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History by month

April

30 days of history. Every date is an entry point to the events, births, and moments that shaped our world.

April 1

April 1

1976 Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne incorporated Apple Computer Company

April 2

April 2

1917 President Wilson asked Congress to declare war after Germany's submarine campaig

April 3

April 3

1865 Union forces seize Richmond, the Confederate capital, delivering a crushing blow

April 4

April 4

1968 A single .30-06 bullet from a Remington rifle shattered Martin Luther King Jr.'s

April 5

April 5

1242 Russian forces under Alexander Nevsky shattered the Teutonic Knights' charge on

April 6

April 6

1896 Athens hosted the first modern Olympic Games in April 1896, drawing the largest

April 7

April 7

1994 Hutu militias and government forces slaughtered 500,000 to 1,000,000 Tutsi and m

April 8

April 8

563 Gautama achieved full awareness during a fateful night of deep meditation, trans

April 9

April 9

1865 Robert E. Lee accepted the desperate measure of arming enslaved people with a pr

April 10

April 10

1925 F. Scott Fitzgerald releases The Great Gatsby through Charles Scribner's Sons in

April 11

April 11

1814 Napoleon surrendered the French crown to end his rule, yet secured sovereignty o

April 12

April 12

1961 Yuri Gagarin strapped himself into the Vostok 1 capsule and shattered the final

April 13

April 13

1970 A routine fan stir-up in the oxygen tank triggered a catastrophic explosion that

April 14

April 14

1865 John Wilkes Booth shot President Abraham Lincoln during a performance of Our Ame

April 15

April 15

1865 He died with his thumb still pressed against the spot where Booth's bullet had t

April 16

April 16

1746 British Hanoverian forces under the Duke of Cumberland crush the French-supporte

April 17

April 17

1961 CIA-sponsored Brigade 2506 landed at Playa Girón expecting a popular uprising, b

April 18

April 18

1775 Joseph Warren dispatched Paul Revere and William Dawes to warn that British troo

April 19

April 19

1775 British regulars marched to seize colonial arms but instead ignited open warfare

April 20

April 20

1902 Marie and Pierre Curie isolated a new element from pitchblende that emitted carm

April 21

April 21

1836 Sam Houston's Republic of Texas forces ambush and crush General Antonio López de

April 22

April 22

1500 Pedro Álvares Cabral's fleet stumbled onto Brazil's coast, instantly shifting Po

April 23

April 23

1014 Brian Boru's forces shattered the Viking-Dublin alliance at Clontarf, drowning f

April 24

April 24

1915 Ottoman authorities rounded up 250 Armenian intellectuals on April 24, 1915, tri

April 25

April 25

1945 United States and Soviet troops met in Torgau along the River Elbe, slicing the

April 26

April 26

1986 A sudden power surge during a routine test at Reactor Four triggered steam explo

April 27

April 27

1521 Chief Lapu-Lapu's warriors repel Spanish forces and kill explorer Ferdinand Mage

April 28

April 28

1789 Lieutenant William Bligh and eighteen loyal sailors survive a harrowing open-boa

April 29

April 29

1992 The acquittal of four LAPD officers for the brutal beating of Rodney King ignite

April 30

April 30

1945 Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun end their lives in the Führerbunker just hours after