From This Day in History.
www.history.com/this-day-in-historyApril 7 1776 Navy Captain John Barry, commander of the American warship Lexington, makes the
first American naval capture of a British vessel when he takes command of the British warship HMS Edward off the coast of Virginia. The capture of the Edward and its cargo turned Captain Barry into a national hero and boosted the morale of the Continental forces.
April 7 1945 Japanese battleship Yamato, ostensibly the
greatest battleship in the world, is sunk. Weighing 72,800 tons, Yamato was Japan’s only hope of destroying the Allied fleet off Okinawa. Struck by 19 American aerial torpedoes, it was sunk, drowning 2,498 of its crew.
April 7 2017 [Trump's strike on Syria with Tomahawk missiles]
April 9, 1865 At Appomattox, Virginia, Confederate General Robert E.
Lee surrenders his 28,000 troops to Union General Ulysses S. Grant, effectively ending the American Civil War.
April 9, 1942 Major
General Edward P. King Jr. surrenders at Bataan, Philippines–against General Douglas MacArthur’s orders–and 78,000 troops (66,000 Filipinos and 12,000 Americans), the largest contingent of U.S. soldiers ever to surrender, are taken captive by the Japanese.
April 9, 1947 The town of Woodward, Oklahoma, is
nearly wiped off the map by a powerful tornado on this day in 1947. More than 100 people died in Woodward, and 80 more lost their lives elsewhere in the series of twisters that hit the U.S. heartland that day.
April 9, 1959 National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) introduces America’s
first astronauts to the press: Scott Carpenter, L. Gordon Cooper Jr., John H. Glenn Jr., Virgil “Gus” Grissom, Walter Schirra Jr., Alan Shepard Jr., and Donald Slayton. The seven men, all military test pilots, were carefully selected from a group of 32 candidates.
April 10, 1942 The day after the surrender of the main Philippine island of Luzon to the Japanese, the 75,000 Filipino and American troops captured on the Bataan Peninsula begin a forced march to a prison camp near Cabanatuan. During this infamous trek, known as the
“Bataan Death March,” the prisoners were forced to march 85 miles in six days, with only one meal of rice during the entire journey. By the end of the march, which was punctuated with atrocities committed by the Japanese guards, hundreds of Americans and many more Filipinos had died.
April 10, 1963, the USS Thresher, an
atomic submarine, sinks in the Atlantic Ocean, killing the entire crew. One hundred and twenty-nine sailors and civilians were lost when the sub unexpectedly plunged to the sea floor 300 miles off the coast of New England.
April 11, 1945 the American Third Army
liberates the Buchenwald concentration camp, near Weimar, Germany, a camp that will be judged second only to Auschwitz in the horrors it imposed on its prisoners.
April 11, 1951 Truman relieves MacArthur of duties in Korea
. In perhaps the most famous civilian-military confrontation in the history of the United States, President Harry S. Truman relieves General Douglas MacArthur of command of the U.S. forces in Korea. The firing of MacArthur set off a brief uproar among the American public, but Truman remained committed to keeping the conflict in Korea a “limited war.”
April 11, 1963 One hundred U.S. troops of the Hawaiian-based 25th Infantry Division are ordered to temporary duty with military units in South Vietnam to serve as machine gunners aboard Army H-21 helicopters. This was the
first commitment of American combat troops to the war and represented a quiet escalation of the U.S. commitment to the war in Vietnam.
April 11, 1970
Apollo 13, the third lunar landing mission, is successfully launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, carrying astronauts James A. Lovell, John L. Swigert, and Fred W. Haise. The spacecraft’s destination was the Fra Mauro highlands of the moon, where the astronauts were to explore the Imbrium Basin and conduct geological experiments. After an
oxygen tank exploded on the evening of April 13, however, the new mission objective became to get the Apollo 13 crew home alive.
April 12, 1861
The Civil War begins
. The bloodiest four years in American history begin when Confederate shore batteries under General P.G.T. Beauregard open fire on Union-held Fort Sumter in South Carolina’s Charleston Bay.
April 12 1864
The Fort Pillow Massacre
. During the American Civil War, Major General Nathan Bedford Forrest’s Confederate raiders attack the isolated Union garrison at Fort Pillow, Tennessee, overlooking the Mississippi River. The fort, an important part of the Confederate river defense system, was captured by federal forces in 1862. Of the 500-strong Union garrison defending the fort, more than half the soldiers were African-Americans.
After an initial bombardment, General Forrest asked for the garrison’s surrender. The Union commander refused, and Forrest’s 1,500 cavalry troopers easily stormed and captured the fort, suffering only moderate casualties. However, the extremely high proportion of Union casualties–231 killed and more than 100 seriously wounded–raised questions about the Confederates’ conduct after the battle. Union survivors’ accounts, later supported by a federal investigation, concluded that African-American troops were massacred by Forrest’s men after surrendering. Southern accounts disputed these findings, and controversy over the battle continues today.
April 12, 1908 A
fire in Chelsea, Massachusetts, leaves 12 dead, 85 missing and presumed dead and more than 17,000 homeless on this day in 1908. The fire nearly spread to nearby Boston and its large Standard Oil refinery, but was stopped just in time.
April 12, 1945 U.S. President Franklin Delano
Roosevelt dies of a cerebral hemorrhage in his home at Warm Springs, Georgia, on this day in 1945. The only man to be elected to four terms as president of the United States, Roosevelt is remembered–by friends and enemies alike–for his New Deal social policies and his leadership during wartime.
April 12, 1981
First launching of the space shuttle
. The space shuttle Columbia is launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, becoming the first reusable manned spacecraft to travel into space.
April 13 1743
Thomas Jefferson is born
April 14, 1865
President Lincoln is shot
. At Ford’s Theater in Washington, D.C., John Wilkes Booth, an actor and Confederate sympathizer, fatally wounds President Abraham Lincoln. The attack came only five days after Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered his massive army at Appomattox, effectively ending the American Civil War.
April 14, 1912 RMS
Titanic hits iceberg
. Just before midnight in the North Atlantic, the RMS Titanic fails to divert its course from an iceberg, ruptures its hull, and begins to sink. (Many Americans on board)
April 14, 1918
U.S. fliers in first dogfight over western front
. Six days after being assigned for the first time to the western front, two American pilots from the U.S. First Aero Squadron engage in America’s first aerial dogfight with enemy aircraft. In a battle fought almost directly over the Allied Squadron Aerodome at Toul, France, U.S. fliers Douglas Campbell and Alan Winslow succeeded in shooting down two German two-seaters. By the end of May, Campbell had shot down five enemy aircraft, making him the
first American to qualify as a “flying ace” in World War I.
April 14, 1986 the United States launches
air strikes against Libya in retaliation for the Libyan sponsorship of terrorism against American troops and citizens.
April 15, 1783 the Continental Congress of the United States officially ratifies the preliminary
peace treaty with Great Britain that was signed in November 1782. The congressional move brings the nascent nation one step closer to the conclusion of the Revolutionary War.
April 15, 1947 Jackie Robinson, age 28, becomes the
first African-American player in Major League Baseball when he steps onto Ebbets Field in Brooklyn to compete for the Brooklyn Dodgers.
April 15, 2013 Two bombs go off near the finish line of the
Boston Marathon, killing three spectators and wounding more than 260 other people in attendance.
April 15 EVERY YEAR:
Income tax due-- the "annual crucible"
April 16, 1947
Texas City explodes
. At 9:12 a.m. in Texas City’s port on Galveston Bay, a fire aboard the French freighter Grandcamp ignites ammonium nitrate and other explosive materials in the ship’s hold, causing a massive blast that destroys much of the city and takes nearly 600 lives.
April 16, 1972
Apollo 16 departs for moonApril 16, 2007
Massacre at Virginia Tech leaves 32 dead
April 17, 1790 American statesman, printer, scientist, and writer
Benjamin Franklin dies in Philadelphia at age 84.
April 17, 1961
The
Bay of Pigs invasion begins
April 18, 1775
Revere and Dawes warn of British attack. On this day in 1775, British troops march out of Boston on a mission to confiscate the American arsenal at Concord and to capture Patriot leaders Samuel Adams and John Hancock, known to be hiding at Lexington. As the British departed, Boston Patriots Paul Revere and William Dawes set out on horseback from the city to warn Adams and Hancock and rouse the Minutemen.
April 18, 1880
Missouri is ravaged by tornadoes
. Missouri is hit by a string of deadly tornadoes on this day in 1880. Statewide, 151 people were killed by the twisters, including 99 in the town of Marshfield.
April 18, 1906
The Great
San Francisco Earthquake At 5:13 a.m., an earthquake estimated at close to 8.0 on the Richter scale strikes San Francisco, California, killing hundreds of people as it topples numerous buildings.
April 18, 1942
Doolittle leads air raid on Tokyo. On this day in 1942, 16 American B-25 bombers, launched from the aircraft carrier USS Hornet 650 miles east of Japan and commanded by Lieutenant Colonel James H. Doolittle, attack the Japanese mainland.
April 18, 1945
Journalist Ernie Pyle killed
. During World War II, journalist Ernie Pyle, America’s most popular war correspondent, is killed by Japanese machine-gun fire on the island of Ie Shima in the Pacific.
April 18, 1983
Suicide bomber destroys U.S. embassy in Beirut
. The U.S. embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, is almost completely destroyed by a car-bomb explosion that kills 63 people, including the suicide bomber and 17 Americans. The terrorist attack was carried out in protest of the U.S. military presence in Lebanon.
April 19, 1775
The American Revolution begins
. At about 5 a.m., 700 British troops, on a mission to capture Patriot leaders and seize a Patriot arsenal, march into Lexington to find 77 armed minutemen under Captain John Parker waiting for them on the town’s common green. British Major John Pitcairn ordered the outnumbered Patriots to disperse, and after a moment’s hesitation the Americans began to drift off the green. Suddenly, the “
shot heard around the world” was fired from an undetermined gun, and a cloud of musket smoke soon covered the green. When the brief
Battle of Lexington ended, eight Americans lay dead or dying and 10 others were wounded. Only one British soldier was injured, but the American Revolution had begun.
April 19, 1861
First blood in the Civil War
. A secessionist mob in Baltimore attacks Massachusetts troops bound for Washington, D.C. Four soldiers and 12 rioters were killed.
April 19, 1897
First Boston Marathon held.
April 19, 1989
Central Park jogger attack shocks New York City
April 19, 1993
Branch Davidian compound burns
. At Mount Carmel in Waco, Texas, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) launches a tear-gas assault on the Branch Davidian compound, ending a tense 51-day standoff between the federal government and an armed religious cult. By the end of the day, the compound was burned to the ground, and some 80 Branch Davidians, including 22 children, had perished in the inferno.
April 19, 1995
Truck bomb explodes in Oklahoma City
. Just after 9 a.m., a massive truck bomb explodes outside the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. The blast collapsed the north face of the nine-story building, instantly killing more than 100 people and trapping dozens more in the rubble. (Timothy McVeigh).
April 20, 1889 (
Hitler's birthday)April 20, 1914
Militia slaughters strikers at Ludlow, Colorado. Ending a bitter coal-miners’ strike, Colorado militiamen attack a tent colony of strikers, killing dozens of men, women, and children.
April 20, 1999
A
massacre at Columbine High School
. Two teenage gunmen kill 13 people in a shooting spree at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. At about11:20 a.m., Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, dressed in long trench coats, began shooting students outside the school before moving inside to continue their rampage.
April 20, 2010
Massive
oil spill begins in Gulf of Mexico. On this day in 2012, an explosion and fire aboard the Deepwater Horizon oil drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico, approximately 50 miles off the Louisiana coast, kills 11 people and triggers the largest offshore oil spill in American history.
April 21, 1836
The Battle of San Jacinto
. During the Texan War for Independence, the Texas militia under Sam Houston launches a surprise attack against the forces of Mexican General Santa Anna along the San Jacinto River. The Mexicans were thoroughly routed, and hundreds were taken prisoner, including
General Santa Anna himself.
April 21, 1930
Prisoners left to burn in Ohio fire
. A fire at an Ohio prison kills 320 inmates, some of whom burn to death when they are not unlocked from their cells. It is one of the worst prison disasters in American history.
April 22, 1778
John Paul Jones leads American raid on Whitehaven, England
. At 11 p.m. on this day in 1778, Commander John Paul Jones leads a small detachment of two boats from his ship, the USS Ranger, to raid the shallow port at Whitehaven, England, where, by his own account, 400 British merchant ships are anchored. Jones was hoping to reach the port at midnight, when ebb tide would leave the shops at their most vulnerable.
Jones and his 30 volunteers had greater difficulty than anticipated rowing to the port, which was protected by two forts. They did not arrive until dawn. Jones’ boat successfully took the southern fort, disabling its cannon, but the other boat returned without attempting an attack on the northern fort, after the sailors claimed to have been frightened away by a noise. To compensate, Jones set fire to the southern fort, which subsequently engulfed the entire town.
April 22, 1889
The
Oklahoma land rush begins
. At precisely high noon, thousands of would-be settlers make a mad dash into the newly opened Oklahoma Territory to claim cheap land.
The nearly two million acres of land opened up to white settlement was located in Indian Territory, a large area that once encompassed much of modern-day Oklahoma.
April 22, 1945
Hitler admits defeat. Adolf Hitler, learning from one of his generals that no German defense was offered to the Russian assault at Eberswalde, admits to all in his underground bunker that the war is lost and that suicide is his only recourse.
April 23, 1975
Ford says that war is finished for America. At a speech at Tulane University, President Gerald Ford says the Vietnam War is finished as far as America is concerned. “Today, Americans can regain the sense of pride that existed before Vietnam. But it cannot be achieved by re-fighting a war.” This was devastating news to the South Vietnamese, who were desperately pleading for U.S. support as the North Vietnamese surrounded Saigon for the final assault on the capital city.
