• 43 BC - Battle of Forum Gallorum: Mark Antony, besieging Julius Caesar's assassin Decimus Junius Brutus in Mutina, defeats the forces of the consul Pansa, who is killed.
• 69 - Vitellius, commander of the Rhine armies, defeats Emperor Otho in the Battle of Bedriacum and seizes the throne.
• 1028 - Henry III, son of Conrad, is elected king of the Germans.
• 1205 - Battle of Adrianople between Bulgarians and Crusaders.
• 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 Warwick at the battle of Barnet; the Earl of Warwick is killed and Edward IV resumes the throne.
• 1699 - Khalsa: Birth of Khalsa, the brotherhood of the Sikh religion, in Northern India in accordance with the Nanakshahi calendar.
• 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.
• 1828 - Noah Webster copyrights the first edition of his dictionary.
• 1831 - Soldiers marching on a bridge in Manchester, England cause it to collapse.
• 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 Louis Kossuth as its leader.
• 1860 - The first Pony Express rider reaches Sacramento, California.
• 1864 - Battle of Dybbøl: A Prussian-Austrian army defeats Denmark and gains control of Schleswig. Denmark surrenders the province in the following peace settlement.
• 1865 - U.S. President Abraham Lincoln is shot in Ford's Theatre by John Wilkes Booth.
• 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 erupts in El Paso, Texas.
• 1890 - The Pan-American Union is founded by the First International Conference of American States in Washington, D.C.
• 1894 - Thomas Edison demonstrates the kinetoscope, a device for peep-show viewing using photographs that flip in sequence, a precursor to movies.
• 1912 - The British passenger liner RMS Titanic hits an iceberg in the North Atlantic, and sinks the following morning with the loss of 1,503 lives.
• 1915 - The Turks invade Armenia.
• 1927 - The first Volvo car premieres in Gothenburg, Sweden.
• 1931 - Spanish Cortes deposes King Alfonso XIII and proclaims the 2nd Spanish Republic.
• 1935 - "Black Sunday", the worst dust storm of the U.S. Dust Bowl.
• 1940 - World War II: Royal Marines land in Namsos, Norway, occupying key points, preparatory to a larger force arriving two days later.
• 1941 - World War II: The Ustashe, a Croatian far-right organization that pursued Nazi and fascist policies, is put in charge of the Independent State of Croatia by the Axis Powers after the April 6 invasion of Yugoslavia during Operation 25. In addition, Rommel attacks Tobruk.
• 1944 - Bombay Explosion (1944): A massive explosion rocks the Bombay harbor killing 300 and causing a loss of 20 million pounds at that time.
• 1945 - Osijek, Croatia, is liberated from fascistic occupation.
• 1956 - Videotape is first demonstrated at the 1956 NARTB (now National Association of Broadcasters) convention in Chicago, Illinois.
• 1958 - The Soviet satellite Sputnik 2 falls from orbit after a mission duration of 162 days.
• 1961 - Yuri Gagarin is greeted by mass crowds and Khrushchev in Red Square following his historic first space flight on 12th April
• 1962 - Georges Pompidou becomes Prime Minister of France.
• 1964 - A Delta rocket's third-stage motor prematurely ignites in an assembly room at Cape Canaveral, killing 3.
• 1968 - At the U.S. Academy Awards, a tie between Katharine Hepburn and Barbra Streisand results in the two sharing the Academy Award for Best Actress.
• 1978 - 1978 Tbilisi Demonstrations: Thousands of Georgians demonstrate against the attempt by the Soviet Union authorities to change the constitutional status of the Georgian language.
• 1981 - STS-1 - The first operational space shuttle, Columbia (OV-102), lands at Edwards Air Force Base, California after its first test flight.
• 1986 - In retaliation for the April 5 bombing of the La Belle Discotheque in West Berlin in which two U.S. servicemen were killed, Ronald Reagan orders major bombing raids against Tripoli and Benghazi, in Libya, which kills 60 people.
• 1986 - 1 kg (2.2 pound) 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.
• 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$1.7 billion in insured damages, the most costly natural disaster in Australian history.
• 2000 - Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich files a lawsuit against P2P sharing phenomenon Napster. This law-suit eventually leads the movement against file-sharing programs.
• 2002 - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez returns to office two days after being ousted and arrested by the country's military.
• 2003 - The Human Genome Project is successfully 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 Achille Lauro in 1985.
• 2005 - The Oregon Supreme Court nullifies nearly 3,000 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.

Births