1607 An expedition of English colonists went ashore at Cape Henry, Va., to establish the first permanent English settlement in the Western Hemisphere. (They later settled at Jamestown.)
1785 Naturalist and artist John James Audubon was born in Haiti.
1865 John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of President Abraham Lincoln, was surrounded and killed by federal troops near Bowling Green, Va.
1937 Planes from Nazi Germany raided the Basque town of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War.
1945 Marshal Henri Philippe Petain, the head of France’s Vichy government during World War II, was arrested.
1986 The world’s worst nuclear accident occurred at the Chernobyl plant in the Soviet Union. An explosion and fire in the No. 4 reactor sent radioactivity into the atmosphere
1989 Actress-comedian Lucille Ball died at age 77.1998 Auxiliary Bishop Juan Gerardi Conedera, a leading human rights activist in Guatemala, was bludgeoned to death two days after a report he’d compiled on atrocities during Guatemala’s 36-year civil war was made public.
2000 Vermont Gov. Howard Dean signed the nation’s first bill allowing same-sex couples to form civil unions.
2002 An expelled student went on a shooting rampage at a school in Erfurt, Germany, killing 13 teachers, two students and a police officer before taking his own life.
2004 The U.S. government unveiled the new colorized $50 bill.
2005 Syria’s 29-year military presence in Lebanon ended as Syrian soldiers completed a withdrawal brought about by international pressure and Lebanese street protests.
2008 Police in Austria arrested Josef Fritzl, freeing his daughter Elisabeth and her six children, whom he had fathered while holding her captive in a cellar for 24 years.
1507 “America” was first used as the name of a continent on a map. German cartographer Martin Waldseemueller used the name in honor of Italian navigator Amerigo Vespucci.
1792 Highwayman Nicolas Jacques Pelletier became the first person under French law to be executed by guillotine.
1859 Ground was broken for the Suez Canal.
1874 Radio pioneer Guglielmo Marconi was born in Bologna, Italy.
1898 The United States declared war on Spain.
1901 New York became the first state to require automobile license plates.
1908 Broadcast journalist Edward R. Murrow was born in Polecat Creek, N.C.
1915 Allied soldiers invaded the Gallipoli Peninsula in an unsuccessful attempt to take the Ottoman Turkish Empire out of World War I.
1945 U.S. and Soviet forces linked up on the Elbe River, in central Europe, a meeting that dramatized the collapse of Nazi Germany.
1959 The St. Lawrence Seaway opened to shipping.
1990 Violeta Barrios de Chamorro was inaugurated as president of Nicaragua, ending 11 years of leftist Sandinista rule.
1990 The Hubble Space Telescope was deployed from the space shuttle Discovery.
1992 Islamic forces took control of most of the Afghan capital Kabul following the collapse of the Communist government.
1998 Whitewater prosecutors questioned first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton.
2003 Georgia lawmakers voted to scrap the Dixie cross from the state’s flag.
2007 The Dow Jones industrial average topped 13,000 for the first time, ending the day at 13,089.89.
2008 Three New York police detectives were acquitted in the 50-shot killing of Sean Bell, an unarmed groom-to-be, on his wedding day.
1792 The French national anthem, “La Marseillaise,” was composed by Capt. Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle.
1800 Congress approved a bill establishing the Library of Congress.
1877 Federal troops were ordered out of New Orleans, ending the North’s post-Civil War rule in the South.
1898 Spain declared war on the United States after rejecting America’s ultimatum to withdraw from Cuba.
1915 The Ottoman Empire rounded up Armenian political and cultural leaders in Constantinople at the start of what many scholars regard as the first genocide of the 20th century, in which an estimated 1.5 million Armenians died.
1916 The Easter uprising began when some 1,600 Irish nationalists seized several key sites in Dublin.
1980 The United States launched an abortive attempt to free the American hostages in Iran; eight U.S. servicemen died.
1990 The space shuttle Discovery blasted off from Cape Canaveral, Fla., carrying the $1.5 billion Hubble Space Telescope.
1996 The main assembly of the Palestine Liberation Organization voted to revoke clauses in its charter that called for an armed struggle to destroy Israel.
2005 Pope Benedict XVI was installed as leader of the Roman Catholic Church in cermonies at the Vatican.
2009 Mexico shut down schools, museums, libraries and state-run theaters across its overcrowded capital in hopes of containing a deadly swine flu outbreak.
1509 Henry VIII became king of England following the death of his father, Henry VII.
1864 Congress authorized the use of the phrase “In God We Trust” on U.S. coins.
1870 Communist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin was born Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov in Simbirsk, Russia.
1898 The first shot of the Spanish-American War rang out as the USS Nashville captured a Spanish merchant ship off Key West, Fla.
1952 An atomic test conducted in Nevada became the first nuclear explosion shown on live network TV.
1954 The televised Senate Army-McCarthy hearings began. 1970 Earth Day was observed for the first time.
1990 Pro-Iranian kidnappers in Lebanon freed American hostage Robert Polhill after nearly 39 months of captivity.
1993 The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum was dedicated in Washington, D.C.
1994 Richard M. Nixon, the 37th president of the United States, died at age 81 in New York City, four days after suffering a stroke.
2000 In a pre-dawn raid, armed immigration agents seized Elian Gonzalez from his relatives’ home in Miami; the 6-year-old boy was reunited with his father.
2004 Pro football player Pat Tillman, who’d traded in a multimillion-dollar contract to serve as an Army Ranger in Afghanistan, was killed by friendly fire; he was 27.
1649The Maryland Toleration Act, which provided for freedom of worship for all Christians, was passed by the Maryland assembly.
1789John Adams was sworn in as the first vice president of the United States.
1816Charlotte Bronte, author of “Jane Eyre,” was born in Thornton, England.
1836Texans led by Sam Houston defeated the Mexicans at San Jacinto, assuring Texas’ independence.
1918Baron Manfred von Richthofen, the German ace known as the “Red Baron,” was killed in action during World War I.
1960Brazil inaugurated its new capital, Brasilia, transferring the seat of national government from Rio de Janeiro.
1975South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu resigned after 10 years in office.
1977The musical “Annie” opened on Broadway.
1980Rosie Ruiz, the first woman to cross the finish line at the Boston Marathon, was disqualified when officials discovered she had jumped into the race about a mile from the finish.
1986A vault in Chicago’s Lexington Hotel that was linked to Al Capone was opened during a live TV special hosted by Geraldo Rivera. Except for a few bottles and a sign, the vault was empty.
1992Robert Alton Harris became the first person executed by the state of California in 25 years as he was put to death in the gas chamber for the 1978 murder of two teenage boys.
1792France declared war on Austria, marking the start of the French Revolutionary wars.
1836The Territory of Wisconsin was established by Congress.
1889Nazi leader Adolf Hitler was born in Braunau, Austria.
1902Scientists Marie and Pierre Curie isolated the radioactive element radium.
1939Baseball Hall of Famer Ted Williams made his major league debut with the Boston Red Sox.
1940RCA publicly demonstrated its new electron microscope.
1945Allied forces took control of the German cities of Nuremberg and Stuttgart during World War II.
1968Pierre Elliott Trudeau was sworn in as prime minister of Canada.
1972The manned lunar module from Apollo 16 landed on the moon.
1980The first Cubans sailing to the United States as part of the massive Mariel boatlift reached Florida.
1999Two students went on a shooting rampage at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., killing 12 students and one teacher before taking their own lives.
1775-The American Revolutionary War began with the battles of Lexington and Concord.
1897-The first Boston Marathon was run.
1933-The United States went off the gold standard.
1943-Tens of thousands of Jews living in the Warsaw Ghetto began an uprising against Nazi forces.
1951-Gen. Douglas MacArthur, relieved of his command by President Harry S. Truman, bid farewell to Congress, quoting a line from a ballad: “Old soldiers never die; they just fade away.”
1995-a truck bomb exploded outside the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people and injuring 500.
1997-Flooding from the Red River forced more than 50,000 residents to abandon Grand Forks, N.D.
1999-The German parliament inaugurated its new home in the restored Reichstag in Berlin, its prewar capital.
2001-The Mel Brooks musical “The Producers” opened on Broadway.
2005-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger of Germany was elected pope; he took the name Benedict XVI.
1775-Paul Revere began his ride from Charlestown to Lexington, Mass., warning American colonists that the British were coming.
1923-The first baseball game was played at Yankee Stadium in New York City, with the Yankees beating the Boston Red Sox 4-1.
1946-The League of Nations went out of business.
1949-The Irish Republic was proclaimed.
1955-Physicist Albert Einstein died at age 76.
1978-The U.S. Senate voted 68-32 to turn the Panama Canal over to Panamanian control in 1999.
1983-A suicide bomber killed 63 people, including 17 Americans, at the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon.
1989-Thousands of Chinese students demanding democracy tried to storm Communist Party headquarters in Beijing.
1999-Wayne Gretzky, the National Hockey League’s all-time leading scorer, played his last professional game, at Madison Square Garden in New York.
1492-Christopher Columbus received a commission from Spain’s King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella to seek a westward ocean passage to Asia.
1861-The Virginia State Convention voted to secede from the Union.
1951-Baseball Hall of Famer Mickey Mantle made his major league debut with the New York Yankees.
1964-The Ford Motor Co. unveiled the Mustang.
1969-A jury in Los Angeles convicted Sirhan Sirhan of assassinating Sen. Robert F. Kennedy.
1970-The astronauts of Apollo 13 splashed down safely in the Pacific Ocean, four days after a ruptured oxygen tank crippled their spacecraft.
1975-Phnom Penh fell to Communist insurgents, ending Cambodia’s five-year civil war.
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.
2001-Barry Bonds of the San Francisco Giants hit his 500th career home run, becoming the 17th major leaguer to reach the mark.
1789 President-elect George Washington left Mount Vernon, Va., for his inauguration in New York.
1917 Revolutionary Vladimir Ilyich Lenin returned to Russia after years of exile.
1962 Walter Cronkite succeeded Douglas Edwards as anchorman of “The CBS Evening News.”
1964 “The Rolling Stones (England’s Newest Hitmakers),” the band’s debut album, was released.
2003 Michael Jordan played his last NBA game as his Washington Wizards ended their season with a loss to the Philadelphia 76ers.
2007 A student killed 32 people on the campus of Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Va., before taking his own life in the deadliest shooting rampage in modern U.S. history.
