1917 – Bolshevik revolution: The Winter Palace in St Petersburg – fell to the Bolsheviks, cementing communist rule in Russia. In March 1917, riots and rebellions forced Nicholas II to abdicate as Tsar of Russia.
0355 – Roman Emperor Constantius II proclaims his cousin Julian as Caesar and heir apparent
1282 – Battle of Menai Straits (Moel-y-don): forces of Edward I defeated as they try to cross a pontoon bridge during their reconquor of Wales
1528 – Shipwrecked Spanish conquistador lvar Nez Cabeza de Vaca becomes the first known European to set foot in Texas.
1572 – Supernova is observed in the constellation known as Cassiopeia
1632 – Death of King Gustavus Adolphus the Great of Sweden in the Battle of Ltzen during the Thirty Years War.
1789 – Father John Carroll was appointed as the first Roman Catholic bishop in the United States of America.
1813 – Chilpancingo congress declares Mexico independent of Spain
1851 – U.S. Navy expedition under command of LT William Lewis Herndon, on a mission to explore the valley of the Amazon and its tributaries, reaches Iquitos in the jungle region of the upper Amazon after their departure from Lima, Peru
1860 – Abraham Lincoln was elected to be the sixteenth president of the United States.
1861 – Jefferson Davis was elected as the president of the Confederacy in the U.S.
1865 – American Civil War: CSS Shenandoah is the last Confederate combat unit to surrender after circumnavigating the globe on its cruise that sank or captured 37 vessels.
1869 – In New Brunswick, New Jersey, Rutgers University defeats Princeton University, 6-4, in the first official intercollegiate American football game
1894 – William C. Hooker received a patent for the mousetrap.
1903 – Philippe Bunau-Varilla, as Panama’s ambassador to the United States, signed the Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty. The document granted rights to the United States to build and indefinitely administer the Panama Canal Zone and its defenses.
1906 – Chinese Government ministries are reorganized as part of the movement towards constitutional government; but in fact the Manchu princes retain control and there is little gain for the Chinese people
1913 – Mohandas K. Gandhi was arrested as he led a march of Indian miners in South Africa.
1917 – Bolshevik revolution begins with the capture of the Winter Palace
1918 – The Second Polish Republic is proclaimed in Poland.
1923 – USSR adopts experimental calendar, with 5-day “weeks”
1925 – Secret agent Sidney Reilly is executed by the OGPU, the secret police of the Soviet Union
1928 – Swedes start a tradition of eating Gustavus Adolphus pastries to commemorate the king
1935 – Edwin H. Armstrong announced his development of FM broadcasting.
1938 – Herschel Grynszpan assassinates Ernst vom Rath, third secretary of the German embassy in Paris
1941 – World War II: Soviet leader Joseph Stalin addresses the Soviet Union for only the second time during his three-decade rule. He states that even though 350,000 troops were killed in German attacks so far, that the Germans have lost 4.5 million soldiers (a wild exaggeration) and that Soviet victory was near
1944 – Plutonium is first produced at the Hanford Atomic Facility, subsequently used in the Fat Man Atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki, Japan.
1945 – House Committee on Un-American Activities begins investigation of 7 radio commentators
1947 – Meet the Press makes its TV debut
1952 – The first hydrogen bomb was exploded at Eniwetok Atoll in the Pacific Ocean.
1956 – Suez Crisis: British Royal Marines storm Port Said in Egypt amid growing domestic and international opposition to the Anglo-French-Israeli military operation
1961 – In the Saraha Desert of Algeria, a natural gas well ignited when a pipe ruptured. The flames rose between 450 feet and 800 feet. The fire burned until April 28, 1962 when a team led by Red Adair used explosives to deprived the fire of oxygen. (Devil’s Cigarette Lighter)
1962 – The U.N. General Assembly adopts a resolution that condemned South Africa’s racist apartheid policies. The resolution also called for all member states to terminate military and economic relations with South Africa.
1965 – The Freedom Flights – Cuba and the United States formally agree to start an airlift for Cubans who want to go to the United States. By 1971, 250,000 Cubans will use this program.
1973 – NASA’s Pioneer 10 spacecraft began photographing Jupiter.
1975 – Green March begins: 300,000 unarmed Moroccans converge on the southern city of Tarfaya and wait for a signal from King Hassan II of Morocco to cross into Western Sahara.
1977 – 39 people were killed when an earthen dam burst, sending a wall of water through the campus of Toccoa Falls Bible College in Georgia.
1978 – Shah of Iran Mohammad Reza Pahlavi places the country under military rule; General Gholām Reza Azhāri forms government
1983 – U.S. Army choppers dropped hundreds of leaflets over northern and central Grenada. The leaflets urged residents to cooperate in locating any Grenadian army or Cuban resisters to the U.S-led invasion.
1985 – Leftist guerrillas belonging to Columbia’s April 19 Movement seized control of the Palace of Justice in Bogota.
1986 – U.S. intelligence sources confirmed a story run by the Lebanese magazine Ash Shiraa that reported the U.S. had been secretly selling arms to Iran in an effort to secure the release of seven American hostages.
1989 – In the hopes of freeing U.S. hostages held in Iran, the U.S. announced that it would unfreeze $567 million in Iranian assets that had been held since 1979.
1990 – About 20% of the Universal Studios backlot in southern California was destroyed in an arson fire.
1991 – Kuwait celebrated the dousing of the last of the oil fires ignited by Iraq during the Persian Gulf War.
1995 – Art Modell, the owner of the Cleveland Browns, announced plans to move his team to Baltimore.
1998 – The Islamic militant group Hamas exploded a car bomb killing the two attackers and injuring 21 civilians.
1999 – Australian voters rejected a referendum to drop Britain’s queen as their head of state.
2001 – In London, the “Lest We Forget” exhibit opened at the National Memorial Arboretum. Fred Seiker was the creator of the 24 watercolors. Seiker was a prisoner of war that had been forced to build the Burma Railroad, the “railway of death,” for the Japanese during World War II.
2004 – Russian owned, Liberian flagged tanker ‘Tropical Brilliance’ gets stuck in the Suez Canal for 3 days, blocking all traffic
2009 – President Barack Obama signs congressional resolution conferring honorary U.S. citizenship to Revolutionary War hero Casimir Pulaski
2012 – Lawrence Nathaniel Jones, a 42-year-old employee shoots four of his coworkers with a stolen handgun, killing two, at the Valley Protein meat processing plant in central Fresno, California
2013 – 8 people are killed and 50 are injured by a suicide bombing in Damascus, Syria
2016 – Indian government declares levels of air pollution in Delhi an emergency situation, closing schools and construction sites
2018 – Colorado votes to abolish slavery as a form of punishment in state constitution
2019 – 17 people die in attack on a checkpoint by Islamic State militants on Tajikistan’s border with Uzbekistan
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
