March 14th
 

1681 ~ Birthday of Georg Philipp Telemann, German Composer.

1804 ~ Birthday of Johann Strauss Sr.

1879 ~ Birthday of Albert Einstein, physicist, awarded the Nobel Prize in physics 1921.

1883 ~ Death of Karl Marx, political theorist.

1900 ~ The Gold Standard Act was ratified, placing U.S. currency on the gold standard.

1942 ~ First successful use of penicillin to treat a patient.

1943 ~ The SS under the command Sturmbannführer Amon Goth began the 'liquidation' of the Kraków Ghetto.

1964 ~ A jury in Dallas found Jack Ruby guilty of murdering Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused assassin of President John F. Kennedy.

1984 ~ Gerry Adams, head of Sinn Féin, was wounded in an assassination attempt in central Belfast.

1985 ~ Birthday of Eva Angelina, Porn actress.

A bit of trivia. Penicillin was first discovered by the British doctor Sir Alexander Fleming in 1928. Many years later he visited Peoria, Illinois, because of the research and experiments being done there by many of Peoria's scientists at the Northern Regional Research Laboratory (NRRL). It was in Peoria, at the NRRL, that the mass production of penicillin took place. :)

March 15th
 

44 B.C. ~ Julius Caesar was assassinated by a group of Roman senators.

1877 ~ The first Test cricket match, between England and Australia.

1898 ~ Death of Henry Bessemer, English metallurgist.

1906 ~ Rolls-Royce Ltd. was registered.

1937 ~ Death of H. P. Lovecraft, horror writer.

1966 ~ Addressing a joint session of Congress, President Lyndon Johnson called for new legislation to guarantee every American's right to vote.

1975 ~ Birthday of Veselin Topalov, Bulgarian chess player, FIDE World Chess Champion 2005 - 2006.

1990 ~ British journalist Farzad Bazoft was executed for spying.

1991 ~ Germany formally regained complete independence after World War II.

2004 ~ Announcement of the discovery of 90377 Sedna, the farthest "planet" in the Solar system so far observed.

Interestingly, Howard Florey and co came to America looking for medical facilities capable of mas-producing the new drug. It was not with-held until patents had been set in stone, as this was deemed unethical at the time. Patents PF, not patients.

It was a US Department of Agriculture lady who found that canteloupe (rockmelons for us OZ folk) yielded significantly greater amounts of the drug.

Florey was vilified by a group of society who blamed him and his wonder-drug for allowing the population explosion to occur.

And rightly so! How wicked can you get?!?!? Saving the lives of all those people who should have died! :yikes:

Yes, we'd have a population of less than half, without so many of those irritating complications like China, India, Africa, poor people and the sickly. The concept of mega-cities like Tokyo and Mexico City just couldn't happen.

It's like sticking equal parts of good and bad into a blender, then trying to name the result.

March 16th
 

1521 ~ Ferdinand Magellan reached the Philippines, where he was killed by natives the following month.

1736 ~ Death of Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, Italian composer.

1789 ~ Birthday of Georg Ohm, German physicist and developer of Ohm's Law.

1850 ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel "The Scarlet Letter" was first published.

1898 ~ Death of Aubrey Beardsley, British Artist.

1926 ~ Robert Goddard launched the first liquid-fueled rocket, at Auburn, Massachusetts.

1968 ~ The My Lai Massacre was carried out by U.S. troops under the command of Lt. William L. Calley.

1978 ~ Aldo Moro was kidnapped by left-wing urban guerrillas in Italy and was later killed by his captors.

1984 ~ William Buckley, the CIA station chief in Beirut, was kidnapped by Islamic fundamentalists; he died in captivity.

1988 ~ The Kurdish town of Halabjah in Iraq was attacked with a mix of poison gas and nerve agents killing 5,000.

March 17th
 

180 ~ Death of Marcus Aurelius, Roman emperor.

461 ~ Death of Saint Patrick, patron saint of Ireland.

1673 ~ Jacques Marquette & Louis Jolliet began their exploration of the Great Lakes and the Mississippi river.

1834 ~ Birthday of Gottlieb Daimler, Engineer & Inventor.

1845 ~ The rubber band was patented by Stephen Perry.

1919 ~ Birthday of Nat King Cole, Singer. Oh! what a singer!

1942 ~ Gen. Douglas MacArthur arrived in Australia to become supreme commander of Allied forces in the southwest Pacific theater during World War II.

1959 ~ Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, fled Tibet and traveled to India.

1973 ~ The Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph Burst of Joy was taken.

1979 ~ Birthday of Stormy Daniels, Porn actress.

Feastdays & Holidays

Catholicism ~ Feast day of St Patrick: a public holiday in Ireland and Montserrat, widely celebrated in North America.

March 18th
 

1844 ~ Birthday of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Composer.

1850 ~ American Express was founded by Henry Wells & William Fargo.

1869 ~ Birthday of Neville Chamberlain, UK PM.

1962 ~ France and Algeria signed an agreement ending the Algerian War.

1965 ~ Soviet cosmonaut Aleksei Leonov became the first man to walk in space.

1978 ~ Death of Leigh Brackett, Science Fiction author.

1990 ~ In the largest art theft in U.S. history, 12 paintings, collectively worth more than $100 million, were stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, Massachusetts.

1992 ~ Microsoft shipped Windows 3.1.

1992 ~ South Africa voted to end apartheid.

2003 ~ Death of Adam Osborne, British born computer pioneer.

March 19th
 

1687 ~ Explorer Robert Cavelier de La Salle, searching for the mouth of the Mississippi River, was murdered.

1813 ~ Birthday of David Livingstone, Missionary & Explorer.

1906 ~ Birthday of Adolf Eichmann, Nazi official.

1915 ~ The U.S. Senate rejected the Treaty of Versailles for the second time.

1932 ~ Sydney Harbor Bridge opened.

1950 ~ Death of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Author.

1953 ~ The Academy Awards were first televised.

1982 ~ Argentines landed on South Georgia Island, precipitating the Falklands War.

1987 ~ Death of Louis-Victor de Broglie, Physicist, awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics 1929.

2008 ~ Death of Arthur C. Clarke, Science Fiction author.

Feastdays & Holidays

The swallows return to Mission San Juan Capistrano in California.

March 20th
 

43 B.C. ~ Birthday of Ovid, Roman poet.

1727 ~ Death of Sir Isaac Newton, Physicist.

1815 ~ Napoleon returned to Paris after escaping from Elba, beginning his "Hundred Days" rule.

1852 ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was published.

1916 ~ Albert Einstein published his General Theory of Relativity.

1928 ~ Birthday of Fred Rogers, children's television host.

1969 ~ John Lennon married Yoko Ono in Gibraltar.

1995 ~ A sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway killed 12 and wounded 1,300 people.

2000 ~ Former Black Panther Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, once known as H. Rap Brown, was captured following a shootout in Atlanta.

2003 ~ U.S. and British forces invaded Iraq from Kuwait.

March 21st
 

1685 ~ Birthday of Johann Sebastian Bach, Composer.

1839 ~ Birthday of Modest Mussorgsky, Russian composer.

1867 ~ Birthday of Florenz Ziegfeld, Broadway Impresario.

1945 ~ UK troops liberated Mandalay, Burma.

1960 ~ Police fired on demonstrators in Sharpeville, South Africa, killing 69 and wounding 180.

1963 ~ The federal penitentiary on an island in San Francisco Bay, Alcatraz, was closed.

1965 ~ Rev. King led 3,200 people on the start of a civil rights march from Selma To Montgomery, Alabama.

1980 ~ President Carter announced a U.S. boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow to protest the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan.

1999 ~ Bertrand Piccard and Brian Jones became the first men to circumnavigate the Earth in a hot air balloon.

2000 ~ The U.S. Supreme Court ruled the government lacked authority to regulate tobacco as an addictive drug.

March 22nd
 

1683 ~ Anne Hutchinson was expelled from Massachusetts Bay Colony for religious dissent.

1687 ~ Death of Jean Baptiste Lully, French Composer.

1832 ~ Death of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Writer & Poet.

1882 ~ U.S. Congress outlawed polygamy.

1923 ~ Birthday of Marcel Marceau, Mime.

1963 ~ The British Secretary of State for War, John Profumo, denied improper involvement with the model Christine Keeler.

1963 ~ The Beatles' first album, Please Please Me, was released in the UK.

1972 ~ The Equal Rights Amendment To The U.S. Constitution was sent to the states for ratification.

1993 ~ The Intel Corporation shipped the first Pentium chips.

2004 ~ Death (by Israeli Hellfire missile) of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, co-founder and spiritual leader of Hamas.

"Death (by Israeli Hellfire missile) of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, co-founder and spiritual leader of Hamas."

I wonder if there was intentional irony in the Hamas leader dying in a blaze of hellfire?

يموت ملؤها الكره للإنسان!

March 23rd
 

1749 ~ Birthday of Pierre Simon de Laplace, Mathematician & Astronomer.

1775 ~ Patrick Henry delivered his famous speech - "give me liberty or give me death" in Williamsburg, Virginia.

1857 ~ Elisha Otis's first elevator was installed at 488 Broadway, New York City.

1882 ~ Birthday of Emmy Noether, Mathematician. Now there's a lady who had a tough row to hoe!

1912 ~ Birthday of Wernher von Braun, Engineer.

1923 ~ Birthday of Roger Bannister, athlete, first man to run the "Miracle Mile"

1983 ~ President Ronald Reagan made his initial proposal to develop technology to intercept missiles.

1989 ~ Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann announced cold fusion at the University of Utah.

1989 ~ A 1,000-foot diameter Near-Earth asteroid (4581 Asclepius) missed the Earth by 400,000 miles.

2001 ~ The Russian space station Mir was de-orbited, breaking up in the atmosphere before falling into the southern Pacific Ocean near Fiji.

March 24th
 

1874 ~ Birthday of Harry Houdini, Magician.

1882 ~ Robert Koch announced the discovery of the bacterium responsible for tuberculosis.

1882 ~ Death of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Poet.

1893 ~ Birthday of Walter Baade, Astronomer.

1905 ~ Death of Jules Verne, Author.

1944 ~ In occupied Rome, the Nazis executed more than 300 civilians in reprisal for an attack by Italian partisans the day before that killed 32 German soldiers.

1965 ~ Ranger 9 broadcast live TV as it crashed-landed onto the Moon.

1980 ~ Archbishop Óscar Romero was killed by gunmen while celebrating Mass in San Salvador.

1989 ~ The Exxon Valdez spilled 270,000 barrels of oil after running aground in Alaska's Prince William Sound.

1999 ~ NATO launched air strikes against Yugoslavia. This marked the first time NATO attacked a sovereign nation.

March 25th
 

1634 ~ The first settlers arrived in Maryland (led by Lord Baltimore).

1807 ~ The Slave Trade Act became law, abolishing slavery in the Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.

1867 ~ Birthday of Arturo Toscanini, Conductor.

1918 ~ Death of Claude Debussy, Composer.

1942 ~ Birthday of Aretha Franklin, Singer.

1957 ~ The European Economic Community was established (West Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg).

1975 ~ King Faisal of Saudi Arabia was shot to death by a nephew with a history of mental illness.

1978 ~ Birthday of Teanna Kai, Porn actress.

1992 ~ Cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev returned to Earth from the Mir space station after a 10-month stay, during which his native country, the Soviet Union, ceased to exist.

1998 ~ President Clinton acknowledged during his Africa tour that "we did not act quickly enough" to stop the slaughter of one million Rwandans four years earlier.

March 26th
 

1827 ~ Death of Ludwig van Beethoven, Composer.

1892 ~ Death of Walt Whitman, Poet.

1904 ~ Birthday of Joseph Campbell, Author & Mythologist.

1964 ~ The musical “Funny Girl”, starring Barbra Streisand, opened on Broadway.

1979 ~ Anwar al-Sadat, Menachem Begin and Jimmy Carter signed the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty in Washington, DC.

1983 ~ Death of Anthony Blunt, British art historian and spy.

1981 ~ The "Gang of Four", Roy Jenkins, David Owen, William Rodgers and Shirley Williams, founded the Social Democratic Party.

1997 ~ The 39 Heaven's Gate cult suicides.

1999 ~ The Melissa worm infected e-mail systems around the world.

2005 ~ Death of James Callaghan, UK Prime Minister.

March 27th
 

1836 ~ Antonio López de Santa Anna ordered the Mexican army to kill about 400 Texans at Goliad, Texas.

1845 ~ Birthday of Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen, physicist, awarded the first Nobel Prize in physics.

1863 ~ Birthday of Sir Henry Royce, automobile pioneer.

1871 ~ First international rugby football match, England v. Scotland, played in Edinburgh at Raeburn Place.

1886 ~ Birthday of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Architect.

1958 ~ Nikita Khrushchev became Premier of the USSR.

1968 ~ Death of Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space.

1972 ~ Death of M. C. Escher, Dutch artist.

1977 ~ A KLM Boeing 747, attempting to take off, crashed into a Pan Am 747 on the Canary Island of Tenerife, killing 582 people.

2002 ~ Passover Massacre: A suicide bomber killed 28 people in Netanya, Israel.

March 28th
 

1881 ~ Death of Modest Mussorgsky, Russian composer.

1910 ~ Henri Fabre becomes the first man to fly a seaplane after taking off from a water runway near Martigues, France.

1939 ~ Generalissimo Franco entered Madrid, essentially ending the Spanish Civil War.

1943 ~ Death of Sergei Rachmaninoff, composer and pianist.

1947 ~ The last episode of the Buck Rogers in the 25th Century played on radio.

1965 ~ Conclusion of the 'Selma to Montgomey' Civil Rights march.

1979 ~ One of the nuclear reactors at Three Mile Island was severely damaged in what remains as the largest nuclear incident in U.S. history.

1980 ~ Birthday of Birthday of Minori Aoi (葵みのり), Japanese Porn actress.

1987 ~ Death of Maria von Trapp, Singer.

2004 ~ Death of Peter Ustinov, Actor.

1797 - Nathaniiel Briggs patented a washing machine

1939 - Spanish Civil War ended

1941 - Virginia Woolf Drowned herself

2000 - Supreme Court unanimously ruled that an anonymous tip does not justify a stop and frisk action against a person.

March 29th
 

1867 ~ Queen Victoria gave Royal Assent to the British North America Act which established the Dominion of Canada on July 1.

1899 ~ Birthday of Lavrenty Beria, Soviet Communist leader.

1912 ~ Death of Robert Falcon Scott, Explorer.

1973 ~ The last U.S. troops left South Vietnam, ending America's direct military involvement in the Vietnam War.

1981 ~ First running of the London Marathon.

1982 ~ Queen Elizabeth gave Royal Assent to the Canada Act 1982, setting the stage for the Queen of Canada to proclaim the Constitution Act, 1982.

1984 ~ The Baltimore Colts of the NFL moved to Indianapolis in the middle of the night.

1985 ~ Death of Jeanine Deckers, better known as "The Singing Nun" due to her 1963 hit song "Dominique".

2004 ~ Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia join NATO as full members.

2004 ~ Death of Alistair Cook, Journalist.

"Death of Jeanine Deckers, better known as "The Singing Nun" due to her 1963 hit song "Dominique"."

I was surprised to read in Wiki that she and her partner of 10 years committed suicide after being hounded by the Belgian Government for back taxes.

March 30th
 

1135 ~ Birthday of Moses Maimonides, Medieval Jewish Philosopher.

1746 ~ Birthday of Francisco Goya, Spanish painter and engraver.

1842 ~ Anesthesia (ether) was used for the first time in an operation.

1853 ~ Birthday of Vincent van Gogh, Painter.

1945 ~ A defecting German pilot delivered a Messerschmitt Me 262A-1 to the Allies.

1951 ~ Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were convicted of espionage.

1951 ~ Remington Rand delivered the first UNIVAC I computer to the U.S. Census Bureau.

1977 ~ Death of Sergey Ilyushin, Russian aerospace engineer.

1981 ~ President Reagan was shot and seriously injured.

1998 ~ German automaker BMW bought Rolls-Royce for $570 million.

March 31st
 

1621 ~ Birthday of Andrew Marvell, English poet.

1732 ~ Birthday of Joseph Haydn, Composer.

1837 ~ Death of John Constable, Painter.

1918 ~ Daylight Savings Time went into effect in the United States for the first time.

1959 ~ The 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, crossed the border into India and was granted political asylum.

1968 ~ President Johnson announced he would not run for re-election.

1970 ~ After 12 years in orbit, Explorer 1 burnt up when it re-entered the Earth's atmosphere.

1976 ~ Birthday of Ashton Moore, Porn actress.

1991 ~ The end of the Warsaw Pact.

1995 ~ Latina superstar Selena was killed by the president of her fan club.

April 1st
 

1815 ~ Birthday of Otto von Bismarck, Politician.

1884 ~ Birthday of Florence Blanchfield, the first woman to receive a regular commission in the U.S. Army.

1873 ~ Birthday of Sergei Rachmaninoff, Composer, Pianist & Conductor.

1917 ~ Death of Scott Joplin, Musician & Composer.

1918 ~ The Royal Flying Corps was replaced by the Royal Air Force.

1945 ~ World War II: U.S. forces invaded Okinawa.

1970 ~ President Nixon signed a measure banning cigarette advertising on radio and TV.

1976 ~ Apple Computer Company was formed by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak.

2001 ~ Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic was arrested and taken to prison.

2001 ~ A U.S. intelligence gathering plane collided with a PRC Army fighter jet. The Navy crew made an emergency landing in Hainan, PRC and was detained.

Feastdays & Holidays

April Fools Day

April 2nd
 

1725 ~ Birthday of Giacomo Casanova, adventurer and writer.

1805 ~ Birthday of Hans Christian Andersen, Danish writer.

1875 ~ Birthday of Walter Chrysler, automobile pioneer.

1917 ~ President Woodrow Wilson asked Congress to declare war against Germany.

1917 ~ The first woman ever elected to the U.S. Congress, Jeannette Rankin, took her seat as a representative from Montana.

1966 ~ Death of C.S. Forester, Author.

1978 ~ Dallas premiered on CBS, beginning a 13-year run.

1982 ~ Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands, starting the war.

1986 ~ A grandmother, her daughter and her granddaughter were sucked out of a TWA jet when it was bombed by a group calling itself the Ezzedine Kassam Unit of the Arab Revolutionary Cells

2005 ~ Death of Pope John Paul II.

April 3rd
 

1882 ~ Death of Jesse James (shot in the back and killed for the reward).

1895 ~ The libel trial started by Oscar Wilde against the Marquess of Queensbury began, eventually resulting in Wilde's arrest, trial and imprisonment on charges of homosexuality.

1897 ~ Death of Johannes Brahms, Composer.

1901 ~ Death of Richard D'Oyly Carte, Impresario.

1934 ~ Birthday of Jane Goodall, Zoologist.

1946 ~ Masaharu Homma, the Japanese general responsible for the Bataan Death March, was executed in the Philippines.

1948 ~ President Truman signed the Marshall Plan.

1991 ~ Death of Graham Greene, English writer.

1996 ~ Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski was arrested at his Montana cabin.

2000 ~ Microsoft was ruled to have violated United States antitrust laws.

April 4th
 

1884 ~ Birthday of Isoroku Yamamoto, naval commander.

1885 ~ Birthday of Arthur Murray, dancer.

1902 ~ British financier Cecil Rhodes left £6 million in his will to provide scholarships for Americans at Oxford University in England.

1949 ~ Twelve nations signed The North Atlantic Treaty creating the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

1964 ~ The Beatles occupied all of the top five positions on the Billboard singles chart in the United States.

1968 ~ Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated.

1975 ~ Microsoft was founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen.

1979 ~ Death of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Pakistan Prime Minister (hanged).

1984 ~ Winston Smith, the main character of George Orwell's book Nineteen Eighty-Four, began writing in his secret diary.

1994 ~ Netscape Communications Corporation was founded by Marc Andreessen and Jim Clark.

April 5th
 

1588 ~ Birthday of Thomas Hobbes, English philosopher.

1614 ~ In Virginia, Pocahontas married English colonist John Rolfe.

1792 ~ President Washington cast the first presidential veto, rejecting a congressional measure for apportioning representatives among the states.

1908 ~ Birthday of Herbert von Karajan, Austrian conductor.

1930 ~ In an act of civil disobedience, Mahatma Gandhi breaks British law after marching to the sea and making salt.

1942 ~ The Japanese Imperial Navy attacked Colombo, Sri Lanka, and sank the Royal Navy cruisers HMS Cornwall and HMS Dorsetshire southwest of the island.

1951 ~ Ethel and Julius Rosenberg were sentenced to death for spying for the Soviet Union.

1964 ~ Death of General Douglas MacArthur, US Army.

1976 ~ Death of Howard Hughes, aviation pioneer.

2008 ~ Death of Charlton Heston, Actor & activist.

April 6th
 

1528 ~ Death of Albrecht Dürer, Artist.

1866 ~ Birthday of Butch Cassidy, Outlaw.

1909 ~ Robert Peary and Matthew Henson became the first men to reach the North Pole.

1917 ~ The United States declared war on Germany.

1928 ~ Birthday of James D. Watson, Geneticist, co-discoverer of structure of DNA, awarded 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

1933 ~ Hostess Twinkies were invented.

1971 ~ Death of Igor Stravinsky, Composer.

1992 ~ Death of Isaac Asimov, Science-fiction author.

1994 ~ The presidents of Rwanda and Burundi were killed in a plane crash near Rwanda's capital.

2001 ~ Algerian national Ahmed Ressam, accused of bringing explosives into the U.S. days before the millennium celebrations, was convicted twice in the same day - first in France for belonging to a group supporting Islamic militants, then in Los Angeles on terror charges.

April 7th
 

1614 ~ Death of El Greco (Domenikos Theotocopoulos), artist.

1795 ~ France adopted the meter as the unit of length.

1862 ~ Union forces led by Gen. Ulysses S. Grant defeated the Confederates at the battle of Shiloh in Tennessee.

1891 ~ Death of P. T. Barnum, Circus Impresario.

1953 ~ Dag Hammarskjöld was elected United Nations Secretary General.

1964 ~ IBM announced the System/360.

1967 ~ Birthday of Runa Akasaka (赤坂ルナ), Japanese Porn actress.

1968 ~ Death of Jim Clark, racing driver.

1969 ~ The Internet's symbolic birth date: publication of First Request for Comment (RFC).

1978 ~ Development of the neutron bomb was canceled by President Carter.

April 8th
 

1820 ~ The Venus de Milo was discovered on the Aegean island of Melos.

1889 ~ Birthday of Sir Adrien Boult, English Conductor.

1945 ~ Pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer was executed at the POW camp at Flossenbürg.

1953 ~ Jomo Kenyatta was convicted of being a member of the Mau Mau.

1973 ~ Death of Pablo Picasso, artist.

1974 ~ Hank Aaron of the Atlanta Braves hit his 715th career home run, breaking Babe Ruth's record.

1975 ~ Frank Robinson managed his first game as major league baseball's first African American manager.

1982 ~ Birthday of Judy Star, Canadian porn actress.

1983 ~ Death of Omar Bradley, general.

2005 ~ The funeral of Pope John Paul II.

April 9th
 

1865 ~ Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered his army to Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House in Virginia.

1906 ~ Birthday of Antal Dorati, Hungarian conductor.

1940 ~ Operation Weserübung: Germany invaded Denmark and Norway.

1942 ~ HMS Hermes and Royal Australian Navy Destroyer HMAS Vampire were sunk off Ceylon’s (Sri Lanka) east coast by Japanese naval aircraft.

1926 ~ Birthday of Hugh Hefner, Editor & Publisher.

1928 ~ Birthday of Tom Lehrer, Musician & Satirist.

1959 ~ Death of Frank Lloyd Wright, Architect.

1974 ~ Birthday of Jenna Jameson, Porn actress.

1991 ~ Georgia declared its independence from the Soviet Union.

2003 ~ Iraqis celebrated the collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime, beheading a toppled statue of the dictator in downtown Baghdad.

April 10th
 

1847 ~ Birthday of Joseph Pulitzer, Journalist & Publisher.

1912 ~ The RMS Titanic left port in Southampton, England.

1919 ~ Mexican Revolution leader Emiliano Zapata was ambushed and killed by government forces.

1932 ~ Birthday of Omar Sharif, Egyptian actor (Doctor Zhivago, anad many others).

1947 ~ Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in MLB.

1954 ~ Death of Auguste Lumière, Cinema Pioneer.

1963 ~ The American submarine USS Thresher and its crew was lost off Cape Cod, Mass.

1966 ~ Death of Evelyn Waugh, Writer.

1970 ~ Paul McCartney announced that The Beatles had broken up.

1998 ~ The Belfast Agreement was signed.

April 11th
 

1814 ~ Napoleon abdicated and was exiled to Elba.

1893 ~ Birthday of Dean Acheson, former U.S. Secretary of State.

1932 ~ Birthday of Joel Grey, American singer and actor.

1945 ~ U.S. forces liberated Buchenwald concentration camp.

1951 ~ President Truman replaced General MacArthur with Lieutenant-General Ridgway.

1961 ~ Bob Dylan made his singing début in New York City.

1961 ~ Start of war crimes trial of Adolf Eichmann.

1979 ~ Idi Amin deposed as president of Uganda.

1986 ~ Birthday of Roman Heart, American Porn actor.

2007 ~ Death of Kurt Vonnegut, American author.

April 12th
 

65 ~ Death of Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Philosopher, Dramatist & Statesman.

1861 ~ The American Civil War began when Confederate forces fired on Fort Sumter in South Carolina.

1895 ~ Birthday of Lily Pons, Opera Soprano.

1937 ~ Frank Whittle ground-tested the first jet engine designed to power an aircraft.

1940 ~ Birthday of Herbie Hancock, Musician.

1945 ~ President Franklin Roosevelt died.

1961 ~ Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space aboard Vostok 1.

1984 ~ Arthur Scargill, the man who led the destruction of the National Union of Mineworkers ruled out a national ballot of miners on whether to continue their strike.

1999 ~ President Clinton was cited for contempt of court for giving "intentionally false statements" in a sexual harassment civil lawsuit.

2009 ~ Death of Marilyn Chambers, Porn actress, best known for her performance in "Behind the Green Door".

April 13th
 

1570 ~ Birthday of Guy Fawkes, Gunpowder Plot conspirator.

1598 ~ Henry IV of France granted freedom of religion to Hguenots.

1742 ~ George Frideric Handel's oratorio Messiah premiered in Dublin, Ireland.

1743 ~ Birthday of Thomas Jefferson, 3rd U.S. President.

1829 ~ The British Parliament granted freedom of religion to Roman Catholics.

1892 ~ Birthday of Arthur Harris, commander of RAF's Bomber Command in World War II.

1964 ~ Sidney Poitier broke the color barrier when he was awarded the “Best Actor” Oscar.

1970 ~ Apollo 13 was almost lost when a tank containing liquid oxygen burst.

1990 ~ The Soviet Union admitted committing the Katyn Massacre.

2008 ~ Death of John Wheeler, American physicist, inventor of the terms "black hole", "quantum foam" and "wormhole".

April 14th
 

1629 ~ Birthday of Christiaan Huygens, Mathematician.

1759 ~ Death of Georg Friedrich Handel, Composer.

1865 ~ President Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth.

1904 ~ Birthday of Sir John Gielgud, Actor.

1935 ~ Death of Emmy Noether, Mathematician.

1939 ~ ''The Grapes of Wrath'' by John Steinbeck was published.

1964 ~ Death of Rachel Carson, Writer & Ecologist.

1988 ~ The USSR pledged to leave Afghanistan.

1999 ~ A hailstorm in Sydney, Australia caused at least A$1.7 billion damages.

2003 ~ The Human Genome Project was completed with 99% of the human genome sequenced.