Tuesday, May 5:

1862: Outnumbered Mexican forces repelled French troops at the Battle of Puebla. The victory gave rise to the celebration of Cinco de Mayo, which later evolved in the United States to a celebration of Mexican heritage.

1891: Carnegie Hall in New York, then known as the Music Hall, opened with a concert. The performance was at first conducted by Walter Damrosch, director of the New York Symphony Orchestra, but after intermission was conducted by Pyotr Tchaikovsky.

1921: The Chanel No. 5 perfume was first released in Coco Chanel’s Paris boutique.

1945: During World War II, the lone fatal attack involving Japan’s balloon bomb killed six people in Oregon. The balloon’s bomb exploded shortly after being discovered by Elsie Mitchell and five children at Gearhart Mountain. The uncontrolled balloons were meant to drop bombs to start forest fires.

1961: Alan Shepard became the first American to travel in space. The suborbital flight of Shepard and the Freedom 7 spacecraft lasted 15 minutes before a splashdown in the Atlantic Ocean.

2023: The World Health Organization declared that COVID-19 was no longer a global health emergency.

Monday, May 4:

1776: Rhode Island declared its independence from England, the first North American colony to do so.

1904: The second, and successful, attempt to build the Panama Canal officially began.

1970: Twenty-eight National Guard members fired more than 60 rounds at anti-war protesters on the campus of Kent State University, killing four people and wounding nine. The demonstrators at Kent State were protesting the expansion of the Vietnam War.

1994: The unofficial holiday for 'Star Wars' fans had its pun introduced on the floor of Britain’s Parliament when Harry Cohen said one of his researchers had advocated for a National Star Wars Day and added, 'May the fourth be with you,' and Cohen suggested the 'very bad joke' should have led to the person’s firing, 'but he is a good researcher.'

Sunday, May 3:

1946: The prosecution opened its case in an international war crimes trial for Japanese military and government officials. More than two years later, the trial concluded with 25 of 28 defendants being found guilty (of those not found guilty, two had died during the trial and another was declared mentally unfit for trial). Seven were subsequently executed.

1948: In Shelley v. Kraemer, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against racially restrictive housing covenants.

1948: In U.S. v. Paramount Pictures, et al., the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Paramount and other major studios had violated antitrust law. The ruling required studios to sell all films individually instead of in blocks, and it required them to divest themselves of the theater chains they owned.

1954: In Hernandez v. Texas, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the 14th Amendment protects a wider range of people from discrimination, acknowledging that there are more classes to consider than simply White and Black people.

1965: The 173rd Airborne Brigade of the U.S. Army was deployed to South Vietnam, becoming the first major U.S. Army ground combat unit involved in the Vietnam War.

1978: Gary Thuerk, a marketing manager for Digital Equipment Corp., sent the first spam email on what was then the ARPAnet, a network of government and university computers. Rather than send individual emails to each of the 600 West Coast members of the group, he realized it would be much easier to send one mass email in order to publicize open houses where Digital Equipment Corp. was unveiling its latest computers.

Saturday, May 2:

1670: King Charles II granted the Hudson’s Bay Co. a permanent charter for trade and commerce over a vast area in North America, essentially giving the company, which began as fur traders, a monopoly. The company shut down in 2025.

1885: The first issue of Good Housekeeping magazine was published.

1945: About 1 million German soldiers surrendered to the Allied forces in Italy, and Berlin surrendered to the Soviet Union’s Marshal Georgy Zhukov, effectively ending fighting in Europe in World War II.

1963: More than 1,000 Black children marched in Birmingham, Alabama, on the first day of protests against segregation in the city. The protest marches became known as the 'Children’s Crusade' and resulted in thousands of children being arrested over the course of several days.

1982: The Weather Channel launched, providing forecasts and weather-related news.

2011: The man who planned the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States, Osama bin Laden was killed by U.S. forces in a raid on a compound in Pakistan.

2012: A pastel version of Edvard Munch’s painting 'The Scream' sold at a Sotheby’s auction in London for $119,922,500, setting a record for sale price of a work of art at auction.

Friday, May 1:

1866: The Memphis massacre of 1866 began as a White mob – including police officers – attacked Black residents, killing 46 and injuring and robbing others, and destroying many buildings including homes, churches and schools.

1926: Ford Motor Co. adopted a five-day, 40-hour workweek for its factory workers, becoming one of the first American companies to do so.

1941: 'Citizen Kane' made its debut, failing at the box office but later receiving nine Academy Award nominations.

1971: Amtrak began operating the first federally run passenger rail service across the United States.

1999: After the Kids’ Choice Awards on Nickelodeon, viewers got their first peek at SpongeBob SquarePants, previewing the series that got its official premiere on July 17.

2003: President George W. Bush delivered what became known as the 'Mission Accomplished' speech aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier. The speech came six weeks after the United States invaded Iraq, but American troops were not withdrawn from Iraq until 2011.

Thursday, April 30:

1789 : George Washington took the oath of office at Federal Hall to become the first president of the United States and delivered his first inaugural address in New York City.

1803 : The United States and France concluded negotiations for the Louisiana Purchase, with the United States agreeing to pay France $15 million for 828,000 square miles of land west of the Mississippi River.

1939 : The National Broadcasting Co. made the first public television broadcast with a telecast of President Franklin Roosevelt at the New York World’s Fair. The event also marked the first time a president appeared on TV.

1945 : German dictator Adolf Hitler and his wife, Eva Braun, killed themselves in a bunker in Berlin to avoid capture as Soviet forces stormed the city. Their bodies were then carried to the Reich Chancellery Garden and burned.

1975 : Saigon fell to North Vietnamese troops, marking the end of the Vietnam War.

1993 : CERN launched the World Wide Web into the public domain.

Wednesday, April 29:

1429: Joan of Arc and her troops entered the besieged city of Orléans during the Hundred Years’ War. She successfully broke through the siege, which gave the French a victory.

1945 : The U.S. Seventh Army liberated thousands of prisoners in the Nazi concentration camp at Dachau, Germany. The number of prisoners was estimated to be around 200,000. Experts believe that as many as 40,000 detainees died at Dachau.

1992 : Riots erupted across Los Angeles in response to the trial acquittals of four police officers indicted on charges of assaulting Rodney King. Three of the four LAPD officers also were acquitted of excessive force charges despite video evidence showing them beating King for 15 minutes. The jury couldn’t agree on whether the fourth used excessive force.

2018 : 'The Simpsons' aired its 636th episode to become the longest-running scripted American prime-time show.

Tuesday, April 28:

1945 : Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini and his mistress, Claretta Petacci, were executed in the village of Giulino di Mezzegra in northern Italy.

1967 : Boxer Muhammad Ali cited religious beliefs in his refusal to be drafted into the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War. He was later convicted of draft evasion. Ali avoided prison while he appealed the conviction, which the U.S. Supreme Court overturned in 1971.

1973 : 'The Dark Side of the Moon,' by Pink Floyd, reached No. 1 on the U.S. Billboard 200 album chart.

1996 : Australia’s worst mass shooting happened in the Port Arthur area of Tasmania. Martin Bryant killed 35 people and wounded 23 others. Bryant was captured the next day and was sentenced to 35 consecutive life sentences without parole. The massacre led to stricter gun control laws in the country.

Monday, April 27

1521 : Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan was killed by a poisoned arrow during a skirmish between his crew and the local natives led by Chief Lapulapu on the Island of Mactan, Philippines.

1981 : Xerox PARC released the first personal computer mouse, an invention of Douglas Engelbart.

1989 : Massive student-led protests erupted throughout China. Sympathizers began to join the 150,000-200,000 strong crowd in Beijing as an anti-protest editorial from the state-run paper The People’s Daily ignited the flames.

2006 : Construction started on One World Trade Center in New York City.

Sunday, April 26:

1607 : This date marked the formation of Jamestown as the first permanent English settlers landed at Cape Henry, Chesapeake Bay.

1865 : John Wilkes Booth, assassin of President Abraham Lincoln, was shot dead by Union cavalry soldiers in Port Royal, Virginia.

1954 : Filmmaker Akira Kurosawa’s epic 'Seven Samurai' was released in Japan. It is widely considered one of the most influential films in cinematic history.

1986 : A reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Chernobyl, Ukraine, went haywire, causing an explosion that destroyed the plant and sent radiation into the surrounding environment.

Saturday, April 25:

1859 : Suez Canal construction began as ground was broken at Port Said, Egypt. Initial work was done by forced laborers digging with picks and shovels. The canal opened 11 years later, connecting the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea.

1950 : Chuck Cooper became first Black person drafted into NBA as the 14th overall pick by the Boston Celtics.

1959 : The St. Lawrence Seaway unofficially opened, allowing ships to travel to the Great Lakes from the Atlantic Ocean. The seaway – a joint project between the U.S. and Canada – took five years to complete.

Friday, April 24:

1800 : The U.S. Library of Congress was established by President John Adams. Congress appropriated the library with $5,000 to purchase 'such books as may be necessary for the use of congress.'

2005 : Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was inaugurated as the 265th pope of the Catholic Church. He took the name Pope Benedict XVI.

2011 : WikiLeaks, The Guardian, The New York Times and NPR published 779 leaked secret documents from the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba. The leaks contained comprehensive notes, interviews, assessments and memos about the prisoners. Many of the detainees were revealed to have been ordinary civilians who were held for years unlawfully.

Thursday, April 23:

1616 : Renowned playwright William Shakespeare died at Stratford-upon-Avon, England at age 52.

1861 : Gen. Robert E. Lee was appointed the commander of Virginia’s Confederate forces during the Civil War. He resigned from the U.S. Army three days prior.

1984 : Secretary of Health and Human Services Margaret Heckler announced that researchers had identified what later was named human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) which causes acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS).

2005: YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim uploaded its first YouTube video, 'Me at the zoo.'

Wednesday, April 22:

1889 : During the Land Rush of 1889, an estimated 50,000 people lined up at noon to claim land in what is now known as Oklahoma. Two million acres of land were up for grabs. Around 11,000 homesteads were established. The land was originally part of Native American territory after various tribes were forced to relocate to the area from their ancestral homes.

1945 : Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler publicly admitted for the first time that Germany could not win World War II and his murderous goal of the Third Reich was over.

1970 : Millions of people across the nation joined together in various events to celebrate the first Earth Day.

Tuesday, April 21:

753 BC: This is the traditional date when Romulus and his twin brother, Remus, founded Rome.

1782 : King Buddha Yodfa Chulaloke founded the city of Rattanakosin, Thailand, now known as Bangkok.

1934 : The Daily Mail printed a photograph depicting the head and long neck of the Loch Ness monster, sparking decades of curiosity. However, the iconic image was later revealed to be an elaborate hoax.

1975 : South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu resigned as communist forces took control of the region and U.S. support dwindled. He fled the country five days later.

Monday, April 20:

1971 : The U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously in Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education that busing students for the purposes of school desegregation is constitutional.

1972 : The Apollo 16 Lunar crew landed safely on the moon. Commander John Young and Lunar Module Pilot Charles Duke would spend 71 hours on the moon before the crew headed back to Earth.

1999 : Students Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold killed 13 people and injured 20 others before dying by suicide at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado.

2010 : One of the largest and worst environmental disasters in history, the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, which has since been renamed by the U.S. government as the Gulf of America. The explosion caused 11 deaths and the oil spill took six months to contain. BP, the operator of the rig, had to pay billions in fines.

2021 : Derek Chauvin was found guilty of unintentional second-degree murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter for the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Chauvin knelt on Floyd’s neck for over nine minutes while Floyd was on the ground lying face down. Floyd was heard yelling that he could not breathe but Chauvin did not relent. He was sentenced to a total of more than 20 years in prison.

Sunday, April 19:

1775 : 'The shot heard around the world.' The American Revolution began as British troops and colonial militiamen collided in Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts.

1897 : John McDermott was crowned winner of the first Boston Marathon. He ran what initially was a 24.5-mile course in 2:55:10.

1943 : In Nazi Germany-occupied Poland, Jewish people in the Warsaw Ghetto rose against German troops moving to liquidate the area. The uprising lasted a month and left at least 13,000 Jews dead.

1987 : 'The Simpsons' debuted on 'The Tracey Ullman Show' as an animated short.

1989 : A woman was beaten and sexually assaulted while jogging at night in New York City’s Central Park. Her assault led to the wrongful conviction of five youths known as the Central Park Five: Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana, and Korey Wise.

1993 : The 51-day Texas standoff between David Koresh’s Waco Branch Davidian complex in Texas and the FBI ended in tragedy as a fire broke out during an FBI tank and gas assault. A total of 76 Davidians, including 18 children younger than 10, died in the fire.

1995 : At 9:02 a.m. CT, a truck containing a homemade bomb exploded at the entrance of Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people including 19 children.

2013 : Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev was killed after a shootout with police. He was also run over and dragged by a car driven by his brother, Dzhokhar, who was eventually captured while hiding in a boat.

Saturday, April 18:

1025: Bolesław I the Brave is crowned in Gniezno, becoming the first King of Poland.

1506: The cornerstone of the current St. Peter's Basilica is laid in the Vatican by Pope Julius II.

1775: Paul Revere, William Dawes and Samuel Prescott ride from Charlestown to Lexington warning "the regulars are coming out!"

1783: George Washington issues General Orders announcing the end of hostilities with Britain in the American Revolutionary War, giving thanks to the Almighty, offering congratulations, and authorizing an extra ration of alcohol to the troops to celebrate.

1809 First run of 2,000 guineas horse race at Newmarket, England.

1906: San Francisco earthquake and fire kills nearly 4,000 while destroying 75% of the city.

1909: Joan of Arc receives beatification by the Roman Catholic Church at St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican.

1938: Superman first appears in DC Comics' Action Comics Series Issue #1, dated June 1938.

1954: Egyptian Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser seizes power and appoints himself Prime Minister.

1985: "Wham!" become the first western pop act to release an album in China.

2018: “Black Panther†is the first film shown at a commercial cinema in 35 years in Saudi Arabia as cinemas are reopened.

Friday, April 17:

1492: Christopher Columbus signs a contract with Spanish monarchs King Ferdinand II of Aragon and Queen Isabella I to find the "Indies" with the stated goal of converting people to Catholicism. This promises him 10% of all riches found and the governorship of any lands encountered.

1860: Champion of England Tom Sayers and American John Heenan fight to a brutal 2 hour, 27 minute draw that ends only when police stop the bout near Farnborough, England, in what is widely acknowledged as the first world title fight.

1895: Treaty of Shimonoseki is signed ending the First Sino-Japanese War (1894-95).

1917: Vladimir Lenin issues his radical "April Theses" calling for Soviets to take power during the Russian Revolution [OS Apr 4].

1961: 1,400 Cuban exiles land in the Bay of Pigs in a doomed attempt to overthrow Fidel Castro.

1970: Paul McCartney releases his first solo album "McCartney".

1976: Trailing 12-1, the Philadelphia Phillies beat the Chicago Cubs 18-16 in 10 innings at Wrigley Field; Mike Schmidt hits four consecutive home runs in the greatest comeback in NL history.

1982: Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau and Queen Elizabeth II sign the "Proclamation of the Constitution Act", establishing the "Charter of Rights and Freedoms" as part of the country’s new Constitution.

2011: "Game of Thrones" TV series based on the fantasy novels by George R. R. Martin premieres on HBO, starring Emilia Clarke, Sean Bean, Lena Headey, and Peter Dinklage.

2012: The 8th century St. Cuthbert Gospel, Europe's oldest intact book, is purchased by the British Library for 9 million pounds.

Thursday, April 16:

1457 BC : Battle of Megiddo: Egyptian forces of Thutmose III defeat a large Canaanite coalition under the King of Kadesh. First battle recorded with a reliable account.

1705 : Queen Anne of England knights scientist Isaac Newton at Trinity College, Cambridge.

1746 : Battle of Culloden: Royalist troops under the Duke of Cumberland defeat the Jacobite army of Charles Edward Stuart in the final battle of the Jacobite Rising on British soil.

1900 : US Post Office issues its first stamp booklets containing 12, 24, or 48 two-cent stamps.

1948 : Organization for European Economic Cooperation (OEEC) forms in Paris.

2003 : Treaty of Accession is signed in Athens, admitting 10 new member states to the European Union.

Wednesday, April 15:

1452 : Italian polymathic genius and artist Leonardo da Vinci was born.

1817 : Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet and Laurent Clerc founded the American School for the Deaf in Hartford, Connecticut. Originally called The American Asylum, At Hartford, For The Education And Instruction Of The Deaf, it is the oldest and most permanent school for the deaf in the United States.

1912 : Luxurious British ocean liner RMS Titanic sunk in the North Atlantic off Newfoundland more than 2 hours after striking an iceberg, leading to the deaths of 1,514 people. Investigations revealed that the lifeboats on the ship were inadequate and too few. Poor emergency planning also contributed to the loss of life. Only 710 people survived.

1892 : General Electric Co. was formed by the merger of the Edison Electric Light Co. with a competing firm in Schenectady, New York.

1923 : A racially motivated attack by a serial arsonist, the Nihon Shogakko fire killed 10 children in a dormitory of a Buddhist boarding school in Sacramento, California.

1947 : Jackie Robinson made his first official debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers. He was the first Black major league player of the modern era.

1954 : Congress changed the date for the federal deadline for filing individual income tax returns to April 15, starting in 1955.

1989 : Students in Beijing launched a series of pro-democracy protests by mourning the death of General Secretary Hu Yaobang, who many in the country saw as being pro-reform. These protests culminated in a face-off in Tiananmen Square months later.

1998 : Genocidal leader of the Khmer Rouge, Pol Pot, died at age 72. Responsible for the deaths of 2 million Cambodians during his reign, he died of a heart attack while under house arrest.

2009 : Thousands of conservative protesters across the United States staged 'tea parties' in response to what they perceived as bad government policies and a failing economy.

2013 : Brothers Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev planted two homemade pressure-cooker bombs, which exploded near the Boston Marathon finish line. Two women and an 8-year-old boy were killed and more than 260 people were injured.

2019 : A fire at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris caused a spire collapse and destruction of most of the roof and upper walls.

Tuesday, April 14:

1775 : The Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage, the first American abolition society, was founded in Philadelphia.

1828: Noah Webster’s 'An American Dictionary of the English Language' was first published.

1865 : John Wilkes Booth shot President Abraham Lincoln in the head by while Lincoln was watching the play 'Our American Cousin' at Ford’s Theatre in Washington, DC. Lincoln died from his injuries the next day.

1902 : James Cash Penney opened his dry-goods store, named The Golden Rule, in Kemmerer, Wyoming. The store sold necessities for the then-burgeoning coal mining town. Penney would later rename the store using his own namesake, and the retail giant was born.

1935 : Dubbed 'Black Sunday,' one of the most devastating Dust Bowl-era storms in the 1930s swept across Oklahoma and Texas with winds so strong that they kicked up clouds of dirt and dust, darkening the sky.

1939: American literature classic 'The Grapes of Wrath' was published.

1975 : Operation Baby Lift, which included 2,600 to 3,300 South Vietnamese infants and children flown out of the country, was completed. Many were adopted into families in the United States and various countries across the world.

1988: Afghanistan and Pakistan, with representatives from the Soviet Union and the United States, signed the Geneva Accords. It was an agreement calling for Soviet forces to pledge to leave Afghanistan.

2003 : The Human Genome Project was completed. The International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium announced that more than 90% of the human genome had been sequenced with an accuracy of 99.99%.

2014: Boko Haram, an Islamic terrorist group, kidnapped more than 276 Christian female students from a secondary school in Chibok, Nigeria. Many of the girls were forced to convert to Islam and forced to marry members of the group. The international community condemned the actions but, as of April 14, 2024, Amnesty International reported 82 of the abducted girls remained missing.

2021 : Bernie Madoff, convicted of operating the world’s largest Ponzi scheme, died in federal prison at the age of 82.

Monday, April 13:

1743 : President Thomas Jefferson was born.

1870 : The Metropolitan Museum of Art was founded in New York City.

1873 : A mob of former Confederate soldiers and the Ku Klux Klan murdered 60 to 150 Black militia men in Colfax, Louisiana, after they surrendered.

1941 : The Soviet Union and Japan signed the Soviet-Japanese Neutrality Pact, anon-aggression agreement after the conclusion of the Soviet Japanese Border War.

1953: CIA Director Allen Dulles directed the agency to develop the mind-control program called Project MKUltra. It was designed to be utilized against the Soviets. The project employed various experiments to manipulate and alter mental states and brain functions using psychoactive drugs, hypnosis, electroshocks, sensory deprivation, isolation, physical and verbal abuse and other forms of torture.

1953 : James Bond, infamous enigmatic spy, debuted in Ian Fleming’s 'Casino Royale.'

1964 : Sidney Poitier became the first Black man to win Best Actor at the Academy Awards for his performance in 'Lilies of the Field.'

1997 : At age 21, Eldrick 'Tiger' Woods became the youngest and the first golfer of Black or Asian descent to win the Masters Tournament. He would go on to win four more times.

2017 : American forces dropped the 'The Mother of All Bombs' on an Islamic State tunnel complex. One of the largest non-nuclear bombs ever detonated, the explosive force was equal to 11 tons of TNT.

2023 : The FBI arrested Jack Teixeira at his home in Dighton, Massachusetts. He was accused of sharing hundreds of classified Pentagon documents on the online messaging platform Discord from October 2022 to April 2023. He pleaded guilty to the charges against him.

Sunday, April 12:

1633 : Catholic cardinal and chief inquisitor Vincenzo Maculani da Firenzuola and the Catholic Church accused Galileo Galilei of heresy for suggesting Earth is a planet that revolves around the sun – as Nicolaus Copernicus had theorized nearly a century prior. Galilei was later found guilty and sentenced to spend the rest of his life on house arrest. It took the Catholic Church more than 350 years to admit Galilei was correct.

1861 : The Civil War officially began at the Battle of Fort Sumter. Confederate forces fired on the fort in Charleston, South Carolina, and Union forces surrendered less than 36 hours later. No direct casualties were reported.

1945 : President Franklin Roosevelt died of a brain hemorrhage in Georgia. He was 63. Vice President Harry Truman was sworn in, and led the country through the remainder of World War II.

1955 : The polio vaccine, developed by Dr. Jonas Salk, was announced to be safe and effective by Dr. Thomas Francis Jr. of the University of Michigan.

1961 : Aboard the Vostok 1 spacecraft, Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human to enter space and orbit Earth. His vehicle orbited the planet at a speed of 27,400 kilometers per hour, and the flight took 108 minutes.

1963 : The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was arrested alongside fellow civil rights activists Ralph Abernathy, Fred Shuttlesworth and others while protesting segregation in Birmingham, Alabama. He wrote his 'Letter from a Birmingham Jail' while jailed. The open letter was a call to arms for activists to act against unjust laws rather than sit idle hoping for change.

1981 : Space shuttle Columbia first launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. Part of NASA’s Space Transportation System, Columbia flew 28 missions before it broke apart Feb. 1, 2003, on reentry.

1999 : U.S. District Court Judge Susan Webber Wright cited President Bill Clinton for contempt of court for 'intentionally false statements' during a sexual misconduct civil lawsuit brought against him by Paula Jones.

2022 : Known global COVID-19 cases passed 500 million with more than 6 million deaths reported.

Saturday, April 11:

1865 : President Abraham Lincoln made his final speech. From the White House, he urged unity as he shared his thoughts on reconciliation and Black suffrage. Among those in attendance was John Wilkes Booth, who assassinated Lincoln three days later.

1921 : The first live broadcast of a sporting event aired on radio from KDKA in Pittsburgh. It was a broadcast of a boxing match between Johnny Ray and Johnny Dundee.

1968 : President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1968, which prohibited discrimination based on race, sex, religion and national origin in the sale, renting and financing of housing.

1970 : Apollo 13 successfully launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Originally planned to land on the moon, it later became a rescue mission to save the crew when an oxygen tank exploded en route.