65 – The freedman Milichus betrayed Piso’s plot to kill the Emperor Nero and all the conspirators are arrested.
797 – Empress Irene organizes a conspiracy against her son, the Byzantine emperor Constantine VI. He is deposed and blinded. Shortly after Constantine dies of his wounds, and Irene proclaims herself basileus.
1529 – Beginning of the Protestant Reformation: After the Second Diet of Speyer bans Lutheranism, a group of rulers (German: Fürst) and independent cities (German: Reichsstadt) protests the reinstatement of the Edict of Worms.
1713 – With no living male heirs, Charles VI, Holy Roman Emperor, issues the Pragmatic Sanction of 1713 to ensure that Habsburg lands and the Austrian throne would be inherited by his daughter, Maria Theresa of Austria (not actually born until 1717).
1770 – Captain James Cook sights the eastern coast of what is now Australia.
1770 – Marie Antoinette marries Louis XVI in a proxy wedding.
1775 – American Revolutionary War: The war begins with an American victory in Concord during the battles of Lexington and Concord.
1782 – John Adams secures the Dutch Republic’s recognition of the United States as an independent government. The house which he had purchased in The Hague, Netherlands becomes the first American embassy.
1824 – Lord Byron, English-Scottish poet (b. 1788) died.
1839 – The Treaty of London establishes Belgium as a kingdom and guaranteeing its neutrality.
1861 – American Civil War: Baltimore riot of 1861: A pro-Secession mob in Baltimore, Maryland, attacks United States Army troops marching through the city.
1865 – Funeral service for Abraham Lincoln is held in the East Room of the White House.
1882 – Charles Darwin, English biologist and theorist (b. 1809) died.
1892 – Charles Duryea claims to have driven the first automobile in the United States, in Springfield, Massachusetts.
1894 – Elizabeth Dilling, American author and activist (d. 1966) was born.
1897 – Léo Taxil exposes his own fabrications concerning Freemasonry
1906 – Pierre Curie, French physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1859) died.
1919 – Leslie Irvin of the United States makes the first successful voluntary free-fall parachute jump using a new kind of self-contained parachute.
1927 – Mae West is sentenced to ten days in jail for obscenity for her play Sex.
1928 – The 125th and final fascicle of the Oxford English Dictionary is published.
1928 – Alexis Korner, French-English singer-songwriter and guitarist (Blues Incorporated and Collective Consciousness Society) (d. 1984) was born.
1930 – Dick Sargent, American actor (Bewitched) (d. 1994) was born.
1936 – In the biggest show of military strength since World War 1 Germany pays homage to Hitler with a show of 300 tanks
1940 – Genya Ravan, American singer-songwriter and producer (Goldie & the Gingerbreads and Ten Wheel Drive) was born.
1942 – Alan Price, English keyboard player and songwriter (The Animals) was born.
1943 – Swiss chemist Dr. Albert Hofmann deliberately takes LSD for the first time.
1943 – On the eve of Passover, April 19, 1943, the police and SS auxiliary forces entered the Ghetto under the command of SS-Oberführer Ferdinand von Sammern-Frankenegg, planning to clean out insurgents who had begun an uprising in January. But Jewish insurgents, who shot and launched Molotov cocktails and hand grenades at them from alleyways forced them to halt the exercise and withdraw. SS-Oberführer Ferdinand von Sammern-Frankenegg was replaced by Brigadeführer Jürgen Stroop who proceeded with a better organized assault that included artillery support and on April 29, 1943 , the Jewish resistance was crushed. Following two years of misery for thousands of Jews forced to live in the Warsaw Ghetto by the Nazi’s where they had been starved, and living with disease and deportations to concentration camps and extermination camps which had dropped the population of the ghetto from an estimated 450,000 to approximately 71,000. The Nazi’s planned effort to transport the remaining ghetto population to the Treblinka extermination camp caused the Jewish people to begin a revolt against the Nazi’s beginning on January 18th , 1943.
1944 – James Heckman, American economist, Nobel Prize laureate was born.
1946 – Tim Curry, English actor and singer was born.
1947 – Mark Volman, American singer-songwriter and guitarist (The Turtles, Flo & Eddie, and The Mothers of Invention) was born.
1951 – General Douglas MacArthur retires from the military.
1956 – Actress Grace Kelly marries Prince Rainier of Monaco.
1957 – Tony Martin, English singer-songwriter (Black Sabbath, Giuntini Project, and Empire) was born.
1965 – Suge Knight, American record producer, co-founded Death Row Records was was born.
1968 – Ashley Judd, American actress was born.
1969 – Jesse James, American motorcycle builder, founded West Coast Choppers was born.
1971 – Vietnam War: Vietnam Veterans Against the War begin a five-day demonstration in Washington, D.C..
1971 – Charles Manson is sentenced to death (later commuted life imprisonment) for conspiracy to commit the Tate/LaBianca murders.
1978 – James Franco, American actor, director, producer, and screenwriter was born.
1985 – U.S.S.R performs nuclear tests at Eastern Kazakhstan/Semipalatinsk.
1985 – 200 ATF and FBI agents lay siege to the compound of the neo-Nazi survivalist group The Covenant, The Sword, and the Arm of the Lord in Arkansas. The CSA surrenders two days later.
1987 – The Simpsons premieres as a short cartoon on The Tracey Ullman Show.
1993 – The 51-day FBI siege of the Branch Davidian building outside Waco, Texas, USA, ends when a fire breaks out. Eighty-one people die.
1993 – David Koresh, American religious leader (b. 1959) died.
1995 – Oklahoma City bombing: The Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, USA, is bombed, killing 168.
1997 – Eldon Hoke, American singer and drummer (The Mentors and The Screamers) (b. 1958) died.
1997 – The Red River Flood of 1997 overwhelms the city of Grand Forks, North Dakota. Fire breaks out and spreads in downtown Grand Forks, but high water levels hamper efforts to reach the fire, leading to the destruction of 11 buildings.
1999 – The German Bundestag returns to Berlin, the first German parliamentary body to meet there since the Reichstag was dissolved in 1933.
2011 – Fidel Castro resigns from the Communist Party of Cuba’s central committee after 45 years of holding the title.
2011 – Elisabeth Sladen, English actress (b. 1946) died.
2012 – Leopold David de Rothschild, English financier and philanthropist (b. 1927) died.
2012 – Greg Ham, Australian saxophonist, songwriter, and actor (Men at Work) (b. 1953) died.
2012 – Levon Helm, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and actor (The Band) (b. 1940) died.
2013 – Boston Marathon bombings suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev is killed in a shootout with police. His brother Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is captured while hiding in a boat inside a backyard in Watertown, Massachusetts.
2013 – Al Neuharth, American journalist, author, and publisher, founded USA Today (b. 1924) died.