1968 – At 6:05 P.M. on Thursday, 4 April 1968, Martin Luther King was shot dead while standing on a balcony outside his second-floor room at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. News of King’s assassination prompted major outbreaks of racial violence, resulting in more than 40 deaths nationwide and extensive property damage in over 100 American cities. – The Martin Luther King, Jr Research and Education Institute/ Stanford University
0896 – Formosus ended his reign as pope.
1081 – Alexius I Comnenus occupies Byzantine throne
1460 – University of Basel founded in Swiss Confederacy (now Switzerland)
1541 – Ignatius of Loyola became the first superior-general of the Jesuits.
1558 – Tsar Ivan IV gives the patent to colonize “the abundant region along the Kama River” of North-Russia to the fur trading Stroganov merchant family
1581 – Francis Drake was knighted by Queen Elizabeth I. A few months earlier he became the first Englishman to circumnavigate the world.
1655 – The miraculous statue entitled the Infant of Prague is solemnly crowned by command of Cardinal Harrach
1660 – English King Charles II issues the Declaration of Breda, promising a general pardon for crimes committed during the English Civil War and the Interregnum and religious toleration for all those who accepted him as King
1687 – King James II ordered that his declaration of indulgence be read in church.
1812 – U.S. President James Madison enacted a ninety-day embargo on trade with the United Kingdom.
1814 – An officer mutiny forces French Emperor Napoléon Bonaparte to abdicate for the first time in flavor of his son, who is not accepted by the Allies occupying Paris
1818 – A plan was passsed by the U.S. Congress that the U.S. flag would have 13 red and white stripes and 20 stars and that a new star would be added for the each new state.
1841 – U.S. President William Henry Harrison, at the age of 68, became the first president to die in office. He had been sworn in only a month before he died of pneumonia.
1850 – The Great Fire of Cottenham, a large part of the Cambridgeshire village (England) is burnt to the ground under suspicious circumstances
1866 – Alexander II of Russia narrowly escapes an assassination attempt in the city of Kiev.
1887 – Susanna M. Salter became mayor of Argonia, KS, making her the first woman mayor in the U.S.
1896 – News of the Yukon’s Klondike gold strike reaches the outside world.
1902 – British Financier Cecil Rhodes left $10 million in his will that would provide scholarships for Americans to Oxford University in England.
1905 – In Kangra, India, an earthquake killed 370,000 people.
1912 – Army fires on striking mine workers at Lena-gold fields Siberia
1917 – The U.S. Senate voted 90-6 to enter World War I on the Allied side.
1918 – The Battle of Somme, an offensive by the British against the German Army ended.
1932 – After five years of research, professor C.G. King, of the University of Pittsburgh, isolated vitamin C.
1933 – USS Akron dirigible crashes into Atlantic Ocean, off coast of New Jersey, in stormy weather; 73 die including US Navy Rear Admiral William A. Moffett – a major proponent of the airship fleet, there were 3 survivors
1943 – WWII: US Army Air Force bomber ‘Lady Be Good’ fails to return to Soluch, Libya base after its maiden flight; presumed lost at sea, wreck was discovered in desert 15 years later
1945 – During World War II, U.S. forces liberated the Nazi death camp Ohrdruf in Germany.
1949 – Twelve nations signed a treaty to create The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
1953 – Fifteen doctors were released by Soviet leaders. The doctors had been arrested before Stalin had died and were accused of plotting against him.
1957 – Herbert Norman, Canadian Ambassador to Egypt, jumps from the roof of his apartment building to his death after suspicions he was a possible Communist sympathizer
1958 – Cheryl Crane (14), daughter of actress Lana Turner, stabs to death organized crime figure Johnny Stompanato, her mother’s boyfriend, in self-defense; crime later ruled a “justifiable homicide”
1966 – Canada starts five-year, $350,000 project to help increase wheat production in Kenya; an environmental fiasco
1967 – Johnny Carson quit “The Tonight Show.” He returned three weeks later after getting a raise of $30,000 a week.
1968 – James Earl Ray assassinated Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in Memphis, Tennessee. The FBI opened a special investigation based on the violation of Dr. King’s civil rights so that federal jurisdiction in the matter could be established
1969 – Dr. Denton Cooley implanted the first temporary artificial heart.
1972 – 1st electric power plant fueled by garbage begins operating
1973 – In New York, the original World Trade Center twin towers opened. At the time they were the tallest building in the world.
1975 – More than 130 people, most of them children, were killed when a U.S. Air Force transport plane evacuating Vietnamese orphans crashed just after takeoff from Saigon.
1979 – Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the president of Pakistan, was executed. He had been convicted of conspiring to murder a political opponent.
1981 – Henry Cisneros became the first Mexican-American elected mayor of a major U.S. city, which was San Antonio, TX.
1983 – At Cape Canaveral, the space shuttle Challenger took off on its first flight. It was the sixth flight overall for the shuttle program.
1984 – U.S. President Reagan proposed an international ban on chemical weapons.
1985 – In Sudan, a coup ousted President Nimeiry and replaced him with General Dahab.
1987 – The U.S. charged the Soviet Union with wiretapping a U.S. Embassy.
1988 – Arizona Governor Evan Mecham was voted out of office by the Arizona Senate. Mecham was found guilty of diverting state funds to his auto business and of trying to impede an investigation into a death threat to a grand jury witness.
1990 – In the U.S., securities law violator Ivan Boesky was released from federal custody.
1991 – Pennsylvanian Senator John Heinz and six others were killed when a helicopter collided with Heinz’s plane over a schoolyard in Merion, PA.
1992 – Sali Berisha became the first non-Marxist president of Albania since World War II.
1994 – Netscape Communications (Mosaic Communications) was founded.
2002 – The Angolan government and UNITA rebels sign a peace treaty ending the Angolan Civil War.
2008 – Raid on Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints owned YFZ Ranch in Texas; 401 children and 133 women taken into state custody
2012 – Somalia’s National Theater is struck by a suicide bomber killing ten people including the presidents of the Somali Olympic Committee and Football Federation
2013 – 9 people have been killed on an axe-murdering rampage in Chhattisgarh state, India
2017 – Chemical weapons attack on Khan Sheikhoun, Syria by Syrian government forces kills more than 80 civilians
2019 – US Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints pledges to roll back anti-LGBT policies, including not baptizing children of gay parents
2023 – Former US president Donald Trump pleads not guilty in a NY court to 34 felony counts of falsifying documents related to 2016 hush money payments to a woman alleging they had an extramarital affair
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
