- 215 BC A temple dedicated to Venus Erycina is built on Capitoline Hill to commemorate the Roman defeat at Lake Trasimene
1014 King Brian Boru of Ireland defeats Viking forces at the Battle of Clontarf, freeing Ireland from foreign control
- 1154 Damascus surrenders to the Nลซr al-Dฤซn, ruler of Aleppo
1229 Christian king Ferdinand III of Castile conquers the Arab-held town of Cรกceres as part of the reconquest of Almohad Spain
- 1343 St. George's Night Uprising in Estonia
1348 The Order of Garter founded by English King Edward III, the most senior order of knighthood in the British honour system; first instituted 1344, formally proclaimed 1348
1516 Duke Wilhelm IV of Bavaria endorses "The German Beer Purity Law" (Reinheitsgebot) and adds to it standards for the sale of beer in Bavaria, ensuring beer is only brewed from three ingredients: water, barley, and hops
- 1521 Battle of Villalar: Spanish King Charles I defeats the Comuneros rebels and captures three of their leaders, who are executed the following day
1597 William Shakespeare's "The Merry Wives of Windsor" is first performed with Queen Elizabeth I of England in attendance
1625 Prince Frederick Henry is appointed Stadtholder of Holland, Zeeland, Utrecht, Guelders, and Overijssel
1661 English king Charles II crowned at Westminster Abbey
1702 Queen Anne is crowned at Westminster Abbey, London
1705 Richard Steele's play "Tender Husband" premieres in London
1775 Opera "Il Rรฉ Pastore" (The Shepherd King) by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is first produced in Salzburg
1789 President-elect George Washington moves into Franklin House, New York, the first official residence of a US President
- 1795 Warren Hastings, Governor-General of India, acquitted in England of high treason
- 1826 Missolonghi, Greece captured by Turks
- 1827 Irish mathematician and astronomer William Rowan Hamilton presents his Theory of Systems of Rays
- 1838 English steamship "Great Western" crosses the Atlantic docks in NYC
1849 Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevsky and members of the Petrashevsky Circle are arrested in St. Petersburg
1861 Robert E. Lee is named commander of Virginia's Confederate forces (US Civil War)
- 1864 Battle of Cane River, Louisiana (Red River Expedition, Monett's Ferry)
1867 Queen Victoria and Napoleon III turn down plans for a channel tunnel
1881 W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan's comic opera "Patience" premieres at The Opera Comique, London
- 1883 John Heemskerk Abrahamszoon forms Dutch government
- 1891 Jews are expelled from Moscow, Russia
- 1896 Vitascope system of movie projection 1st shown at Koster & Bial's Music Hall, New York City
- 1900 First known occurrence of the word "hillbilly" (NY Journal)
- 1903 NY Highlanders (Yankees) win their first game; beat Washington Senators, 7-2 at American League Park
- 1904 American Academy of Arts & Letters forms
- 1908 Denmark, Germany, Britain, France, Netherlands & Sweden sign North Sea accord
- 1910 International Exhibition opens in Brussels, Belgium
- 1914 MLB Chicago Federals host the Kansas City Packers in the 1st game played at Weeghman Park (now Wrigley Field)
- 1916 Lord Dunsany's "Night at an Inn" premieres in NYC
- 1918 Raid of Zeebrugge; the British navy attempts to block German vessels from leaving port by sinking obsolete ships - mostly fails
- 1918 Zeebrugge Raid: Dover Patrol attempted to block Belgian port of Bruges-Zeebrugge to prevent German U-boats from leaving port
- 1919 US Major League Baseball opens a reduced 140-game season
1920 Turkish Grand National Assembly 1st meets in Ankara, under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal Atatรผrk denounces the government of Sultan Mehmed VI and announces a temporary constitution
1925 1st London performance of Franz Lehรกrโs operetta "Frasquita" is staged
- 1925 Having badly defeated Spain and driven her out of Spanish Morocco, the native Riffi, led by Abd-el-Krim, turn on the French in French Morocco
- 1925 Pastor LH Perquin forms Union of Catholic Dutch Radio (KRO)
1931 US gangster film "The Public Enemy" starring James Cagney and Jean Harlow premieres
- 1932 153-year old De Adriaan Windmill in Haarlem, the Netherlands, burns down
- 1932 Shakespeare Memorial Theatre opens at Stratford-on-Avon, England
- 1935 Polish Constitution of 1935 is adopted
1937 New York Giants pitcher Carl Hubbell's first start of season, a 3-0 win over the Boston Bees, is his 17th straight win; streak continues for league record 24 victories in a row
1939 Ted Williams hits his 1st Major League home run while playing for the Boston Red Sox
- 1940 Dance hall fires kills 198 in Natchez, Mississippi
- 1941 Greek Army surrenders to Germany; British RAF evacuates the Greek King George II to Egypt
- 1942 1st night Exeter bombed by German Luftwaffe
- 1942 4-day allied bombing on Rostock, Germany begins
- 1943 British & US offensive directed at Tunis and Bizerta
- 1945 Flossenbรผrg concentration camp liberated by US army troops
- 1945 US troops in Italy cross river Po
- 1946 Brooklyn Dodger Ed Head no-hits Boston Braves, 5-0
- 1948 Minnesota's first television station, KSTP TV channel 5 (ABC affiliate), aired its 1st broadcast
- 1949 Chinese Red army conquers Nanjing
- 1949 Courtesy mail boxes for motorists started in San Francisco
- 1949 Netherlands annex several German territories, including Elten and Tuddern, as apart of post-Wold War II border adjustments
- 1950 1st Major League Baseball day game completed under lights (Phillies 6, Braves 5)
- 1950 Nationalist Chinese forces (Kuomintang) evacuates Hainan Island after being defeated by the People's Liberation Army
- 1950 Stanley Cup Final, Olympia Stadium, Detroit, MI: Pete Babando scores Cup-winning goal in double overtime of Game 7 as Detroit Red Wings beat NY Rangers, 4-3 for a 4-3 series win
1952 Bob Cain of St. Louis Browns and Bob Feller of Cleveland Indians each pitch a one-hitter, as the home team wins 1-0 at Sportsman's Park in St. Louis, Missouri
- 1952 Crude oil pipeline from Kirkuk, Iraq to Banias, Syria completed
1952 NY Giant Hoyt Wilhelm wins his first game in relief and hits his only home run
- 1953 "Shane", directed by George Stevens and based on the 1949 novel by Jack Schaefer, starring Alan Ladd and Jean Arthur premieres
- 1953 USAF General Charles P. Cabell becomes deputy director of CIA, serves until 1962
- 1953 WCOV TV channel 20 in Montgomery, Alabama (IND/CBS) begins broadcasting
1954 Hammerin' Hank Aaron hits 1st of his 755 homers
1958 Gil Hodges hits his 300th home run and Pee Wee Reese plays in 2,000th game, a double-milestone for Los Angeles Dodgers
1961 Singer Judy Garland appears in concert at Carnegie Hall, NYC; the event is recorded for a double live album and wins a Grammy Award for Album of the Year, the first by a female artist
- 1962 New York Mets win their 1st game ever, after starting the season with nine losses, beating Pirates 9-1
- 1962 Ranger 4, 1st US satellite to reach the Moon, launched from Cape Canaveral
- 1964 Houston Colt 45s Ken Johnson becomes 1st major league pitcher to lose a 9 inning no-hitter, Reds win 1-0
- 1964 New York State Theater opens
- 1965 "I Can't Help Myself (Sugar Pie Honey Bunch)" single released by the Four Tops (Billboard Song of the Year 1965)
1965 American composer Randall Thompson marks his retirement from the Harvard faculty conducting the debut of his orchestrated arrangement of "Frostiana: Seven Country Songs" with the Harvard Glee Club and Radcliffe Choral Society singing poetry of Robert Frost
- 1965 Molniya-1, 1st Soviet communications satellite launches
- 1967 Soyuz 1 spacecraft launches; Vladimir Komarov becomes 1st in-flight casualty when parachute fails
- 1968 Columbia University Crisis: Students for a Democratic Society and the Afro-American Society begin a non-violent, six-day strike, calling for Columbia to cut ties with the Institute for Defense Analysis. After negotiations fail, nearly 1,000 police are sent to campus, resulting in a violent clash and over 700 students arrested [1]
- 1968 First decimal coins issued in Britain, the 5 and 10 new pence, replacing the shilling and two-shilling pieces
- 1968 United Methodist Church forms in Dallas, Texas
- 1969 Over 1000 square miles flooded in Shantung Province, China
1969 Sirhan Sirhan sentenced to death for killing US Senator Robert F. Kennedy (later commuted to a life sentence)
- 1969 The Unionist Parliamentary Party votes by 28 to 22 to introduce universal adult suffrage in local government elections in Northern Ireland; the demand for 'one man, one vote' had been one of the most powerful slogans of the civil rights movement
- 1972 26th Tony Awards: "Sticks and Bones" (play) & "The Two Gentlemen of Verona" (musical) win
- 1972 Apollo 16 astronauts explore the moon's surface
- 1972 The Sunday Times Insight Team publish their account of the events of 'Bloody Sunday'
- 1974 USSR performs nuclear test at Sary Shagan USSR
1975 Harold Pinter's play "No Man's Land" premieres in London
- 1977 ADO Den Haag soccer team forms in The Hague, Netherlands
- 1977 Czech chess master, Vlastimil Hort, plays 201 games simultaneously; won-174, drew-17, lost-10
- 1977 Ethiopian Red Terror: Milt workers massacre 300-500 students in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (Red Terror 1976-78)
1978 MLB Cincinnati Reds second baseman Joe Morgan ends record streak of 91 consecutive errorless games
- 1978 USSR performs nuclear test at the Semipalatinsk Test Site in northeast Kazakhstan
- 1979 Fighting in London between the Anti-Nazi League and the Metropolitan Police Special Patrol Group results in the death of protester Blair Peach
- 1982 Conch Republic is established - secession of the Florida Keys from the United States of America
- 1982 The 8-bit personal home computer the Sinclair ZX Spectrum is released (goes on to sell 5 million worldwide)
- 1984 AIDS virus is identified as HTLV-III (Human T-lymphotropic Virus Type III)
- 1985 Brooklyn College soccer team wins Nepal's All-Nepal Football Association invitational tournament 2-0
- 1985 New Coke debuts; Coca-Cola announced it is changing its secret flavor formula
- 1986 Disney World breaks ground for Victorian themed Grand Floridian Beach Resort (now known as Disney's Grand Floridian Resort & Spa)
- 1987 28 construction workers are killed in an apartment collapse in Bridgeport, Connecticut
- 1987 New Jersey Devils farm team, Maine Mariners (AHL), move to Utica New York, there known as the Utica Devils
- 1988 Federal smoking ban during domestic airline flights of 2 hours or less
- 1988 Greek Olympic cyclist Kanellos Kanellopoulos pedals the MIT Daedalus 88 self-powered aircraft a record 71.5 miles (115 km) from Heraklion on the island of Crete to Santorini
- 1988 Karolina Szabรณ runs female world record for 25k (1:29:29.2) and 30k (1:47:05.6) in Budapest, Hungary
- 1989 CBS' premiere of fact based "The Littlest Victims", based on Newark, N.J. physician James Oleske as the first doctor to discover AIDS in children
1989 Kareem Abdul-Jabbar scores 10 points in his last game as a Laker in a 121-117 win over Seattle SuperSonics at the LA Forum
- 1989 NFL Draft: #1 pick UCLA quarterback Troy Aikman by Dallas Cowboys
1989 Students in Beijing, China announce classroom boycotts as part of pro-democracy protests following the death of reformist leader Hu Yaobang
1989 Texas Rangers' Nolan Ryan loses a no-hitter in the 9th inning against the Toronto Blue Jays
1989 Wine merchant William Sokolin breaks a bottle of 1787 Chรขteau Margaux, possibly belonging to Thomas Jefferson, worth $500,000 at the Four Seasons restaurant in New York
1991 Bjรถrn Borg loses 6-2, 6-3 to Jordi Arrese after an 8 year lay off without practising or playing any exhibition matches
- 1991 USSR grants republics the right to secede under certain conditions through a new Union Treaty
- 1992 Marion Berry (former mayor of Washington, D.C.) released from prison
- 1992 McDonald's opens its 1st restaurant in China, amassing over 40,000 customers on its opening day
- 1993 Eritrea votes to secede from Ethiopia with 99.83% in favor
- 1994 Army shoots to death 23-40 fishermen in Gonaives, Haiti
- 1994 General Tire World Bowling Tournament of Champions won by Norm Duke
1994 Libertarian party nominates Howard Stern for Governor of New York
1995 President Clinton declares a national day of mourning for Oklahoma City
- 1996 Howard Stern Radio Show premieres in Reno, Nevada on KRZQ 96.5 FM
- 1996 Sotheby's begins a four-day auction of over 5,000 Jackie Kennedy items, amassing $34.5 million in sales
- 1996 US docuseries "Forensic Files" (Medical Detectives) premieres on TLC Network
- 1997 Omaria massacre in Algeria: 42 villagers are killed
2001 Fatboy Slim releases single "Weapon of Choice", music video directed by Spike Jonze starring Christopher Walken dancing
2002 Pope John Paul II meets with U.S. Catholic Church leaders at Vatican regarding sexual abuse of minors
2003 Beijing closes all schools for two weeks because of the SARS virus
- 2005 NFL Draft: University of Utah quarterback Alex Smith first pick by San Francisco 49ers
- 2005 YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim uploads the first video to YouTube, "Me at the zoo," showing him in front of two elephants at the San Diego Zoo, which has over 311 million views [1]
- 2009 Gamma ray burst (GRB) 090423 is observed for 10 seconds, the most distant object of any kind and also the oldest known object in the universe
- 2011 Zach Daniels defeated Rick Michaels to become the new TNT Heavyweight Champion.
- 2012 38,000 London Marathon entrants have their home and email contacts published in a data protection breach
2012 Netherlands Prime Minister, Mark Rutte, tenders resignation, paving the way for early elections
- 2012 Rangers F.C. owner, Craig Whyte, is banned for life from any involvement in Scottish football
2013 "Star Trek Into Darkness" directed by J. J. Abrams starring Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto premieres in Sydney
- 2013 21 people are killed during violent unrest in Xinjiang, China
- 2013 28 people are killed and 70 are injured during clashes between police and Sunni Muslims in Hawija, Iraq
2013 A 1% flash crash hits the US stock market after a news agency was hacked and claimed injury to President Obama
- 2013 The French National Assembly passes an amended bill legalizing same-sex marriage
2013 West Indian cricketer Chris Gayle smashes the fastest century in history in just 30 balls
- 2014 60 people are killed & 80 are injured after a train crashes in The Democratic Republic of the Congo
2015 Kawhi Leonard is named the NBA Defensive Player of the Year for the first time
2015 Loretta Lynch is confirmed by US Senate vote, 56-43, as the first African-American woman as US Attorney-General, succeeding Eric Holder
2017 Adam Ondra sets a new highpoint for the Project indoor sport route in Stockholm, Sweden
- 2018 Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan resigns after 10 years in office after mass protests against him beginning an unconstitutional third term
- 2018 Mario Abdo Benรญtez is elected President of Paraguay
2018 Marvel's "Avengers: Infinity War" directed by Anthony and Joe Russo, starring Chris Evans, Robert Downey Jr and large ensemble cast premieres in Los Angeles, California
- 2018 Van deliberately driven into pedestrians in Toronto, Canada, killing 10 and injuring 13
- 2019 At least 54 jade miners buried by a mudslide in Kachin state, Myanmar
- 2019 Second of two major earthquakes strikes island of Samar, Philippines, magnitude 6.3, a day after magnitude 6.1 hits Luzon Island killing at least 16 people
- 2019 Southampton striker Shane Long scores fastest goal in English Premier League history when he nets after 7.69 seconds in 1-1 draw at Watford
- 2019 World's first malaria vaccine, giving partial protection to children, begins in Malawi by the WHO
- 2020 Ecuador's COVID-19 death toll is then one of world's highest per capita after 7,600 more deaths than usual (503 official toll), in report by "The New York Times"
- 2020 First findings of a frog fossil 40 million years old, found on Seymour Island, Antarctica (2015) published in "Scientific Reports"
- 2020 German Chancellor Angela Merkel warns this is "not the end phase but still just the beginning" of the COVID-19 pandemic
2020 NFL Draft: LSU quarterback Joe Burrow first pick by Cincinnati Bengals
2020 US President Donald Trump suggests studying if COVID-19 could be treated by introducing disinfectant or UV lights into a human body, during a White House press briefing; government officials and disinfectant companies quickly state doing so is not only extremely dangerous but potentially deadly
- 2022 59th Venice Biennale contemporary art exhibition opens, with 80 participating. Main exhibition "The Milk of Dreams" curated by Cecilia Aleman. [1]
- 2022 American Simone Leigh is the first Black woman artist to win the main prize at Venice Biennale for her sculpture "Brick House" [1]
- 2022 Venice Biennale's top award, The Golden Lion (Best National Participation) awarded to UK's Sonia Boyce for her work "Feeling Her Way" [1]
- 2023 At least 100 bodies discovered in shallow graves in Shakahola forest, eastern Kenya. Believed to be members of Good News International Church, which encourages salvation through starvation. [1]
- 2023 Chevron Championship Women's Golf, The Club at Carlton Woods: Lilia Vu wins her first major beating fellow American Angel Yin on the first playoff hole
- 2023 MLB Boston Red Sox outfielder Masataka Yoshida hits a solo home run and a grand slam in the eight inning in 12-5 win over the Brewers in Milwaukee
2024 Australian PM Anthony Albanese hits back at Elon Musk saying it will "do what's necessary to take on this arrogant billionaire who thinks he's above the law" as a court orders X take down terrorist attack footage [1]
- 2025 International Coral Reef Initiative releases study showing that 84% of the world's coral reefs have been impacted by an ongoing bleaching event that started in January 2023 [1]
- ๐ King Henry VIII at the height of his reign
A Son, A Son โ My Wife For A Son!
April 21, 1509 - ๐ Richard Nixon on the presidential campaign trail
Richard Nixon, The Only US President to Resign
April 22, 1994 - ๐ Staff and students from Shakespeare's old school in a birthday parade through the town to put flowers on his grave
Who Wrote Shakespeare?
April 23, 1564 - ๐ Colonel โTeddyโ Roosevelt (center, with glasses and holstered gun) with his โRough Ridersโ after victory at the Battle of San Juan Hill
Spain Declares War Against the United States
April 24, 1898
