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.

Friday, April 10:

1606 : A royal charter was given to the Virginia Company of London by King James I with the goal of establishing colonies on the eastern coast of North America.

1866 : Henry Bergh established the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in New York City.

1872 : The first American Arbor Day was celebrated in Nebraska. More than 1 million trees were planted.

1912 : The RMS Titanic embarked on its first and only voyage from Southampton, England, departing for New York City .

1925 : 'The Great Gatsby,' by F. Scott Fitzgerald, was first published.

1970 : Paul McCartney announced the Beatles had broken up, confirming months of speculation.

Thursday, April 9:

1784 : King George III ratified The Treaty of Paris, effectively and officially recognizing the end of the American Revolutionary War. It was previously ratified by the newly formed U.S. Congress on Jan.14, 1784.

1865 : Confederate Gen. Robert Lee surrendered to Union Gen. Ulysses Grant at Appomattox Court House in Virginia, signifying the end of the Civil War.

1866 : The Civil Rights Act of 1866 was enacted after Congress twice overrode President Andrew Johnson’s veto. It was the first federal law to define citizenship and provide civil protections to all citizens, including Black citizens.

1939 : International singer Marian Anderson performed a concert at the Lincoln Memorial to a crowd of 75,000. Initially set to sing at Constitution Hall, she was denied entry because of her skin color by the Daughters of the American Revolution, who owned the venue.

1962 : Rita Moreno became the first Hispanic woman to win an Oscar for her role as Anita in 'West Side Story.' Moreno, from Puerto Rico, accepted the award for Best Supporting Actress.

2003 : Baghdad fell to American forces during the Iraq War. A bronze statue of dictator Saddam Hussein in Baghdad’s Firdos Square was toppled, symbolizing the end of Hussein’s brutal regime.

Wednesday, April 8:

1232: The Mongols began their invasion of Kaifeng, the capital of the Jin dynasty in Asia. The two sides had been at war since 1211 after the Mongols refused to submit to the Jin as a vassal state. The war ended with the Jin dynasty falling to the Mongols in 1234.

1820: Fragments of the Venus de Milo statue were discovered by a Greek farmer on the Aegean island of Milos. The parts were later reconstructed and installed at the Louvre in Paris in 1821.

1908 : Harvard Business School was established by the Harvard Corp. It was the first school in the world to offer the MBA program.

1913: The 17th Amendment was ratified. It established that U.S. senators would be directly elected by the voters of each state.

1974: Hank Aaron of the Atlanta Braves broke Babe Ruth’s all-time home run record, hitting his 715th career homer.

2009: Somali pirates hijacked the Maersk Alabama, marking the first time a ship flying an American flag was assaulted off the coast of the Horn of Africa.

Tuesday, April 7:

1927: Bell Telephone Co. made the world’s first long-distance television transmission, an image of Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover sent to New York City from Washington, DC.

1933: The Cullen-Harrison Act took effect, legalizing the sale of beer with an alcohol content of 3.2%. Upon signing the law, President Franklin Roosevelt was quoted to have said, 'I think this would be a good time for a beer.'

1933: Nazi Germany issued the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service, banning people of Jewish heritage and political dissidents from civil service positions.

1969: The internet’s symbolic birth date coincides with the publication of an initial RFC (request for comments), titled 'Host Software,' written by Steve Crocker to document how information packets would be relayed between computers.

1994: Violence erupted in Rwanda after the assassination of President Juvénal Habyarimana. The Presidential Guard began killing politicians and public figures. It led to one of the worst genocides since World War II, with an estimated 500,000 to 1million civilians killed over 100 days.

Monday, April 6:

1712: The New York Slave Revolt of 1712 began. It was a violent uprising by 23 African-born slaves who took up arms against their captors, resulting in the deaths of at least eight slaveholders and injury of six others.

1830: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was established by Joseph Smith in Fayette, New York.

1896: After 1,500 years, the Olympic Games were reborn in Athens, Greece,. A crowd of 60,000 spectators welcomed 280 participants from 13 nations competing in 43 events.

1917: Congress officially declared war on Germany, and the United States entered World War I.

1947: The first Tony Awards ceremony took place.

Sunday, April 5:

1614: Pocahontas, daughter of the Powhatan chief, married English tobacco farmer John Rolfe.

1722: Dutch navigator Jacob Roggeveen made the first European discovery of Easter Island, also known as Rapa Nui.

1862: The Battle of Yorktown began when Gen. George McClellan directed his Union army to establish siege lines in Yorktown, Virginia.

1923: Firestone Tire and Rubber Co. in Akron, Ohio, started production of the first low-pressure inflatable balloon tires.

1933: The Civilian Conservation Corps was established by President Franklin Roosevelt. The work relief program employed millions of young men on environmental projects during the Great Depression.

Saturday, April 4:

1945: The U.S. Army’s 4th Armored Division and the 89th Infantry Division liberated Ohrdruf concentration camp in Germany. It was the first such camp to be liberated by the U.S. Army.

1949: The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was established via a treaty signed in Washington, DC.

1968: James Earl Ray killed the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee.

1973 : The original World Trade Center buildings officially opened in New York City.

1975: Microsoft was founded by childhood friends Bill Gates and Paul Allen in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

2022: Elon Musk became the largest shareholder of Twitter after buying 9.2% of the company’s stock, a total purchase of 73.5 million shares worth $2.9 billion.

Friday, April 3:

1860 : The Pony Express began operations by delivering mail via horse and rider relay teams between St Joseph, Missouri, and Sacramento, California. It operated for 18 months from April 3, 1860, to October 26, 1861.

1888 : The first of the horrific Whitechapel murders happened in London, which gave rise to the notorious legend of Jack the Ripper. Eleven women were killed. Their cases remained unsolved to this day.

1968 : The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his last speech, 'I’ve Been to the Mountaintop,' at Mason Temple in Memphis, Tennessee.

1973 : The first mobile phone call was made. Standing in midtown Manhattan, Martin Cooper of Motorola placed a call from a mobile handheld to Joel S. Engel of Bell Labs in New Jersey.

1996: 'Unabomber' Theodore Kaczynski was captured in Montana. Kaczynski had killed three people and injured more than 20 with explosives sent through the mail over a 17-year period. He was sentenced to eight consecutive life sentences. He died by suicide in 2023.

Thursday, April 2:

1513 : Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de León landed on the coastal area between what later became St. Augustine and the mouth of the St. Johns River, claiming 'La Florida' as a territory of Spain.

1968 : Stanley Kubrick’s influential '2001: A Space Odyssey' premiered at the Uptown Theater in Washington, DC.

1982 : Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands, starting what is now known as the Falklands War. A 10-week undeclared war, it was fought between Argentina and the United Kingdom over the U.K. - controlled Falkland Islands, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands.

1986 : The New York City Gay Rights Bill went into effect, aiming to provide protections for New York City’s LGBTQ+ population against discrimination in employment, public accommodations and housing.

1992: American mob boss John Gotti was convicted of murder, racketeering, tax evasion and other criminal charges. He was sentenced to life in prison.

Wednesday, April 1:

1748 : Commissioned by Charles III of Spain, Rocque Joaquin de Alcubierre – a military engineer in the Spanish army – began prospecting the yet to be identified buried city of Pompeii.

1789 : Frederick Muhlenberg, hailing from Pennsylvania, was elected as the first speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.

1924 : Adolf Hitler was found guilty of treason and sentenced to five years in prison for his role in a failed coup on Nov.8, 1923, in Munich, Germany, known as the 'Beer Hall Putsch.'

1948 : Ralph Alpher, George Gamow and Hans Bethe (whose name appeared on the byline) published 'The Origins of Chemical Elements' in the scientific journal Physical Review. Their work laid the foundations of the Big Bang theory.

1976 : Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne founded Apple Computer Inc.

1999 : Canada redrew its borders and created the northern territory of Nunavut.

2001 : The Netherlands legalized same-sex marriages, becoming the first country in the modern world to do so.

Tuesday, March 31:

1889: Gustave Eiffel, the engineer whose company designed and built the Eiffel Tower, dedicated the 984-foot iron structure with a flag-raising and fireworks.

1918: At 2 a.m., daylight saving time took effect in the United States for the first time.

1995: American singer Selena was fatally shot in Corpus Christi, Texas, by the head of her fan club. Yolanda Saldivar was later convicted of the murder.

2005: Terri Schiavo, a brain-damaged Florida woman, died 13 days after her feeding tube was removed under court orders. She had been in a vegetative state since her cardiac arrest in 1990.

2020: At a White House briefing, Drs. Anthony Fauci and Deborah Brix announced that between 100,000 and 240,000 COVID-19-related deaths were expected in the U.S., even if distancing and other public health measures were perfectly enacted.

Monday, March 30:

1855: About 5,000 slavery advocates came into the Kansas Territory from Missouri to cast fraudulent ballots and shape its legislature. This election – amid the bloody border battle during the years that led up to Kansas being admitted as the 34th state in 1861 – came months after Sen. David Atchison, D-Missouri, led more than 1,700 'border ruffians' there to deliver death threats to people who opposed slavery.

1945: The Soviet Red Army stormed into Austria, which had been part of Nazi Germany since it was annexed seven years prior on the eve of World War II. The Soviets captured the capital, Vienna, on April 13.

1959: The 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, fled toward India from Tibet amid an uprising against Chinese control and fear he would be kidnapped. The Buddhist leader continues to live in exile over 60 years later while remaining Tibet’s spiritual leader.

1981: John Hinckley shot President Ronald Reagan in the chest and wounded three others in Washington, DC. A jury found Hinckley not guilty in 1982 due to insanity.

2010: Japanese automaker Nissan Motor Co. announced the world’s first mass-produced electric car would cost about $25,000, once buyers in the U.S. subtracted the $7,500 federal tax credit. Nissan started making the Leaf later that year.

Sunday, March 29:

1849: The British East India Co. annexed most of the Punjab region in South Asia.

1871: Queen Victoria opened Royal Albert Hall in London.

1927: Henry Seagrave broke the land speed record in the Sunbeam 1,000-horsepower car named Mystery on Daytona Beach, Florida. It marked the first time a car eclipsed 200 mph.

1973: The United States withdrew its final combat soldiers from South Vietnam, an unsuccessful end to America’s direct involvement in the war.

1984: Baltimore Colts owner Bob Irsay had his NFL franchise’s property moved to Indianapolis in the middle of the night on 15 Mayflower trucks to the surprise of upset fans.

1999: The Dow Jones industrial average closed over the 10,000-point mark for the first time.

Saturday, March 28:

1930: The Turkish city Constantinople became Istanbul.

1959: China’s State Council dissolved Tibet’s government.

1979: An automated valve mistakenly closed at Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island nuclear power plant, which led to a series of events that ended with radioactive leakage from a partial core meltdown.

2020: To help prevent the spread of COVID-19, the White House extended all distancing measures through the end of the following month. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a domestic travel advisory for people in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut due to high community transmission of COVID-19 in those states, urging residents to refrain from all nonessential domestic travel for at least 14 days.

Friday, March 27:

1886: Apache leader Geronimo surrendered to the U.S. Army to end the heaviest battles between the two sides that began in 1849.

1915: 'Typhoid' Mary Mallon, an Irish American thought to have infected dozens of people with typhoid fever as an asymptomatic carrier, was quarantined for a second and final time.

1964: With a 9.2 magnitude, the most powerful earthquake recorded in North America slammed Alaska, killed over 100 people and wreaked destruction in Anchorage on Good Friday.

1975: Construction began on the 800-mile Trans-Alaska Pipeline System for moving crude oil from Prudhoe Bay near the Beaufort Sea to Valdez, Alaska.

Thursday, March 26:

1484: English writer and businessman William Caxton printed his translation of 'Aesop’s Fables,' by the titled ancient Greek storyteller.

1830: Egbert Grandin printed the first edition of the Book of Mormon in Palmyra, New York.

1945: The Battle of Iwo Jima ended as the U.S. Marines and Navy secured control of the island after five weeks of deadly fighting with the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II.

1953: Dr. Jonas Salk told CBS radio listeners nationwide about a vaccine to combat the virus that caused polio after he conducted initial human trials on himself and his family. The vaccine was deemed safe and effective in 1955. It eradicated polio in the United States.

1997: Authorities in an affluent suburb of San Diego discovered 39 people had killed themselves. They later were found to be part of the Heaven’s Gate UFO cult led by Marshall Applegate. A message on the group’s website before the ritualistic suicides mentioned the visible comet Hale-Bopp as a sign that it was time for them to go to the next level.

Wednesday, March 25:

421: The city of Venice was founded in what became Italy.

1931: The Scottsboro Boys, nine young African American men, were charged with raping two white women aboard a train in Alabama. Eight of the nine were convicted and reconvicted after the U.S. Supreme Court ordered retrials. They collectively served over 100 years in prison. By 2013, all of the Scottsboro Boys either had their convictions overturned or had been pardoned.

1995: Computer programmer Ward Cunningham made public the world’s first wiki, WikiWikiWeb.

2006: Protesters who decried a rigged Belarus election were beaten, arrested or otherwise subdued by riot police who blocked their path to October Square in the nation’s capital, Minsk.

Tuesday, March 24:

1765: British Parliament adopted the Quartering Act that required North American colonialists to provide food and housing to British troops. This practice was banned in the new nation in the Third Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

1900: Two years after the merger of its five boroughs, New York City Mayor Andrew Van Wyck led its groundbreaking for its first subway system to link the boroughs via rapid transit.

1972: The U.K. government imposed direct rule on Northern Ireland during the Troubles conflict, which ceased along with direct rule in 1998.

1989: The Exxon Valdez supertanker ran aground and spilled 240,000 barrels – over 10 million gallons – of crude oil into Alaska’s Prince William Sound. The spill hit 1,300 miles of coastline, leading to the deaths of about 900 bald eagles, 300 seals, 1,000 harlequin ducks, 2,800 sea otters and 250,000 seabirds, according to the conservation group Oceana. In 1991, Exxon settled criminal and civil litigation claims that topped $1 billion in payouts.

2002: Halle Berry became the first Black woman to win an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in the movie 'Monster’s Ball.'

Monday, March 23:

1775: Patrick Henry, a U.S. founding father, declared to the Second Virginia Convention: 'Give me liberty or give me death.'

1806: Meriwether Lewis and William Clark began their return trip from the Pacific coast along the Columbia River by canoes after they had made the first U.S. exploration of the West. That exploration was commissioned by President Thomas Jefferson to map the newly acquired territory of the Louisiana Purchase.

1919: Italian autocrat Benito Mussolini, who later became the first fascist dictator, founded the paramilitary organization that was later reorganized as the National Fascist Party.

2010: President Barack Obama signed into law the Affordable Care Act.

2024: Six construction workers on the Francis Scott Key Bridge died when it collapsed into the Patapsco River in Baltimore’s Outer Harbor after being struck by a 984-foot container ship registered in Singapore named the Dali.

Sunday, March 22:

1621: Pilgrims in New England’s Plymouth Colony signed a peace treaty with the Wampanoag, whose population had dropped since English contact, especially during an epidemic caused by bacteria-infected rodents that had traveled aboard ships from Europe.

1622: Powhatan warriors massacred 347 English settlers near Jamestown, Virginia.

1794: Congress passed the Slave Trade Act of 1794, which banned Americans from building ships in U.S. ports for the importation of slaves and prohibited the exporting of slaves.

1934: The Masters golf tournament teed off for the first time in Augusta, Georgia.

Friday, March 20:

1345: Some 14th century scholars who survived the Black Death erroneously theorized that a universal pestilence was unleashed on this date in 1345 due to a triple conjunction planetary alignment. The infectious bubonic plague, which killed more than 25million people across Europe, Asia and the Middle East in the 14th century, is widely regarded as having stemmed from a bacteria carried by fleas that infested rats and eventually humans.

1602: The Dutch East India Co. was founded.

1916: Physicist Albert Einstein submitted for publication his theory of relativity, which refined Sir Isaac Newton’s law of universal gravitation and provided the modern description of gravity.

1923: Spanish artist Pablo Picasso’s first U.S. exhibit, 'Original Drawings by Pablo Picasso,' opened at the Arts Club of Chicago.

1965: President Lyndon Johnson told segregationist Alabama Gov. George Wallace that Johnson was calling up 10,000 members of the Alabama National Guard because Wallace refused to do so for a planned march from Selma to Montgomery in the wake of two previous failed attempts, including 'Bloody Sunday.'

Thursday, March 19:

1624: William Tucker was the first African child born in the colonies. Tucker was baptized in Jamestown, Virginia. There are unconfirmed reports that he lived to be 108 years old.

1918: Congress authorized daylight saving time and established five time zones.

1979: C-SPAN, also known as Cable Satellite Public Affairs Network, began broadcasting daily congressional business in the U.S. House.

2003: President George W. Bush announced the start of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq after its leader Saddam Hussein refused to leave.

Wednesday, March 18:

1766: As tensions mounted that eventually led to the Revolutionary War, the British Parliament repealed the Stamp Act nearly a year after it started taxing American colonists to pay for a British army in the colonies. In repeal, Parliament adopted the Declaratory Act that stated it could make laws for the colonies 'in all cases whatsoever.'

1865: The Confederate States Congress permanently adjourned near the end of the Civil War.

1877: President Rutherford Hayes appointed Frederick Douglass marshal of the District of Columbia.

2014: Russian and Crimean parliaments signed a treaty after Russia invaded the peninsula, which was part of Ukraine, the month before. This was the start of the Russia-Ukraine War that escalated with another invasion in 2022.

Tuesday, March 17:

461: Saint Patrick died in Saul, Ireland. St. Patrick’s Day later became a holiday in Ireland, the United States and many other countries.

1776: About 11,000 British soldiers and hundreds of sympathizers retreated from Boston by boat to end an eight-year occupation on what became known as 'Evacuation Day.' The Siege of Boston, the opening of the Revolutionary War, came after Gen. George Washington’s troops seized Dorchester Heights, where they placed fortifications and cannons in previous weeks.

2020: Kentucky Derby and French Open organizers postponed the historic sporting events to September from May due to the spreading coronavirus that caused the COVID-19 pandemic.