Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/April
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April 1: Independence Day in San Serriffe (1967); April Fools' Day; Assyrian New Year
- 1865 – Ordered to hold five forks, Confederate General George Pickett instead lost almost 3,000.
- 1918 – The British Armed Forces established a new branch to grant personnel the power to fly.
- 1969 – The British-born model Hawker Siddeley Harrier was introduced at a Royal Air Force event, becoming the only one in the 1960s to successfully perform on a short runway.
- 1976 – Two college dropouts and a business partner with cold feet founded what is now Apple Inc. to sell their handicrafts (pictured), eventually offering them at a market-price of US$666.66 because they liked repeating digits.
- 1999 – Under the terms of two laws passed by the Canadian Parliament in 1993, the Northwest Territories carved all of their inhabitants into two pieces.
- 2002 – The Netherlands, on their one-year anniversary of recognising a new form of marriage, legalized euthanasia.
More events: March 31 – April 1 – April 2
April 2: Malvinas Day in Argentina
- 1792 – By the Coinage Act, the United States Mint was founded and the U.S. currency was decimalized.
- 1801 – War of the Second Coalition: British forces led by Vice Admiral Horatio Nelson (pictured) defeated the Dano-Norwegian fleet at the Battle of Copenhagen off the coast of Copenhagen.
- 1982 – Argentine special forces invaded the Falkland Islands, sparking the Falklands War.
- 1984 – Aboard Soyuz T-11, Rakesh Sharma became the first Indian to be launched into space.
- 2002 – Operation Defensive Shield: Approximately 200 Palestinians fled advancing Israeli forces into the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, starting a month-long standoff.
More events: April 1 – April 2 – April 3
- 1882 – Jesse James, an outlaw in the American Old West, was shot in the back and killed for a bounty of US$5,000.
- 1895 – The libel trial instigated by Irish author Oscar Wilde began, eventually resulting in Wilde's arrest, trial and imprisonment on charges of homosexuality.
- 1922 – Joseph Stalin became the first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
- 1948 – The Marshall Plan (poster pictured), an economic recovery program established by U.S. Secretary of State George Marshall to assist the post-World War II re-building of Europe, was signed into law.
- 1971 – The Japanese tokusatsu television series Kamen Rider premiered, marking the beginning of the long-running Kamen Rider franchise.
- 1973 – On a New York City street, Motorola researcher Martin Cooper made the first public call on a handheld mobile phone.
More events: April 2 – April 3 – April 4
April 4: Qingming Festival in the Chinese calendar; Hansik in South Korea; (2008); Children's Day in Taiwan
- 1660 – Charles II of England issued the Declaration of Breda, describing his conditions for the Restoration of the crown of England.
- 1721 – Robert Walpole took office as First Lord of the Treasury, Chancellor of the Exchequer and Leader of the House of Commons, becoming the first British Prime Minister, though the term "Prime Minister" was not used at the time.
- 1949 – Twelve nations signed the North Atlantic Treaty, creating NATO.
- 1968 – American civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. (pictured) was assassinated on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee.
- 1969 – Surgeons Denton Cooley and Domingo Liotta implanted the first total artificial heart.
- 1976 – Norodom Sihanouk abdicated from the role of leader of Cambodia and was arrested by the Khmer Rouge.
More events: April 3 – April 4 – April 5
- 1242 – Northern Crusades: In the Battle of the Ice, Novgorod forces led by Alexander Nevsky rebuffed an invasion attempt by the Teutonic Knights at Lake Peipus on the present-day border of Estonia and Russia.
- 1614 – Native American Pocahontas (pictured) married English colonist John Rolfe in Virginia, and was christened Lady Rebecca.
- 1847 – Britain's first civic public park, Birkenhead Park in Birkenhead, Merseyside, England, opened.
- 1976 – The Tiananmen Incident, a protest against the repression of the Chinese regime nearing the end of the Cultural Revolution, took place in Tiananmen Square in Beijing.
- 1998 – Japan's Akashi-Kaikyo Bridge, linking Awaji Island and Kobe, opened to traffic, becoming the longest suspension bridge in the world to date with a main span length of 1,991 metres (6,532 ft).
More events: April 4 – April 5 – April 6
April 6: Cheti Chand, Gudi Padwa and Ugadi in various parts of India (2008); Tartan Day
- 1652 – Dutch sailor Jan van Riebeeck (pictured) established the first permanent European settlement in South Africa at what eventually became known as Cape Town.
- 1782 – Rama I succeeded King Taksin of Siam, founding the Chakri Dynasty.
- 1830 – Joseph Smith, Jr., Oliver Cowdery, David Whitmer and others formally organized the Church of Christ, starting the Latter Day Saint movement.
- 1886 – Vancouver, one of British Columbia's youngest cities, was incorporated.
- 1896 – The first modern Olympic Games opened in Athens.
- 1994 – The airplane carrying Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana and Burundian President Cyprien Ntaryamira was shot down as it prepared to land in Kigali, Rwanda, marking the beginning of the Rwandan Genocide.
More events: April 5 – April 6 – April 7
- 529 – Byzantine Emperor Justinian I (pictured) issued the first draft of the Corpus Juris Civilis, a first attempt to codify Roman law.
- 1348 – King Charles of Bohemia issued a Golden Bull to establish Charles University in Prague, the first university in Central Europe.
- 1868 – D'Arcy McGee, a Canadian Father Of Confederation, was assassinated – to date, the only Canadian political assassination at the federal level.
- 1945 – World War II: American forces sunk the Japanese battleship Yamato during Operation Ten-Go.
- 1948 – The United Nations established the World Health Organization.
- 1954 – Cold War: U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower introduced the domino theory, speculating that if one nation in a region came under the influence of communism, then its surrounding countries would follow in a domino effect.
More events: April 6 – April 7 – April 8
April 8: Hanamatsuri in Japan
- 217 – Roman Emperor Caracalla (bust pictured) was assassinated at a roadside near Harran.
- 1093 – Winchester Cathedral at Winchester in Hampshire, one of the largest cathedrals in England, was dedicated by Bishop Walkelin.
- 1341 – Italian scholar and poet Petrarch took the title poet laureate at a ceremony in Rome.
- 1886 – British Prime Minister William Gladstone introduced the first Irish Home Rule Bill into the British House of Commons.
- 1904 – France and the United Kingdom signed the entente cordiale, agreeing to a peaceful coexistence after centuries of intermittent conflict.
- 1904 – British occultist and writer Aleister Crowley began transcribing The Book of the Law, a Holy Book in Thelema.
- 1929 – Indian independence movement: Indian revolutionary Bhagat Singh with the help of Batukeshwar Dutt bombed the Central Assembly in Delhi.
More events: April 7 – April 8 – April 9
April 9: Araw ng Kagitingan in the Philippines
- 1865 – Confederate forces under Robert E. Lee surrendered to Union troops led by Ulysses S. Grant in Appomattox Court House, Virginia, effectively ending the American Civil War.
- 1917 – World War I: The Canadian Corps began the first wave of attacks at the Battle of Vimy Ridge in Vimy, France.
- 1942 – World War II: Japanese forces defeated Allied troops at the Battle of Bataan on the Bataan Peninsula in the Philippines before beginning to forcibly transfer more than 90,000 prisoners of war to prison camps in the Bataan Death March.
- 1959 – NASA announced the selection of the Mercury Seven (pictured), the first astronauts in Project Mercury.
- 1989 – An anti-Soviet demonstration in Tbilisi, Georgia was quashed by the Soviet army, resulting in 20 deaths and hundreds of injuries.
More events: April 8 – April 9 – April 10
- 1606 – The Charter of the Virginia Company of London was established by Royal Charter by King James I of England with the purpose of establishing colonial settlements in North America.
- 1815 – Mount Tambora in Indonesia began one of the most violent volcanic eruptions in recorded history, killing at least 71,000 people.
- 1919 – Mexican Revolutionary leader Emiliano Zapata (pictured) was shot to death near Ciudad Ayala, Morelos.
- 1959 – Crown Prince Akihito, the future Emperor of Japan, wedded Michiko, the first commoner to marry into the Japanese Imperial Family.
- 1998 – The Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom signed the Belfast Agreement in Belfast, a major step in the Northern Ireland peace process.
More events: April 9 – April 10 – April 11
April 11: Juan Santamaría Day in Costa Rica
- 1241 – Mongol invasion of Europe: Mongols led by Batu Khan and Subutai crushed the Hungarian army of King Béla IV at the Battle of Mohi near the Sajó River in Hungary.
- 1713 – The main agreements of the Treaty of Utrecht were signed in the Dutch city of Utrecht, helping to end the War of the Spanish Succession.
- 1888 – The Concertgebouw concert hall in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, was inaugurated.
- 1945 – World War II: American forces liberated the Buchenwald concentration camp near Weimar, Germany.
- 1979 – Ugandan–Tanzanian War: The Uganda National Liberation Army and Tanzanian forces captured Kampala, forcing Ugandan President Idi Amin to flee.
- 2002 – In a coup attempt, members of the Venezuelan military detained President Hugo Chávez (pictured) and demanded his resignation.
More events: April 10 – April 11 – April 12
April 12: Cosmonautics Day in Russia; Yuri's Night
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- 1204 – Alexios V fled Constantinople as forces under Boniface the Marquess of Montferrat and Enrico Dandolo the Doge of Venice entered and sacked the Byzantine capital, effectively ending the Fourth Crusade.
- 1606 – A royal decree established the Union Flag (pictured) to symbolise the Union of the Crowns, merging the designs of the Flag of England and the Flag of Scotland.
- 1861 – Confederate forces began firing at Fort Sumter in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina, starting the American Civil War.
- 1927 – Chinese Civil War: A large-scale purge of communists from the nationalist Kuomintang began in Shanghai.
- 1961 – Aboard Vostok 3KA-2, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first man to enter outer space, completing one orbit in a time of 108 minutes.
More events: April 11 – April 12 – April 13
- 1598 – King Henry IV of France (pictured) issued the Edict of Nantes, allowing freedom of religion to the Huguenots.
- 1873 – In the wake of a contested election for local political offices in Colfax, Louisiana, USA, armed white supremacists overpowered freedmen and the African American state militia trying to control the parish courthouse, killing over 100 of them.
- 1919 – British Indian Army troops opened fire on a peaceful gathering in Amritsar, Punjab in India, killing hundreds of unarmed men, women and children.
- 1943 – World War II: Germany announced the discovery of a mass grave of Polish prisoners-of-war executed by Soviet forces in the Katyn Forest Massacre.
- 1984 – Indian forces launched a preemptive attack on the disputed Siachen Glacier region of Kashmir, triggering a military conflict with Pakistan.
More events: April 12 – April 13 – April 14
April 14: Pohela Baishakh in Bengal; Vaisakhi in India; N'Ko Alphabet Day in West Africa
- 1471 – Wars of the Roses: The Yorkists under Edward IV (pictured) defeated the Lancastrians near the town of Barnet, killing Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick.
- 1865 – Actor and Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth shot U.S. President Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C.
- 1931 – King Alfonso XIII left Spain. The Second Spanish Republic was proclaimed by a provisional government led by Niceto Alcalá-Zamora.
- 1970 – An oxygen tank aboard Apollo 13 exploded, causing the NASA spacecraft to lose most of its oxygen and electrical power.
- 1978 – Thousands of Georgians demonstrated in Tbilisi against an attempt by the Supreme Soviet of the Georgian SSR to change the constitutional status of the Georgian language.
More events: April 13 – April 14 – April 15
April 15: Tax Day in the United States; Father Damien Day in Hawaii; Birthday of the Great Leader in North Korea
- 1755 – A Dictionary of the English Language by Samuel Johnson was first published.
- 1912 – The passenger liner RMS Titanic sank about two hours and forty minutes after colliding with an iceberg (pictured), killing over 1,500 people.
- 1947 – Jackie Robinson, the first African American to break the baseball color line, played his first game in Major League Baseball.
- 1986 – U.S. armed forces launched Operation El Dorado Canyon against Libya.
- 1989 – The death of former Chinese General Secretary Hu Yaobang triggered a series of events that led to the Tiananmen Square protests in Beijing.
More events: April 14 – April 15 – April 16
April 16: Education and Sharing Day in the United States (2008); Emancipation Day in Washington, D.C.
- 1853 – Indian Railways, the state-owned railway company of India, launched its first passenger service between Bombay and Thane.
- 1912 – Harriet Quimby (pictured) became the first woman to fly across the English Channel.
- 1917 – Vladimir Lenin returned to Petrograd from Switzerland, and joined the Bolshevik movement in Russia.
- 1943 – Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann discovered the psychedelic effects of the semisynthetic drug LSD.
- 1947 – American financier and presidential adviser Bernard Baruch first described the post-World War II tensions between the Soviet Union and the United States as a "cold war".
More events: April 15 – April 16 – April 17
April 17: Fast of the Firstborn (Judaism, 2008)
- 1797 – French Revolutionary Wars: British Lieutenant General Ralph Abercromby and a force of over 6,000 men invaded Spanish-controlled Puerto Rico.
- 1895 – The Empire of Japan and the Chinese Qing Empire signed the Treaty of Shimonoseki, an unequal treaty that ended the First Sino-Japanese War.
- 1942 – World War II: Captured French General Henri Giraud (pictured) escaped from German captivity in the Königstein Castle.
- 1961 – Armed Cuban exiles backed by the CIA invaded Cuba, landing in the Bay of Pigs, with the aim of ousting Fidel Castro.
- 1975 – The Khmer Rouge under Pol Pot captured Phnom Penh, ending the Cambodian Civil War, and established the Democratic Kampuchea.
- 1986 – The Netherlands and the Isles of Scilly declared peace, ending the Three Hundred and Thirty Five Years' War.
More events: April 16 – April 17 – April 18
April 18: Independence Day in Zimbabwe (1980)
- 1506 – Construction of the current St. Peter's Basilica (interior pictured) in Vatican City, to replace the old St. Peter's Basilica built in the 4th century, began.
- 1942 – World War II: Sixteen B-25 Mitchell bombers from the aircraft carrier USS Hornet carried out the Doolittle Raid, the first Allied attack on the Japanese home islands.
- 1988 – Iran–Iraq War: U.S. naval forces launched Operation Praying Mantis in retaliation for the Iranian mining of the Persian Gulf and the subsequent damage to the American frigate USS Samuel B. Roberts.
- 1992 – General Abdul Rashid Dostum revolted against the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan and allied with Ahmad Shah Massoud to capture the Afghan capital of Kabul.
- 1996 – Israeli forces shelled Qana, Lebanon during Operation Grapes of Wrath, killing over 100 civilians and injuring over 110 others at a UN compound.
More events: April 17 – April 18 – April 19
April 19: Passover begins at sunset (Judaism, 2008); Feast of Saint Alphege (Western Christianity);
- 1713 – With no living male heirs, Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI issued the Pragmatic Sanction to ensure one of his daughters would inherit the Habsburg monarchy.
- 1775 – The American Revolutionary War began with the Battles of Lexington and Concord in Middlesex County, Massachusetts.
- 1943 – Nazi German troops entered the Warsaw Ghetto to round up the remaining Jews (pictured), sparking the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, the first mass uprising in Poland against the Nazi occupation during the Holocaust.
- 1971 – The first space station, Salyut 1, was launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome near Tyuratam, Kazakh SSR, USSR.
- 1995 – A car bomb was detonated in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, USA, killing 168 people and injuring over 800 others.
More events: April 18 – April 19 – April 20
April 20: Palm Sunday in Eastern Christianity (2008); Ridván begins at sunset in the Bahá'í Faith; 4/20 in cannabis culture
- 1653 – Oliver Cromwell dissolved the Rump Parliament of the Commonwealth of England by force, eventually replacing it with the Barebone's Parliament.
- 1862 – French chemist Louis Pasteur (pictured) and physiologist Claude Bernard completed the first test on pasteurization.
- 1884 – Pope Leo XIII published the encyclical Humanum Genus, denouncing Freemasonry, the doctrine of a separation of church and state, and many other principles, some of which are today equated by most people with the founding ones of the United States.
- 1968 – British Member of Parliament Enoch Powell made his controversial "Rivers of Blood" speech in opposition to immigration and anti-discrimination legislation, resulting in his removal from the Shadow Cabinet.
- 1978 – Soviet fighters shot down Korean Air Lines Flight 902 after it violated Soviet airspace and failed to respond to Soviet interceptors.
More events: April 19 – April 20 – April 21
April 21: Patriots' Day in Massachusetts and Maine (2008); Grounation Day in the Rastafari movement; First day of Ridván in the Bahá'í Faith; Tiradentes Day in Brazil
- 753 BC – Romulus and Remus founded Rome, according to the calculations by Roman scholar Varro Reatinus.
- 1836 – Texan forces led by Sam Houston (pictured) defeated General Antonio López de Santa Anna and his Mexican troops in the Battle of San Jacinto near La Porte, the decisive battle in the Texas Revolution.
- 1894 – Norway formally adopted the Krag-Jørgensen, a repeating bolt action rifle designed by the Norwegians Ole Herman Johannes Krag and Erik Jørgensen, as the main firearm of its armed forces.
- 1918 – The German fighter pilot known as "The Red Baron", the most successful flying ace of World War I with 80 confirmed air combat victories, was shot down and killed near Vaux-sur-Somme in France.
- 1967 – Colonel Georgios Papadopoulos overthrew the government of Prime Minister Panagiotis Kanellopoulos in a coup d'état, establishing the Regime of the Colonels in Greece.
- 1970 – In response to a long-running dispute over wheat quotas, the Principality of Hutt River proclaimed their secession from Western Australia, but to this day has never been formally acknowledged by the Commonwealth of Australia or any other international entity.
More events: April 20 – April 21 – April 22
- 1500 – Portuguese explorer Pedro Álvares Cabral (pictured) and his crew became the first Europeans to sight Brazil when they spotted Monte Pascoal.
- 1889 – Over 50,000 people rushed to claim a piece of the available two million acres (8,000 km²) in the Unassigned Lands, the present-day U.S. state of Oklahoma. Within hours, both Oklahoma City and Guthrie had established cities of around 10,000 people.
- 1915 – The Germans released chlorine gas as a chemical weapon in the Second Battle of Ypres, killing over 5,000 soldiers within ten minutes by asphyxiation in the first large-scale successful use of poison gas in World War I.
- 1930 – France, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States signed the London Naval Treaty, regulating submarine warfare and limiting military ship building.
- 1945 – About 600 prisoners of the Jasenovac concentration camp in the Independent State of Croatia revolted, but only 80 managed to escape while the other 520 were killed by the Croatian Ustaše regime.
- 1993 – The first version of Mosaic, created by computer programmers Marc Andreessen and Eric Bina at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, was released, becoming the first popular World Wide Web browser and Gopher client.
More events: April 21 – April 22 – April 23
April 23: 150th birthday of physicist Max Planck; Administrative Professionals' Day in Canada and the United States (2008); World Book and Copyright Day; Children's Day in Turkey; St George's Day in various countries
- 1661 – Charles II was crowned King of England, Ireland, and Scotland at Westminster Abbey.
- 1827 – Irish mathematician and physicist William Rowan Hamilton (pictured) presented his Theory of Systems of Rays.
- 1920 – The Grand National Assembly of Turkey, the Turkish unicameral parliament, was founded in Ankara in the midst of the Turkish War of Independence.
- 1923 – Gdynia was inaugurated as a Polish seaport on the coast of Gdańsk Bay, a southwestern bay of the Baltic Sea.
- 1961 – Dressed in his 1940s-vintage general's uniform, President Charles de Gaulle delivered a televised speech calling on the military personnel and civilians of France to oppose the Algiers putsch, a coup d'état attempt against him.
- 1968 – Students protesting the Vietnam War at Columbia University in New York City took over administration buildings and shut down the university.
More events: April 22 – April 23 – April 24
April 24: Great Thursday in Eastern Christianity (2008); Republic Day in the Gambia; Genocide Remembrance Day in Armenia
- 1800 – The Library of Congress (pictured), today the de facto national library of the United States, was established as part of an act of Congress providing for the transfer of the nation's capital from Philadelphia to Washington, D.C.
- 1877 – Russia declared war on the Ottoman Empire, starting the Russo-Turkish War.
- 1915 – The Armenian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire began with the arrest and deportation of hundreds of prominent Armenians in Constantinople.
- 1967 – The Soviet spacecraft Soyuz 1 crashed in Siberia during its return to Earth, killing cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov, the first in-flight fatality in the history of spaceflight.
- 1990 – The Hubble Space Telescope was launched by the Space Shuttle Discovery in mission STS-31.
More events: April 23 – April 24 – April 25
April 25: Great Friday (Eastern Christianity, 2008); Arbor Day in the United States (2008); ANZAC Day in Australia and New Zealand; Liberation Day in Italy; Red Hat Society Day
- 1719 – Robinson Crusoe, a novel by English author Daniel Defoe (pictured) about a castaway who spends 28 years on a remote tropical island near Venezuela, was first published.
- 1792 – The guillotine was first used to carry out capital punishment in France, with crowds marvelling at the machine's speed and precision.
- 1898 – Spanish-American War: The United States retroactively declared war on Spain, stating that a state of war between the two countries had already existed for the past couple of days.
- 1953 – Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid by molecular biologists James Watson and Francis Crick was first published in the scientific journal Nature, describing the discovery of the double helix structure of DNA.
- 1983 – Cold War: Replying to her letter in which she expressed her fears about the tensions between the Soviet Union and the United States, Soviet leader Yuri Andropov invited American schoolgirl Samantha Smith to visit Moscow, Leningrad and the Artek Young Pioneer camp.
More events: April 24 – April 25 – April 26
April 26: Holy and Great Saturday (Eastern Christianity, 2008)
- 1478 – In a conspiracy to replace the Medici family as rulers of the Florentine Republic, the Pazzi family attacked Lorenzo de' Medici (pictured) and killed his brother Giuliano during High Mass at the Florence Duomo.
- 1937 – Spanish Civil War: The Bombing of Guernica by the Condor Legion of the German Luftwaffe resulted in a devastating firestorm.
- 1964 – Tanganyika and Zanzibar merged to form Tanzania.
- 1986 – The Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant near Chernobyl, Ukrainian SSR suffered a steam explosion, resulting in a fire and a nuclear meltdown.
- 2002 – Expelled student Robert Steinhäuser murdered 16 people and wounded 7 others before committing suicide in the Erfurt school shooting in Erfurt, Germany.
More events: April 25 – April 26 – April 27
April 27: Easter in Eastern Christianity (2008); Independence Day in Togo and Sierra Leone; Freedom Day in South Africa
- 1296 – In the first battle of the First War of Scottish Independence, the English defeated the Scots near Dunbar, Scotland.
- 1565 – Conquistador Miguel López de Legazpi and 500 armed soldiers arrived at Cebu and established the first Spanish settlement in the Philippines.
- 1865 – An explosion destroyed the steamboat Sultana (pictured) on the Mississippi River, killing 1,700 passengers.
- 1909 – Abdul Hamid II, the last Sultan of the Ottoman Empire to rule with absolute power, was overthrown by Mehmed V.
- 1967 – The Expo 67 World's Fair opened in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, with over 50 million visitors and 62 nations participating.
- 1992 – Betty Boothroyd became the first female Speaker of the British House of Commons.
- 1993 – Members of the Zambia national football team were killed in a plane crash off Libreville, Gabon en route to Dakar, Senegal to play a 1994 FIFA World Cup qualifying match against the Senegal national team.
More events: April 26 – April 27 – April 28
April 28: Easter Monday (Eastern Christianity, 2008); Festival of Matsu in Southeast Asia (2008); International Workers' Memorial Day
- 1192 – Third Crusade: Conrad of Montferrat, the elected King of Jerusalem, was fatally stabbed by members of the Hashshashin.
- 1611 – The University of Santo Tomas in Manila, one of the oldest existing universities in Asia and one of the world's largest Catholic universities in terms of enrollment, was founded.
- 1789 – Fletcher Christian led a mutiny aboard the Royal Navy ship HMAV Bounty against its commander William Bligh (pictured).
- 1923 – London's Wembley Stadium, then known as Empire Stadium, was opened to the public for the first time and held the 1923 FA Cup Final between Bolton Wanderers and West Ham United football clubs.
- 1952 – The Treaty of San Francisco entered into force, ending the occupation of Japan by the former Allied Powers of World War II.
- 1978 – Mohammed Daoud Khan, the first President of Afghanistan, was overthrown and assassinated in a coup d'état by pro-communist supporters.
- 2001 – Dennis Tito became the world's first fee-paying space tourist, riding the Russian Soyuz TM-32 spacecraft to the International Space Station.
More events: April 27 – April 28 – April 29
April 29: Shōwa Day in Japan; International Dance Day
- 1770 – British explorer James Cook and the crew of HM Bark Endeavour made their first landfall on Australia on the coast of Botany Bay in present-day Sydney.
- 1882 – German inventor Ernst Werner von Siemens (pictured) began operating his Elektromote, the world's first trolleybus, in a Berlin suburb.
- 1916 – World War I: Khalil Pasha of the Ottoman Army accepted the surrender of Major-General Charles Townshend and the British Mesopotamian Expeditionary Force, ending the Siege of Kut.
- 1968 – The controversial musical Hair, a product of the hippie counter-culture and sexual revolution of the 1960s, opened at the Biltmore Theatre on Broadway, with its songs becoming anthems of the anti-Vietnam War movement.
- 1992 – The acquittal of policemen who had beaten motorist Rodney King sparked civil unrest in Los Angeles that lasted for six days and killed over 50 people.
More events: April 28 – April 29 – April 30
April 30: Queen's Day in the Netherlands; Walpurgis Night in various European countries; Reunification Day in Vietnam
- 313 – Roman Emperor Licinius unified the eastern half of the empire under his rule.
- 1789 – George Washington (pictured) took the oath as the first President of the United States of America at Federal Hall in New York City.
- 1945 – World War II: As Allied forces were closing in on Berlin, Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun committed suicide in the Führerbunker after being married for one day.
- 1975 – North Vietnamese troops captured Saigon, ending the Vietnam War with the unconditional surrender of South Vietnam.
- 1993 – CERN announced that the World Wide Web would be free to everyone.
More events: April 29 – April 30 – May 1
Selected anniversaries/On this day archive
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