This Week In History
April 12th
1872 Jesse James gang robs bank in Columbia, Kentucky.
1937 Sir Frank Whittle ground-tests the first jet engine designed to power an aircraft at Rugby, England.
1945 Canadian troops liberate Nazi concentration camp Westerbork, Netherlands.
1945 US President Franklin D. Roosevelt dies in office and Vice President Harry Truman is sworn in as 33rd US President.
1955 Polio vaccine tested by Jonas Salk announced to be 'safe and effective' and is given full approval by the US Food and Drug Administration.
1961 Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin becomes the first person to orbit Earth.
April 13th
1796 First elephant arrives in US from India
1860 1st Pony Express reaches Sacramento, California.
1954 Physicist and Father of the Atomic Bomb
Robert Oppenheimer accused of being a communist.
Robert Oppenheimer accused of being a communist.
1994 Asteroid 7373 Takei discovered and named after Star Trek actor George Takei.
2019 World's largest plane by wingspan at 117m (385 ft), the Stratolaunch, built as a flying launch pad for satellites, takes its first flight from Mojave, California.
April 14th
1865 US President Abraham Lincoln is shot by John Wilkes Booth at Ford's Theater in Washington.
1903 Dr Harry Plotz discovers vaccine against typhoid.
1912 RMS Titanic hits an iceberg at 11.40 p.m. off Newfoundland
1981 1st Space Shuttle, Columbia 1, returns to Earth.
2003 The Human Genome Project is completed with 99% of the human genome sequenced to an accuracy of 99.99%
2015 Archeologists announce they have found at Lomekwi in Kenya 3.3 million-year old stone tools, the oldest ever discovered and which pre-date the earliest humans
2018 Beyoncé is the first black woman to headline the Coachella Music Festival, her performance on this day the most-watched performance ever on YouTube
2019 South Bend mayor Pete Buttigieg officially announces his presidential campaign in Indiana, first openly gay candidate to run for US president
April 15th
1877 1st telephone installed: Boston-Somerville in Massachusetts
1912 RMS Titanic sinks at 2:27 AM off Newfoundland as the band plays on, with the loss of between 1,490 and 1,635 people
1941 1st helicopter flight of 1 hr duration, Stratford, Ct
2013 Boston Marathon bombings: 3 people are killed and 183 injured after two explosions near the finish line
2019 Measles cases jump 300% in first three months of 2019, according to World Health Organization, largest rise in Africa (700%) with 800 deaths in Madagascar
2019 Aretha Franklin posthumously receives the Pulitzer Prize Special Citation honor, first individual woman to win it since 1930
2019 Paris cathedral Notre Dame catches fire, toppling its spire and destroying its roof
April 16th
1789 George Washington heads for 1st presidential inauguration
1922 Annie Oakley sets women's record by breaking 100 clay targets in a row
1929 NY Yankees become 1st team to wear uniform numbers
1993 Jury reaches guilty verdict in Federal case against police officer who beat Rodney King,
2007 Virginia Tech massacre: The deadliest mass shooting in modern American history. The gunman, Seung-Hui Cho, kills 32 people and injures 23 others before committing suicide.
April 17th
1492 Christopher Columbus signs a contract with the Spanish monarchs to find the "Indies" with the stated goal of converting people to Catholicism.
1961 1,400 Cuban exiles land in Bay of Pigs in a doomed attempt to overthrow Fidel Castro
1969 Sirhan Sirhan is convicted of assassinating US Senator Robert F. Kennedy
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
2019 Research showing pigs brains partially brought back to life at Yale University, published in "Nature"
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
April 18th
1775 Paul Revere and William Dawes ride from Charlestown to Lexington warning the "regulars are coming!"
1783 Fighting ceases in the American Revolution, eight years to the day when it began
1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire kills nearly 4,000 while destroying 75% of the city
1983 A lone suicide bomber kills 63, at US Embassy in Lebanon
1986 IBM produces 1st megabit-chip
2013 Two earth-like planets are discovered orbiting the star Kepler-62
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