1911 – In New York City, 146 women were killed in fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company in New York City. The owners of the company were indicted on manslaughter charges because some of the employees had been behind locked doors in the factory. The owners were later acquitted and in 1914 they were ordered to pay damages to each of the twenty-three families that had sued.
0031 – 1st Easter, according to calendar-maker Dionysius Exiguus
0421 – The city of Venice was founded.
0708 – Constantine begins his reign as Catholic Pope.
1150 – Tichborne family of Hampshire England start tradition of giving gallon of flour to residents to keep deathbed promise
1199 – King Richard I (the Lion Heart) of England, is wounded by a crossbow bolt while fighting France, leads to his death on April 6
1306 – Robert the Bruce was crowned king of Scotland.
1436 – Florentine Cathedral Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore with then the largest dome in the world by Filippo Brunelleschi with support from Cosimo de’ Medici, consecrated by Pope Eugene IV (begun 1296)
1593 – Recantation of Loos, Dutch scholar Coinelius Loos recants his earlier written protest against witchcraft persecution in Trier, Germany before officials in Brussels
1609 – Henry Hudson left on an exploration for Dutch East India Co.
1634 – Lord Baltimore founded the Catholic colony of Maryland.
1655 – Puritans jailed Governor Stone after a military victory over Catholic forces in the colony of Maryland.
1655 – Christian Huygens discovered Titan. Titan is Saturn’s largest satellite.
1669 – Mount Etna in Sicily erupted destroying Nicolosi. 20,000 people were killed.
1700 – England, France and Netherlands ratify the 2nd Extermination Treaty.
1753 – Voltaire left the court of Frederik II of Prussia.
1774 – English Parliament passed the Boston Port Bill.
1776 – The Continental Congress authorized a medal for General George Washington.
1802 – France, Netherlands, Spain and England signed the Peace of Amiens.
1807 – British Parliament abolished the slave trade.
1813 – The frigate USS Essex flew the first U.S. flag in battle in the Pacific.
1817 – Tsar Alexander I recommends formation of Society of Israeli Christians
1820 – Greece freedom revolt against anti Ottoman attack
1821 – Greece gained independence from Turkey.
1857 – Frederick Laggenheim took the first photo of a solar eclipse.
1865 – The SS General Lyon at Cape Hatteras caught fire and sank. 400 people were killed.
1879 – Japan invaded the kingdom of Liuqiu (Ryukyu) Islands, formerly a vassal of China.
1895 – Italian troops invaded Abyssinia (Ethiopia).
1898 – Writer O. Henry sentenced to 5 years in prison for embezzling $854 from a bank reportedly to pay for his sick wife’s medical bills. Goes on to write many classics while in jail including “Whistling Dick’s Christmas Stocking”.
1900 – The U.S. Socialist Party was formed in Indianapolis.
1901 – The Mercedes was introduced by Daimler at the five-day “Week of Nice” in Nice, France.
1901 – It was reported in Washington, DC, that Cubans were beginning to fear annexation.
1902 – In Russia, 567 students were found guilty of “political disaffection.” 95 students were exiled to Siberia.
1905 – Rebel battle flags that were captured during the American Civil War were returned to the South.
1905 – Russia received Japan’s terms for peace.
1907 – Nicaraguan troops took Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras.
1909 – In Russia, revolutionary Popova was arrested on 300 murder charges.
1911 – In New York City, 146 women were killed in fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company in New York City. The owners of the company were indicted on manslaughter charges because some of the employees had been behind locked doors in the factory. The owners were later acquitted and in 1914 they were ordered to pay damages to each of the twenty-three families that had sued. https://www.history.com/topics/early-20th-century-us/triangle-shirtwaist-fire
1919 – The Paris Peace Commission adopted a plan to protect nations from the influx of foreign labor.
1931 – Fifty people were killed in riots that broke out in India. Gandhi was one of many people assaulted.
1931 – Scottsboro Boys arrested in Alabama, accused of raping a white woman https://www.history.com/topics/great-depression/scottsboro-boys
1940 – The U.S. agreed to give Britain and France access to all American warplanes.
1941 – Yugoslavia joined the Axis powers.
1947 – A coalmine explosion in Centralia, IL, killed 111 people.
1947 – John D. Rockefeller III presented a check for $8.5 million to the United Nations for the purchase of land for the site of the U.N. center.
1949 – The Soviet Union begins deporting some 90,000 Estonians, Latvians, and Lithuanians to some of Russia’s most inhospitable areas. Operation Priboi, also known as March deportation, was designed to weaken the Baltic nationalist movement. Most of the deportees, labeled “enemies of the people” by the Soviet authorities, were women and children.
1953 – The USS Missouri fires on targets at Kojo, North Korea, the last time her guns fire until the Persian Gulf War of 1992.
1955 – United States Customs seizes copies of Allen Ginsberg’s poem “Howl” as obscene.
1957 – The European Economic Community was established with the signing of the Treaty of Rome.
1960 – A guided missile was launched from a nuclear powered submarine for the first time.
1966 – The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the “poll tax” was unconstitutional.
1970 – The Concorde made its first supersonic flight.
1971 – European council accepts Mansholt plan laying off 5 million farmers
1971 – The Boston Patriots became the New England Patriots.
1975 – King Faisal of Saudi Arabia was shot to death by a nephew. The nephew, with a history of mental illness, was beheaded the following June.
1975 – Hue is lost and Da Nang is endangered by North Vietnamese forces. The United States orders a refugee airlift to remove those in danger.
1981 – The U.S. Embassy in San Salvador was damaged when gunmen attacked using rocket propelled grenades and machine guns.
1983 – The U.S. Congress passed legislation to rescue the U.S. social security system from bankruptcy.
1986 – U.S. President Ronald Reagan ordered emergency aid for the Honduran army. U.S. helicopters took Honduran troops to the Nicaraguan border.
1986 – Supreme Court rules Air Force could ban wearing of yarmulkes
1987 – The US Supreme Court rules that gender-based workplace affirmative action plans do not constitute discrimination on the basis of sex under the Civil Rights Act 1964
1988 – Robert E. Chambers Jr. pled guilty to first-degree manslaughter in the death of 18-year-old Jennifer Levin. The case was known as New York City’s “preppie murder case.”
1988 – Thousands of people join the first peaceful demonstrations against the communist regime in Czechoslovakia, The Candle Demonstration was brutally dispersed by the Police but was the first step towards the Velvet Revolution that resulted in the establishment of democracy in the country.
1989 – In Paris, the Louvre reopened with I.M. Pei’s new courtyard pyramid.
1990 – Estonia voted for independence from the Soviet Union.
1991 – Iraqi President Saddam Hussein launched a major counter-offensive to recapture key towns from Kurds in northern Iraq.
1993 – President de Klerk admitted that South Africa had built six nuclear bombs, but said that they had since been dismantled.
1994 – United States troops completed their withdrawal from Somalia.
1995 – WikiWikiWeb, the world’s first wiki, is launched, Ward Cunningham introduced the wiki, or user-editable website. Today, Wikipedia is the world’s most well known and widely used wiki.
1996 – An 81-day standoff by the antigovernment Freemen began at a ranch near Jordan, MT.
1998 – A cancer patient was the first known to die under Oregon’s doctor-assisted suicide law.
1998 – The FCC nets $578.6 million at auction for licenses for new wireless technology.
1998 – Quinn Pletcher was found guilty on charges of extortion. He had threatened to kill Bill Gates unless he was paid $5 million.
2002 – The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) dismissed complaints against Walt Disney Co.’s ABC network broadcast of a Victoria’s Secret fashion show in November 2001.
2004 – The U.S. Senate voted (61-38) on the Unborn Victims of Violence Act (H.R. 1997) to make it a separate crime to harm a fetus during the commission of a violent federal crime.
2006 – Capitol Hill massacre: A gunman kills six people before taking his own life at a party in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood
2006 – Protesters demanding a re-election in Belarus following the rigged Belarusian presidential election, 2006 clash with riot police. Opposition leader Aleksander Kozulin is among several protesters arrested.
2012 – Peter Cruddas, treasurer of Britain’s Conservative Party, resigns after being caught on film selling access to British Prime Minister David Cameron
2016 – Suicide attack during a football match in Iskandariya, Iraq kills at least 32 people, ISIS claim responsibility
2018 – Fire in a shopping mall in the Siberian city of Kemerovo, Russia, kills at least 64
2018 – North Korean leader Kim Jong un begins surprise trip to Beijing by train to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping
2019 – British Airways flight from London mistakenly flies to Edinburgh, Scotland instead of Düsseldorf, Germany when wrong flight plan submitted
2019 – NASA cancels a planned historic all-female spacewalk because it doesn’t have enough spacesuits to fit women
2021 – Republican-led Georgia State Senate passes restrictive changes to state voting. President Joe Biden calls it “Jim Crow in the 21st Century” and “a blatant attack on the Constitution”.
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
