1776 – Adam Weishaupt founds secret society of Illuminati
1864 – -8] Battle at Alexandria, Louisiana (Red River Campaign)
1912 – The Beverly Hills Hotel opens on Sunset Boulevard in Beverly Hills, California
1940 – Summer Olympics (scheduled for Helsinki) are cancelled by the Finnish OC because of WWII
1945 – About 1,000 citizens of Demmin in Germany, commit suicide provoked by occupation by Soviet Red Army
1950 – Mayor of Brussels reluctantly bans May Day parade
1979 – Home rule introduced to Kalaallit Nunaat (Greenland)
1982 – 108th Kentucky Derby: Ed Delahoussaye wins aboard Gato Del Sol, the first of consecutive Derby victories (1983 Sunny’s Halo)
1984 – Mick Fleetwood (of Fleetwood Mac) files for bankruptcy
1992 – Oakland outfielder Rickey Henderson steals his 1,000th MLB career base in A’s 7-6 win at Detroit
Category: Historical Events
Historical Events for 30th April 2024
1695 – William Congreve’s Restoration comedy “Love for Love” premieres in London
1808 – 1st practical typewriter finished by Italian Pellegrini Turri
1897 – English physicist and head of the Cavendish laboratory J. J. Thomson announces his discovery of the electron in a lecture to the Royal Institution
1911 – Portugal approves female suffrage
1978 – British film “The Stud” starring Joan Collins, based on the book by her sister Jackie Collins premieres in UK
1980 – Terrorists seize Iranian Embassy in London
1986 – Bill Elliott sets all-time NASCAR qualifying record, winning pole for the Winston 500 at Talladega Superspeedway; 212.809 mph (342.483 km/h; 44.998 seconds)
1989 – Pope John Paul II beatifies Victoire Rasoamanarivo of Madagascar
2013 – Willem-Alexander becomes the first male Monarch of Netherlands in 123 years, following the abdication of his mother, Queen Beatrix
2020 – South Korea reports no new domestic cases of COVID-19 for 1st time, their virus cases peaked Feb 29
Historical Events for 29th April 2024
1540 – Emperor Charles declares all privileges of Ghent ended
1670 – Clemens X [Emilio Bonaventura Altieri] elected Pope
1864 – -30] Skirmish at Jenkins’ Ferry, Arkansas
1903 – Limestone slide at Turtle Mountain drops 30 million cubic metres (82 million tons) on to town of Frank, Alberta, Canada, kills 70-90 residents
1953 – The first U.S. experimental 3D-TV broadcast showed an episode of Space Patrol on Los Angeles ABC affiliate KECA-TV
1982 – 17th Academy of Country Music Awards: Alabama, Merle Haggard, and Barbara Mandrell win
1985 – 17th NASA Space Shuttle Mission (51-B): Challenger 7 launches
1995 – Longest sausage ever, at 28.77 miles, made in Kitchener, Ontario
2015 – German Measles is declared eradicated from North and South America – 1st world region to do so
2016 – Iranian run-off elections give moderates and reforms a majority in parliament
Historical Events for 28th April 2024
1901 – Cleveland’s Bock Baker gives up a record 23 singles as White Sox beat Blues (Cleveland Blues!) 13-1
1919 – American stuntman and parachute developer Leslie Irvin (23) makes first premeditated free-fall parachute jump from a plane above US the Army Air Service’s McCook Field near Dayton, Ohio
1955 – WBIQ TV channel 10 in Birmingham, Alabama (PBS) begins broadcasting
1960 – WIPM TV channel 3 in Mayaguez, PR (PBS) begins broadcasting
1965 – Richard Helms replaces Marshall S. Carter as deputy director of CIA
1991 – Space Shuttle STS 39 (Discovery 12) launched
1993 – Carlo Ciampi forms Italian government with ex-communists
1997 – Ringo Starr’s fourth All-Starr Band debuts in concert; members include: Peter Frampton, Jack Bruce, Gary Brooker, Simon Kirke, and Mark Rivera
2007 – ICC Men’s Cricket ODI World Cup, Kensington Oval, Bridgetown, Barbados: Australia 3-peat with 53 run win over Sri Lanka; Player of the Match: Adam Gilchrist (AUS) 149 (104) and 2 catches
2018 – Shaquem Griffin is the first one-handed person to be drafted into the NFL; selected by Seattle Seahawks
Historical Events for 27th April 2024
1509 – Pope Julius II excommunicates Italian state of Venice
1861 – US President Abraham Lincoln suspends writ of habeas corpus (US Civil War)
1875 – The New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NYSPCC), the world’s 1st such agency is incorporated
1905 – World Exposition opens in Liège
1945 – 2nd Republic of Austria forms
1953 – 1st general elections in British Guiana, won by the People’s Progressive Party with Cheddi Jagan first person of Indian descent to be elected head of government outside South Asia
1956 – Burma Premier U Nu’s Volksliga voor Vrijheid loses election
1999 – Nevada State Museum discovers the oldest mummy in North America – on the shelves of their own museum, after the Spirit Cave Mummy radiocarbon dates to over 9,400 years old
2005 – The superjumbo jet aircraft Airbus A380 makes its first flight from Toulouse, France
2018 – Mass protests across Spain after 5 men convicted of sexual abuse but not rape of teenage girl during Running of the Bulls festival in Pamplona
Historical Events for 26th April 2024
1912 – 1st homerun hit at Fenway Park (Hugh Bradley, Red Sox)
1928 – Madame Tussaud’s waxwork exhibition reopens in London after a fire
1935 – Frank Boucher is given NHL’s Lady Byng Trophy for sportsmanship permanently for winning it 7 of 11 years
1956 – First modern container ship, the Ideal X, leaves Port Newark, New Jersey for Houston, Texas
1966 – International Olympic Committee votes to award German city of Munich the right to host the 1972 Summer Olympic Games
1971 – San Francisco lightship replaced by automatic buoy
1992 – Revival of Henrik Ibsen’s stage drama “The Master Builder”, directed by Tony Randall, closes at Belasco Theater, NYC, after 45 performances
1995 – Baseball season begins after lengthy strike
2018 – Serial killer “Golden State Killer” identified after 40 years as a former police officer, responsible for 12 killings, 50 rapes in California
2021 – President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announces Turkey will go into full lockdown till May 17 to a curb COVID-19 surge and world’s 4th highest caseload
Historical Events for 25th April 2024
1862 – After the Battle of Forts Jackson and St. Philip, Union forces under Flag Officer David Farragut request the surrender New Orleans, LA, despite being largely defenseless armed mobs reuse
1961 – Unmanned Mercury test explodes on launch pad
1962 – Cleve sends Harry Chiti to Mets for a player to be named later, on June 15 the Mets send Chiti back to Cleveland
1962 – Lion and Tiger Veldt at Cleveland Metroparks Zoo is dedicated (Cleveland, Ohio)
1971 – About 200,000 anti-Vietnam War protesters march on Washington, D.C.
1976 – Portugal adopts new constitution
1977 – USSR performs nuclear test at the Semipalatinsk Test Site in northeast Kazakhstan
1988 – American news program “Nightline” goes on location to Jerusalem Israel
1994 – King Azlan Shah of Malaysia resigns
2009 – Elijah Wood is honored with the Midnight Award by the San Francisco International Film Festival
Historical Events for 24th April 2024
1655 – Piedmontese Easter Massacre: Troops of Charles Emmanuel II, Duke of Savoy, slaughter upwards of 4,000 Waldensian civilians for non-compliance with the Edict of 25 January 1655, which called for the expulsion or conversion of non-Catholic householders in Piedmont, Duchy of Savoy
1841 – Inventor and engineer Squire Temple of Utica, New York, granted a patent for an iron truss bridge
1865 – Fire alarm and police telegraph system put into operation in San Francisco
1895 – Canadian-American adventurer Joshua Slocum sets sail from Boston, Massachusetts on a solo around-the-world voyage aboard ‘Spray’, an 11.2-m oyster sloop
1962 – 1st Lockheed A-12 is taxi tested
1969 – US B-52’s drop 3,000 ton bombs at Cambodian boundary
1979 – US State of Georgia designates Ray Charles’ rendition of “Georgia On My Mind” (written by Hoagy Carmichael and Stuart Gorrell) as official state song
1996 – The UN and Iraq end a third round of negotiations over Iraq’s possible sale of $1 billion of oil for 90 days for a 180-day trial period
2018 – US President Donald Trump hosts his first state dinner for visiting French President Emmanuel Macron
2023 – India surpasses China as the worlds most populous country according to UN estimates, with 1,425,775,850 people (estimated to reach 1.7 billion by 2064)
Historical Events for 23rd April 2024
1789 – President-elect George Washington moves into Franklin House, New York, first official resident of a US President
1849 – Russian writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky and members of the Petrashevsky Circle are arrested in St. Petersburg
1860 – Democratic convention in Charleston, South Carolina divided over slavery
1924 – British Empire Exhibition opens at Wembley, London
1931 – US gangster film “The Public Enemy” starring James Cagney and Jean Harlow premieres
1952 – Crude oil pipeline from Kirkuk, Iraq to Banias, Syria completed
1959 – 1st heliport in Britain opens in London
1985 – Brooklyn College soccer team wins Nepal’s invitational
1989 – Kareem Abdul-Jabbar scores 10 points in his last game as a Laker in a 121-117 win over Seattle SuperSonics at the LA Forum
2015 – Kawhi Leonard is named the NBA Defensive Player of the Year for the first time
Historical Events for 22nd April 2024
1164 – Raynald of Dassel names Guido di Crema as anti-pope Paschalis III
1793 – President Washington attends opening of Rickett’s, 1st circus in US
1823 – Baltic Club (Exchange) forms in London
1969 – Robin Knox-Johnston ends 312 days of non-stop sailing to become the 1st person to perform a single-handed non-stop circumnavigation of the globe
1977 – Shimon Peres becomes Acting Prime Minister of Israel
1983 – Stern mag announces major historical find-discovery of 60 volume personal diaries written by Adolf Hitler (turned out to be a hoax)
1986 – US performs nuclear test at Nevada Test Site
1992 – Plane crash at Perris Valley Airport California, kills 16 parachutists
1993 – Seattle Mariner Chris Basio no-hits Boston Red Sox
2000 – In a pre-dawn raid, federal agents seize six-year-old Elián González from his relatives’ home in Miami, Florida.