Category: Today

On April 21, 1989, six days after the death of Hu Yaobang, the deposed reform-minded leader of the Chinese Communist Party, some 100,000 Chinese students gathered at Beijing’s Tiananmen Square to commemorate Hu and voice their discontent with China’s authoritative communist government. At an official memorial service for Hu Yaobang, held the next day in Tiananmen’s Great Hall of the People, student representatives carried a petition to the steps of the Great Hall, demanding to meet with Premier Li Peng. The Chinese government refused the meeting, leading to a general boycott of Chinese universities across the country and widespread calls for democratic reforms. Days later, on April 27, students from more than 40 universities marched to Tiananmen Square and were joined by workers, intellectuals, and civil servants. By mid-May, more than a million people filled the square, the site of communist leader’s Mao Zedong’s proclamation of the People’s Republic of China in 1949.

On April 20, 1898, President William McKinley asked Congress to declare war on Spain, two months after two explosions sank the USS Maine in Havana, Cuba. During those two months, newspaper baron Randolph Hearst and others whipped up public sentiment to go to war to give Cubans their independence and attacked McKinley for weakness in not acting more aggressively.

On April 20, 1999, two teenager students planned and carried out a shooting spree at their Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, killing 13 people, a teacher and 12 fellow students, and wounding 23 others, before committing suicide by shooting themselves.

On April 19, 1775, the American Revolution began when the “shot heard around the world” was fired between the 700 British troops on a mission to capture Patriot leaders Sam Adams and John Hancock and to seize a Patriot arsenal and the 77 armed minutemen under Captain John Parker waiting for them on the Lexington town green. The Battle of Lexington ended with eight Americans killed and ten wounded, along with one wounded British soldier.

In Concord, a couple of hours later, British troops were encircled by hundreds of armed Patriots. The British commander ordered his men to return to Boston without directly engaging the Americans, but on the 16-mile journey they were constantly attacked by Patriot marksmen firing at them Indian-style from behind trees, rocks, and stone walls. By the time the British reached the safety of Boston, nearly 300 soldiers had been killed, wounded, or were missing in action. The Patriots suffered fewer than 100 casualties.

On April 18, 1689, after news reached Boston that James II of England had been overthrown, the colonists of Boston rose up against the rule of Sir Edmund Andros, the governor of the Dominion of New England. Andros had angered the local populace by enforcing the restrictive Navigation Acts, denying the validity of existing land titles, restricting town meetings, and appointing unpopular regular officers to lead the colonial militia. He also infuriated Puritans by promoting the Church of England. A well-organized “mob” of provincial militia and citizens took over the city and arrested dominion officials, without any casualties. Leaders of the former Massachusetts Bay Colony then reclaimed control of the government.

On April 18, 1775, as British troops leave Boston to confiscate the arsenal in Concord and to arrest Sam Adams and John Hancock in Lexington, Patriots Paul Revere and William Dawes set out on horseback from the city to warn Adams and Hancock and rouse the Minutemen.

On April 18, 1923, Yankee Stadium, “The House that Ruth Built,” opened in the Bronx.

On April 17, 1961, just after midnight, a force of CIA financed and trained Cuban exiles landed at the Bay of Pigs in Cuba with the aim of ousting Fidel Castro. The Cuban armed forces quickly defeated the invading combatants. Several hundred to several thousand people were estimated to have been killed, wounded or missing in the fighting, and more than 1,200 Cuban exiles were captured by Castro. In August, Che Guevara sent a note to President Kennedy, reading, “Thanks for Playa Girón. Before the invasion, the revolution was weak. Now it’s stronger than ever.” Finally, days before Christmas 1962, Castro signed an agreement to exchange 1,113 prisoners with the U.S. for $53 million in food and medicine.

On April 17, 1970, Apollo 13 returned safely back to Earth.

On April 17, 1975, Cambodian government forces surrender to the Khmer Rouge, who capture Phnom Penh, the capital. In the next five years, more than 1 in every 5 Cambodians died of starvation, was worked to death or was executed.

On April 17, 1986, the Three Hundred and Thirty Five Years’ War between the Netherlands and the Isles of Scilly ended. Peace at last!

On April 16, 73 A.D., Masada, a Jewish fortress, fell to the Romans after several months of siege, ending the Jewish Revolt.

On April 16, 1520, the citizens of Castile, Spain, rebelled against the rule of Charles V in what became known as the Revolt of the Comuneros. At its height, rebels controlled the heart of Castile, ruling the cities of Valladolid, Tordesillas and Toledo.

On April 16, 1862, the District of Columbia Compensated Emancipation Act, a bill ending slavery in the District of Columbia, became law.

On April 16, 1912, Harriet Quimby became the first woman to fly an airplane across the English Channel.

On April 15, 1452, Leonardo da Vinci, the polymath of the Italian Renaissance, was born in Vinci, Italy, near Florence.

On April 15, 1783, the Continental Congress officially ratified the preliminary peace treaty with Great Britain that was signed in November 1782. Five months later, on September 3, 1783, the Treaty of Paris was signed by representatives of the United States, Great Britain, Spain and France, officially bringing an end to the Revolutionary War.

On April 15, 1945, the British 11th Armoured Division liberated the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, discovering 53,000 prisoners inside, most half-starved and seriously ill, and another 13,000 corpses lying around the camp unburied.

On April 15, 1947, Jackie Robinson stepped onto Ebbets Field to play for the Brooklyn Dodgers, becoming the first African-American player in Major League Baseball. Eleven weeks later Larry Doby would break the color barrier in the American League with the Cleveland Indians.

On April 15, 1998, Saloth Sar, known as Cambodian dictator Pol Pot, died. He led the Khmer Rouge from 1963 until his death, and served as the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Kampuchea from 1975 to 1979. During his time in power more than one of every five Cambodians died by execution, forced labor and starvation.

On April 13, 1570, Guy Fawkes was born. In 1604, Fawkes became involved with a small group of English Catholics, led by Robert Catesby, who planned to assassinate the Protestant King James and replace him with his daughter, third in the line of succession, Princess Elizabeth.

On April 13, 1743, Thomas Jefferson was born. Jefferson went on to swear “upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.” He also wrote the Declaration of Independence, and served as the first U.S. Secretary of State, second Vice President and third President of the United States.

On April 13, 1919, Eugene V. Debs entered prison at the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary in Atlanta, Georgia, for speaking out against the draft during World War I. Debs had run as the Socialist Party’s candidate for the presidency in 1900, 1904, 1908, and 1912. His last presidential run came in 1920 from his prison cell.

On April 13, 1934, Jane Jacob, who most scholars agree is the world’s best Mother ever, was born.

On April 12, 1861, the Civil War began when Confederate shore batteries opened fire on Union-held Fort Sumter in South Carolina’s Charleston Bay. After firing more than 4,000 rounds at the fort in the next 34 hours, U.S. Major Robert Anderson surrendered. Two days later, President Abraham Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers to quell the Southern “insurrection.” Thus began the deadliest war in American history with more than 600,000 dead on both sides.

On April 12, 1989, Abbie Hoffman, the 1960s political and social activist who co-founded the Youth International Party or “Yippies” and was tried and convicted of conspiracy and inciting a riot for his role in protests during the 1968 Democratic National Convention, as one of the Chicago 7, died after wallowing 150 phenobarbital tablets along with hard liquor. Hoffman’s death was officially ruled a suicide.

On April 12, 1999, President Bill Clinton was cited for contempt of court for giving “intentionally false statements” in a civil lawsuit brought against him by Paula Jones charging sexual harassment.

On April 10, 1778, Commander John Paul Jones and his crew aboard the USS Ranger set sail from Brest, France, headed toward the Irish Sea to raid British warships, the first mission of its kind during the Revolutionary War. Jones is remembered as a “Father of the American Navy.”

On 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 began a forced march to a prison camp near Cabanatuan. During this infamous trek, known as the “Bataan Death March,” the prisoners marched 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.