Tokugawa shogunate forces put down the Shimabara Rebellion when they retake Hara Castle from the rebels.
1642 – Irish Confederate Wars: A Confederate Irish militia is routed in the Battle of Kilrush when it attempts to halt the progress of a Parliamentarian army.
1715 – The Pocotaligo Massacre triggers the start of the Yamasee War in colonial South Carolina.
1738 – Serse, an Italian opera by George Frideric Handel receives its premiere performance in London, England.
1755 – Samuel Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language is published in London.
1783 – Preliminary articles of peace ending the American Revolutionary War (or American War of Independence) are ratified.
1802 – William Wordsworth and his sister, Dorothy see a "long belt" of daffodils, inspiring the former to pen I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud.
1817 – Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet and Laurent Clerc founded the American School for the Deaf, the first American school for deaf students, in Hartford, Connecticut.
1861 – President Abraham Lincoln calls for 75,000 Volunteers to quell the insurrection that soon became the American Civil War
1865 – Abraham Lincoln dies after being shot the previous evening by actor John Wilkes Booth.
1892 – The General Electric Company is formed.
RMS Titanic disaster.
1896 – Closing ceremony of the Games of the I Olympiad in Athens, Greece.
1900 – Philippine–American War: Filipino guerrillas launch a surprise attack on U.S. infantry and begin a four-day siege of Catubig, Philippines.
1912 – The British passenger liner RMS Titanic sinks in the North Atlantic at 2:20 a.m., two hours and forty minutes after hitting an iceberg. Only 710 of 2,227 passengers and crew on board survive.
1920 – Two security guards are murdered during a robbery in South Braintree, Massachusetts. Anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti would be convicted of and executed for the crime, amid much controversy.
1921 – Black Friday: mine owners announce more wage and price cuts, leading to the threat of a strike all across England.
1922 – U.S. Senator John B. Kendrick of Wyoming introduces a resolution calling for an investigation of secret land deal, which leads to the discovery of the Teapot Dome scandal.
1923 – Insulin becomes generally available for use by people with diabetes.
1924 – Rand McNally publishes its first road atlas.
1927 – The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, the most destructive river flood in U.S. history, begins.
1935 – Roerich Pact signed in Washington, D.C.
1936 – First day of the Arab revolt in Palestine.
1936 – Aer Lingus (Aer Loingeas) is founded by the Irish government as the national airline of the Republic of Ireland.
1940 – The Allies begin their attack on the Norwegian town of Narvik which is occupied by Nazi Germany.
1941 – In the Belfast Blitz, two-hundred bombers of the German Luftwaffe attack Belfast, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom killing one thousand people.
1942 – The George Cross is awarded to "to the island fortress of Malta – its people and defenders" by King George VI.
1945 – The Bergen-Belsen concentration camp is liberated.
1947 – Jackie Robinson debuts for the Brooklyn Dodgers, breaking baseball's color line.
1952 – The maiden flight of the B-52 Stratofortress
1955 – McDonald's restaurant dates its founding to the opening of a franchised restaurant by Ray Kroc, in Des Plaines, Illinois
1957 – White Rock, British Columbia officially separates from Surrey, British Columbia and is incorporated as a new city.
1960 – At Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina, Ella Baker leads a conference that results in the creation of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, one of the principal organizations of the African-American Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s.
1969 – The EC-121 shootdown incident: North Korea shoots down a United States Navy aircraft over the Sea of Japan, killing all 31 on board.
1970 – During the Cambodian Civil War, massacres of the Vietnamese minority results in 800 bodies flowing down the Mekong River into South Vietnam.
1986 – The United States launches Operation El Dorado Canyon, its bombing raids against Libyan targets in response to a bombing in West Germany that killed two U.S. servicemen.
1989 – Hillsborough disaster: A human crush occurs at Hillsborough Stadium, home of Sheffield Wednesday, in the FA Cup Semi Final, resulting in the deaths of 96 Liverpool fans.
1989 – Upon Hu Yaobang's death, the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 begin in the People's Republic of China.
2013 – Two bombs explode near the finish line at the Boston Marathon in Boston, Massachusetts, killing at least 3 people and injuring 183 others.
2013 – A wave of bombings across Iraq kills 56 people and injures approximately 300 others.


Boston Marathon bombings

Two pressure cooker bombs exploded during the 2013 Boston Marathon on April 15, 2013, killing 3 people and injuring at least 183 others. The bombs were placed near the finish line, along Boylston Street. They exploded at 2:50 p.m. EDT (18:50 UTC), about 12 seconds apart. Doctors treating the injured have removed small metallic objects from them, including nails.

No suspects have been named, and there have been no arrests or claims of responsibility for the attack. President Barack Obama announced that the Federal Bureau of Investigation was investigating the bombings as an act of terrorism.


April 2013 Iraqi bombings

A wave of bombings across Iraq on 15 April 2013 killed at least 50 people, and injured close to 300 others. On 16 April, the violence continued with six further deaths reported. The attacks came just days before the provincial elections which will be held on 20 April.

[Duke of Buckingham]

April 16

1457 BC – Likely date of the Battle of Megiddo between Thutmose III and a large Canaanite coalition under the King of Kadesh, the first battle to have been recorded in what is accepted as relatively reliable detail.
1178 BC – The calculated date of the Greek king Odysseus' return home from the Trojan War.
73 – Masada, a Jewish fortress, falls to the Romans after several months of siege, ending the Great Jewish Revolt.
1346 – Dušan the Mighty is proclaimed Emperor, with the Serbian Empire occupying much of the Balkans.
1520 – The Revolt of the Comuneros begins in Spain against the rule of Charles V.
1521 – Martin Luther's first appearance before the Diet of Worms to be examined by the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and the other estates of the empire.
1582 – Spanish conquistador Hernando de Lerma founds the settlement of Salta, Argentina.
1746 – The Battle of Culloden is fought between the French-supported Jacobites and the British Hanoverian forces commanded by William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, in Scotland. After the battle many highland traditions were banned and the Highlands of Scotland were cleared of inhabitants.
1780 – The University of Münster in Münster, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany is founded.
1799 – Napoleonic Wars: The Battle of Mount Tabor – Napoleon drives Ottoman Turks across the River Jordan near Acre.
1818 – The United States Senate ratifies the Rush-Bagot Treaty, establishing the border with Canada.
1847 – The accidental shooting of a Māori by an English sailor results in the opening of the Wanganui Campaign of the New Zealand land wars.
1853 – The first passenger rail opens in India, from Bori Bunder, Bombay to Thane.
1858 – The Wernerian Natural History Society, a former Scottish learned society, is wound up.
1862 – American Civil War: The Battle at Lee's Mills in Virginia.
1862 – American Civil War: The District of Columbia Compensated Emancipation Act, a bill ending slavery in the District of Columbia, becomes law.
1863 – American Civil War: The Siege of Vicksburg – ships led by Union Admiral David Dixon Porter move through heavy Confederate artillery fire on approach to Vicksburg, Mississippi.
1881 – In Dodge City, Kansas, Bat Masterson fights his last gun battle.
1908 – Natural Bridges National Monument is established in Utah.
1912 – Harriet Quimby becomes the first woman to fly an airplane across the English Channel.
1917 – Lenin returns to Petrograd from exile in Switzerland.
1919 – Gandhi organizes a day of "prayer and fasting" in response to the killing of Indian protesters in the Amritsar Massacre by the British.
1919 – Polish–Soviet War: The Polish army launches the Vilna offensive to capture Vilnius in modern Lithuania.
1922 – The Treaty of Rapallo, pursuant to which Germany and the Soviet Union re-establish diplomatic relations, is signed.
1925 – During the Communist St Nedelya Church assault in Sofia, 150 are killed and 500 are wounded.
1941 – World War II: The Italian convoy Duisburg, directed to Tunisia, is attacked and destroyed by British ships.
1941 – Bob Feller of the Cleveland Indians throws the only Opening Day no-hitter in the history of Major League Baseball, beating the Chicago White Sox 1-0.
1944 – Allied forces started bombing of Belgrade, killing about 1,100 people. This bombing fell on the Orthodox Christian Easter.
1945 – The Red Army begins the final assault on German forces around Berlin, with nearly one million troops fighting in the Battle of the Seelow Heights.
1945 – The United States Army liberates Nazi Sonderlager (high security) prisoner-of-war camp Oflag IV-C (better known as Colditz).
1945 – More than 7,000 die when the German refugee ship Goya is sunk by a Soviet submarine torpedo.
1947 – Texas City Disaster: An explosion on board a freighter in port causes the city of Texas City, Texas, to catch fire, killing almost 600.
1947 – Bernard Baruch coins the term "Cold War" to describe the relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union.
1953 – Queen Elizabeth II launches the Royal Yacht HMY Britannia.
1962 – Walter Cronkite takes over as the lead news anchor of the CBS Evening News, during which time he would become "the most trusted man in America".
1963 – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. pens his Letter from Birmingham Jail while incarcerated in Birmingham, Alabama for protesting against segregation.
1972 – Apollo program: The launch of Apollo 16 from Cape Canaveral, Florida.
1990 – The "Doctor of Death", Jack Kevorkian, participates in his first assisted suicide.
1992 – The Katina P. runs aground off of Maputo, Mozambique and 60,000 tons of crude oil spill into the ocean.
2001 – India and Bangladesh begin a five-day border conflict, but are unable to resolve the disputes about their border.
2003 – The Treaty of Accession is signed in Athens admitting 10 new member states to the European Union.
2007 – Virginia Tech massacre: The deadliest spree shooting in modern American history. Seung-Hui Cho kills 32 and injures 23 before committing suicide.
2013 – A 7.8-magnitude earthquake strikes Sistan and Baluchestan Province, Iran, the strongest in the country in 40 years, killing at least 34 people.


Jallianwala Bagh massacre

The Jallianwala Bagh massacre (also known as the Amritsar massacre), took place in the Jallianwala Bagh public garden in the northern Indian city of Amritsar on 13 April 1919. The shooting that took place was ordered by Brigadier-General Reginald E.H. Dyer.

On Sunday, 13 April 1919, Dyer was convinced of a major insurrection and thus he banned all meetings. On hearing that a meeting of 15,000 to 20,000 people including women, children and the elderly had assembled at Jallianwala Bagh, Dyer went with fifty Gurkha riflemen to a raised bank and ordered them to shoot at the crowd. Dyer continued the firing for about ten minutes, until the ammunition supply was almost exhausted; Dyer stated that 1,650 rounds had been fired, a number which seems to have been derived by counting empty cartridge cases picked up by the troops. Official British Indian sources gave a figure of 379 identified dead, with approximately 1,100 wounded. The casualty number estimated by the Indian National Congress was more than 1,500, with approximately 1,000 dead.

Dyer was removed from duty and forced to retire by the House of Commons. He became a celebrated hero in Britain among most of the people connected to the British Raj. for example, the House of Lords, but unpopular in the House of Commons, that voted against Dyer twice.The massacre caused a reevaluation of the army's role, in which the new policy became "minimum force", and the army was retrained and developed suitable tactics for crowd control. Some historians consider the episode as a decisive step towards the end of British rule in India, although others believe that greater self-government was inevitable as a result of India's involvement in World War I.