1961 – The Bay of Pigs Invasion in 1961 was a failed attack launched by the CIA during the Kennedy administration to push Cuban leader Fidel Castro from power. Since 1959, officials at the U.S. State Department and the CIA had attempted to remove Castro. Finally, on April 17, 1961, the CIA launched what its leaders believed would be the definitive strike: a full-scale invasion of Cuba by 1,400 American-trained Cubans who had fled their homes when Castro took over. However, the invasion was doomed from the start. The invaders were badly outnumbered by Castro’s troops, and they surrendered after less than 24 hours of fighting. https://www.history.com/topics/cold-war/bay-of-pigs-invasion
1387 – Geoffrey Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales” characters begin their pilgrimage to Canterbury (according to scholars)
1492 – Christopher Columbus signs a contract with the Spanish monarchs to find the “Indies” with the stated goal of converting people to Catholicism. This promises him 10% of all riches found, and the governorship of any lands encountered.
1521 – Martin Luther was excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church.
1524 – New York Harbor was discovered by Giovanni Verrazano.
1535 – Antonio Mendoza was appointed first viceroy of New Spain.
1610 – English explorer Henry Hudson departs London, England aboard Discovery on his fourth, final and fatal voyage to discover a north west passage to the Pacific
1629 – Horses were first imported into the colonies by the American Massachusetts Bay Colony.
1704 – John Campbell published what would eventually become the first successful American newspaper. It was known as the Boston “News-Letter.”
1711 – Charles VI becomes Holy Roman Emperor after the death of his brother Joseph I
1758 – Frances Williams, the first African-American to graduate from a college in the western hemisphere, publishes a collection of Latin poems.
1797 – Sir Ralph Abercromby attacks San Juan, Puerto Rico, one of the largest invasions of Spanish territories in America
1808 – Bayonne Decree by Napoleon I of France ordered the seizure of U.S. ships.
1810 – Pineapple cheese was patented by Lewis M. Norton.
1824 – Russia abandoned all North American claims south of 54′ 40′.
1860 – New Yorkers learned of a new law that required fire escapes to be provided for tenement houses.
1861 – Virginia became the eighth state to secede from the Union.
1864 – U.S. Civil War General Grant banned the trading of prisoners.
1864 – Bread revolt in Savannah, Georgia
1865 – Mary Surratt was arrested as a conspirator in the Lincoln assassination.
1875 – The game “snooker” was invented by Sir Neville Chamberlain.
1895 – China and Japan signed the Treaty of Shimonoseki. It was the end of the first Sino-Japanese War. In the treaty China ceded Taiwan to Japan.
1905 – US Supreme Court judges maximum work day unconstitutional in Lochner v. New York by declaring the “right to free contract” implicit in the due process clause of the 14th Amendment of the Constitution
1917 – A bill in Congress to establish Daylight Saving Time was defeated. It was passed a couple of months later.
1932 – Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia ends slavery
1941 – Igor Sikorsky accomplished the first successful helicopter lift-off from water near Stratford, CT.
1941 – The office of Price Administration was established in the U.S. to handle rationing.
1946 – The last French troops left Syria.
1948 – Elpidio Quirino assumes the Presidency of the Philippines, taking his oath of office two days after the death of President Manuel Roxas
1961 – About 1,400 U.S.-supported Cuban exiles invaded Cuba at the Bay of Pigs in an attempt to overthrow Fidel Castro. It was an unsuccessful attack. https://www.history.com/topics/cold-war/bay-of-pigs-invasion
1964 – The Ford Motor Company unveiled its new Mustang model.
1967 – The U.S. Supreme Court barred Muhammad Ali’s request to be blocked from induction into the U.S. Army.
1969 – In Los Angeles, Sirhan Sirhan was convicted of assassinating U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy.
1969 – Czechoslovak Communist Party chairman Alexander Dubcek was deposed.
1970 – Apollo 13 returned to Earth safely after an on-board accident with an oxygen tank.
1975 – Khmer Rouge forces capture the capital of Cambodia, Phnom Penh. It was the end of the five-year war.
1978 – Mir Akbar Khyber’s assassination triggers a communist coup in Afghanistan, The Communists introduced a series of reforms, such as equal rights for women and universal education. These achievements were undone soon after by the outbreak of several wars.
1979 – Four Royal Ulster Constabulary officers are killed by a Provisional Irish Republican Army van bomb in Bessbrook, County Armagh; the bomb is believed to be the largest PIRA bomb used up to that point
1983 – In Warsaw, police routed 1,000 Solidarity supporters.
1983 – In New York, a transit strike that began on March 7 ended.
1984 – In London, demonstrators outside the Libyan Embassy were fired upon from someone inside. Eleven people were injured and an English Police woman was killed.
1985 – In Lebanon, the cabinet resigned as Shiites took W. Beirut.
1986 – The world’s longest war ends without a single shot having been fired, The state of war between the Netherlands and the Isles of Scilly had been extended for a total of 335 years by the lack of a peace treaty. Some historians doubt that war had ever been declared.
1987 – In Sri Lanka, Tamil guerrillas killed 122 people in a road ambush.
1989 – In Poland, courts gave Solidarity legal status.
1991 – Railroad workers go on strike in US
1993 – A federal jury in Los Angeles convicted two former police officers of violating the civil rights of beaten motorist Rodney King. Two other officers were acquitted.
1996 – Erik and Lyle Menendez were sentenced to life in prison without parole for killing their parents.
1999 – In India, the government of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee collapsed after losing a vote of confidence.
2001 – A letter between Gale Norton and Jeb Bush is released, stating that the Bush administration has decided to go ahead with plans to auction 6 million acres of potentially oil-and-gas-rich seabed in the Gulf of Mexico
2002 – Four Canadian Forces soldiers are killed in Afghanistan by friendly fire from two United States Air Force F-16s, the first deaths in a combat zone for Canada since the Korean War
2012 – The 8th century St. Cuthbert Gospel, Europe’s oldest intact book, is purchased by the British Library for 9 million pounds
2013 – 15 people are killed and 100 are injured after a fertilizer plant explodes in West, Texas
2013 – 5 people are killed in Wana, Pakistan, by a United States drone attack
2018 – Protests across India at the rape and murder of an 8-year old Muslim girl in Kathua, Bengalu
2019 – 10 babies with “bubble boy disease” cured using a gene therapy made from HIV at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Memphis, according to new study
2019 – Terror alert closes schools in Denver, Colorado, due to 18 year-old woman obsessed with Columbine massacre, who is then found dead
2021 – Global COVID-19 death toll passes three million (Johns Hopkins University figures)
2022 – Alex Jones’ companies including website Infowars, file for bankruptcy in the US after losing defamation suits filed by families of the Sandy Hook Massacre (which he called a hoax)
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
