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On this day: April 13

2015-04-13T00:00:00Z

April 13: Vaisakhi (Sikhism); Thingyan begins in Burma; Lao New Year in Laos; Thai New Year's Day

1742 – Messiah, an oratorio by baroque composer George Frideric Handel (pictured), premiered in Dublin.
1829 – The Roman Catholic Relief Act was granted Royal Assent, removing the most substantial restrictions on Catholics in the United Kingdom.
1919 – British Indian Army troops massacred hundreds of unarmed men, women and children who were attending a peaceful gathering at the Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar, Punjab, India.
1945 – World War II: Soviet and Bulgarian forces captured Vienna in Austria.
2009 – Twenty-three people died in a homeless hostel fire in Kamień Pomorski, Poland, the country's deadliest fire since 1980.

More anniversaries: April 12 – April 13 – April 14

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On this day: April 14

2015-04-14T00:00:00Z

April 14: Bengali New Year; Cambodian New Year, Tamil New Year, and other New Year festivals in Asia (2015); Day of the Georgian language in Georgia (1978)

193 – Septimius Severus seized the throne of the Roman Empire after the death of Pertinax during the Year of the Five Emperors.
966 – After his marriage to the Christian Dobrawa of Bohemia, the pagan ruler of the Polans, Mieszko I, converted to Christianity, an event considered to be the founding of the Polish state.
1865 – Actor and Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth (pictured) fatally shot U.S. President Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C.
1935 – A massive dust storm swept across Oklahoma and northern Texas, removing an estimated 300,000,000 short tons (270,000,000 t) of topsoil.
1999 – A storm dropped an estimated 500,000 tonnes of hailstones in Sydney and along the east coast of New South Wales, causing about A$2.3 billion in damages, the costliest natural disaster in Australian insurance history.

More anniversaries: April 13 – April 14 – April 15

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On this day: April 15

2015-04-15T00:00:00Z

April 15: Father Damien Day in Hawaii; Day of the Sun in North Korea; Tax Day in the United States (2015)

1071 – Norman forces, under the command of Robert Guiscard, conquered the city of Bari, the capital of the Catepanate of Italy.
1638 – A rebellion by Catholic Japanese peasants in Shimabara over increased taxes was put down by the Tokugawa shogunate, resulting in greater enforcement of the policy of national seclusion.
1912 – The passenger liner RMS Titanic sank (pictured) about two hours and forty minutes after colliding with an iceberg, killing more than 1,500 people.
1986 – U.S. armed forces began bombing Libya to try to reduce that country's ability to support international terrorism.
1995 – At a GATT ministerial meeting in Marrakesh, Morocco, representatives of 124 countries and the European Communities signed an agreement to establish the World Trade Organization.

More anniversaries: April 14 – April 15 – April 16

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On this day: April 16

2015-04-16T00:00:00Z

April 16: Queen Margrethe II's birthday in Denmark; Yom HaShoah in Israel (2015)

1520 – Citizens of Toledo, Castile, who were opposed to the rule of the foreign-born Charles V, rose up in revolt when the royal government attempted to unseat radical city councilors.
1847 – New Zealand Wars: A minor Māori chief was accidentally shot by a junior British Army officer in the Petre settlement of New Zealand's North Island, triggering the Wanganui Campaign.
1912 – American Harriet Quimby (pictured) became the first woman to fly across the English Channel.
1945 – World War II: Nearly one million Soviet soldiers began the Battle of the Seelow Heights against the "Gates of Berlin".
2007 – In one of the deadliest shooting incidents in United States history, a gunman killed 32 people and wounded over 20 more before committing suicide at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, Virginia.

More anniversaries: April 15 – April 16 – April 17

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On this day: April 17

2015-04-17T00:00:00Z

April 17: Evacuation Day in Syria (1946)

1080 – On the death of his brother Harald III, Canute IV, who later became the first Dane to be canonized, became King of Denmark.
1907 – Brazil became the third country in the world to start construction on a dreadnought battleship (pictured), sparking a vastly expensive South American naval arms race.
1951 – The Peak District was designated the first national park in the United Kingdom.
1975 – The Khmer Rouge under Pol Pot captured Phnom Penh, ending the Cambodian Civil War, and established Democratic Kampuchea.
2013 – An ammonium nitrate explosion occurred at a fertilizer company facility in West, Texas, US, killing 15 people and injuring 160 others.

More anniversaries: April 16 – April 17 – April 18

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On this day: April 18

2015-04-18T00:00:00Z

April 18: Easter Saturday (Eastern Christianity, 2015); Independence Day in Zimbabwe (1980)

1506 – Construction of the current St. Peter's Basilica (interior pictured) in Vatican City, to replace the old basilica built in the 4th century, began.
1775 – American Revolutionary War: Colonists Paul Revere, William Dawes, and Samuel Prescott began a "midnight ride" from Boston to Lexington to warn residents about the impending arrival of British troops.
1847 – Mexican–American War: Winfield Scott's United States troops out-flanked and drove Santa Anna's larger Mexican army from a strong defensive position in the Battle of Cerro Gordo.
1938 – Superman, created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, made his debut in Action Comics #1, the first true superhero comic book.
1996 – Israeli forces shelled Qana, Lebanon, during Operation Grapes of Wrath, killing more than 100 civilians and injuring more than 110 others at a UN compound.

More anniversaries: April 17 – April 18 – April 19

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On this day: April 19

2015-04-19T00:00:00Z

April 19: 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 lands.
1809 – War of the Fifth Coalition: The French won a hard-fought victory over Austria in Lower Bavaria when their opponents withdrew from the field of battle that evening.
1927 – American actress Mae West was sentenced to ten days in jail for "corrupting the morals of youth" for her play Sex.
1960 – Students in South Korea held a nationwide pro-democracy protest (pictured) against President Syngman Rhee, eventually forcing him to resign.
1995 – A car bomb destroyed much of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, killing 168 people and injuring over 800 others.

More anniversaries: April 18 – April 19 – April 20

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On this day: April 20

2015-04-20T00:00:00Z

April 20: Ridván begins at sunset (Bahá'í Faith); Patriots' Day in Maine and Massachusetts (2015); 4/20 (cannabis culture)

1792 – After Foreign Minister Charles François Dumouriez presented the French Legislative Assembly with a long list of grievances against Austria, France declared war to begin the French Revolutionary Wars.
1818 – Four days after the Court of King's Bench in England upheld a murder suspect's right to trial by battle in Ashford v Thornton, the plaintiff declined to fight, allowing the defendant to go free.
1914 – A fire and a gun battle between the Colorado National Guard and striking coal miners in Ludlow, Colorado, led to 17 deaths in the Ludlow Massacre.
1968 – Pierre Trudeau (pictured) succeeded Lester B. Pearson as Prime Minister of Canada.
2010 – An explosion on Deepwater Horizon, an offshore oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico, caused the largest accidental marine oil spill in the history of the petroleum industry.

More anniversaries: April 19 – April 20 – April 21

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On this day: April 21

2015-04-21T00:00:00Z

April 21

900 – A debt was pardoned by the Datu of Tondo on the island of Luzon, as inscribed on the Laguna Copperplate Inscription, the earliest known written document found in the Philippines.
1782 – A city pillar was erected on Rattanakosin Island, located on the eastern bank of the Chao Phraya River, an act considered the founding of the city of Bangkok.
1918 – Manfred von Richthofen (pictured), known as the "Red Baron", was shot down and killed near Vaux-sur-Somme in France, after a career as the most successful fighter pilot of World War I with 80 confirmed air combat victories.
1960 – Brasília, a planned city primarily designed by architect and urban planner Lúcio Costa, was officially inaugurated, replacing Rio de Janeiro as the capital of Brazil.
1975 – Nguyễn Văn Thiệu resigned as President of South Vietnam, and was replaced by Trần Văn Hương, as communist forces closed in on victory.

More anniversaries: April 20 – April 21 – April 22

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On this day: April 22

2015-04-22T00:00:00Z

April 22: Earth Day; Yom Hazikaron in Israel (2015)

1519 – Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés (pictured) established a settlement in Mexico, naming it "Villa Rica de la Vera Cruz" ("Rich village of the True Cross").
1864 – The U.S. Congress passed the Coinage Act, authorizing the minting of a two-cent coin, the first U.S. coin to bear the phrase "In God we trust".
1930 – France, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States signed the London Naval Treaty, regulating submarine warfare and limiting military ship building.
1951 – Korean War: The People's Volunteer Army of China attacked positions occupied mainly by Australian and Canadian forces, starting the Battle of Kapyong.
1983 – The West German news magazine Stern published excerpts from what purported to be the diaries of Adolf Hitler, which were subsequently revealed to be forgeries.

More anniversaries: April 21 – April 22 – April 23

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