April 19

Events

• 1012 - Martyrdom of St Alphege in Greenwich, London.
• 1529 - At the Diet of Speyer, a group of rulers (German: Fürst) and independent cities (German: Reichsstadt) protests the reinstatement of the Edict of Worms, beginning the Protestant movement.
• 1587 - Sir Francis Drake sinks the Spanish fleet in Cádiz Harbor.
• 1713 - With no living male heirs, Emperor Charles VI issues the Pragmatic Sanction to ensure that Habsburg lands and the Austrian throne would be inherited by his daughter, Maria Theresa.
• 1770 - Captain James Cook first spots Australia.
• 1775 - American Revolutionary War: The Battle of Lexington and Concord – British General Thomas Gage attempts to confiscate American colonists' firearms. The British are driven back to Boston, Massachusetts, thus beginning the American Revolutionary War.
• 1809 - The army of Austria attacks and is defeated by the forces of the Duchy of Warsaw in the Battle of Raszyn, part of the struggles of the Fifth Coalition.
• 1810 - Venezuela achieves home rule: Emparan, Governor of the Captaincy General is removed by the people of Caracas and a Junta is installed.
• 1839 - The Treaty of London establishes Belgium as a kingdom.
• 1861 - American Civil War: A pro-Secession mob in Baltimore, Maryland, attacks United States Army troops marching through the city.
• 1892 - Charles Duryea claims to have driven the first automobile in the United States, in Springfield, Massachusetts.
• 1904 - Much of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, is destroyed by fire.
• 1909 - Joan of Arc is declared a saint.
• 1919 - Leslie Irvin of the United States makes the first successful parachute jump and free fall.
• 1927 - Mae West is sentenced to 10 days in jail for obscenity for her play Sex.
• 1928 - The final volume of the Oxford English Dictionary is published.
• 1933 - President Franklin Delano Roosevelt announces that the United States will be abandoning the gold standard.
• 1934 - Shirley Temple debuts in Stand Up and Cheer.
• 1938 - RCA–NBC begins regular television broadcasts.
• 1943 - World War II: In Poland, German troops enter the Warsaw ghetto to round up the remaining Jews, beginning the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
• 1943 - Bicycle Day – Swiss chemist Dr. Albert Hofmann deliberately takes LSD for the first time.
• 1951 - General Douglas MacArthur retires from the military.
• 1956 - Actress Grace Kelly marries Rainier III of Monaco.
• 1960 - Students in South Korea hold a nationwide pro-democracy protest against their president Syngman Rhee, eventually forcing him to resign.
• 1961 - The Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba ends in failure.
• 1971 - Sierra Leone becomes a republic, and Siaka Stevens the president.
• 1971 - Vietnam War: Vietnam Veterans Against the War begin a five-day demonstration in Washington, DC.
• 1971 - Charles Manson is sentenced to life in prison for the Sharon Tate murders.
• 1971 - Launch of Salyut 1, first human-made space station.
• 1978 - Lagumot Harris is elected President of Nauru.
• 1980 - In The Hague, Netherlands, Johnny Logan wins the twenty-fifth Eurovision Song Contest for Ireland singing "What's Another Year".
• 1989 - A gun turret explodes on the USS Iowa, killing 47 sailors.
• 1989 - Trisha Meili, the "Central Park Jogger" is raped.
• 1992 First attempted raid on the Weaver Family - Ruby Ridge, Idaho
• 1993 - The 50-day siege of the Branch Davidian complex outside Waco, Texas, USA, ends when a fire breaks out. Eighty-one people die.
• 1995 - Oklahoma City bombing: The Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, USA, is bombed, killing 168.
• 1999 - The German parliament returns to Berlin.
• 2000 - An Air Philippines Boeing 737-200 crashes near Davao airport, killing 131.
• 2005 - Cardinal Joseph Alois Ratzinger is elected the 265th Pope by the College of Cardinals. He takes the name Pope Benedict XVI.
  

  Births

• 1320 - King Peter I of Portugal (d. 1367)
• 1721 - Roger Sherman, signer of the U.S. Declaration of Independence (d. 1793)
• 1721 - Thomas McKean, signer of the U.S. Declaration of Independence (d. 1817)
• 1883 - Richard von Mises, mathematician (d. 1953)
• 1892 - Germaine Tailleferre, composer (d. 1983)
• 1897 - Constance Talmadge, actress (d. 1973)
• 1900 - Richard Hughes, novelist (d. 1976)
• 1903 - Eliot Ness (d. 1957)
• 1912 - Glenn Seaborg, American chemist and Nobel Prize winner (d. 1999)
• 1928 - Alexis Korner, rock musicianian (d. 1984)
• 1930 - Dick Sargent, actor (d. 1994)
• 1933 - Jayne Mansfield, actress (d. 1967)
• 1933 - Dickie Bird, cricket umpire
• 1935 - Dudley Moore, actor, musician, comedian, composer (d. 2002)
• 1942 - Frank Elstner, television producer
• 1944 - Bernie Worrell, keyboardistist (originally with P Funk)
• 1946 - Tim Curry, British actor
• 1947 - Murray Perahia, American pianist
• 1949 - Paloma Picasso, Spanish painter
• 1949 - Larry Walters, floated 16,000 feet into the air on a lawn chair attached to helium-filled balloons (d. 1993)
• 1952 - Alexis Arguello, boxer
• 1953 - Ruby Wax, British television personality
• 1962 - Al Unser, Jr, automobile racer, two-time Indianapolis 500 winner
• 1965 - Suge Knight, record producer
• 1967 - Steven H Silver, science fiction editor
• 1968 - Ashley Judd, actress
• 1970 - Kelly Holmes, Olympian, double gold medalist
• 1972 - Rivaldo, football player
• 1979 - Kate Hudson, actress
• 1981 - Hayden Christensen, actor
• 1981 - Catalina Sandino Moreno, actress
• 1987 - Maria Sharapova, tennis player
• 1988 - Ted Kim, volleyball player
  

  Deaths

• 1012 - Alphege, Archbishop of Canterbury (b. 954)
• 1054 - Pope Leo IX (b. 1002)
• 1390 - King Robert II of Scotland (b. 1316)
• 1578 - Uesugi Kenshin, Japanese samurai and warlord (b. 1530)
• 1632 - Sigismund, king of Sweden and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (b. 1561)
• 1689 - Queen Christina of Sweden (b. 1626)
• 1813 - Benjamin Rush, physician, activist (b. 1745)
• 1824 - George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron, author, poet (b. 1788)
• 1881 - Benjamin Disraeli, former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (b. 1804)
• 1882 - Charles Darwin, biologist, author (b. 1809)
• 1906 - Pierre Curie, physicist (b. 1859)
• 1914 - Charles Sanders Peirce, pragmatic semiologist (b. 1839)
• 1930 - Georges-Casimir Dessaulles, Canadian Senator (b. 1827)
• 1937 - William Martin Conway, British art critic and mountaineer (b. 1856)
• 1949 - Ulrich Salchow, Swedish figure skater (b. 1877)
• 1958 - Robert Bentley, humorist, actor
• 1967 - Konrad Adenauer, former Bundeskanzler of West Germany (b. 1876)
• 1971 - Earl Thomson, Canadian athlete (b. 1895)
• 1973 - Hans Kelsen, Austrian-American legal theorist
• 1974 - Ayub Khan, former President of Pakistan (b. 1907)
• 1975 - Percy L. Julian, chemist (b. 1899)
• 1987 - Maxwell Taylor, general (b. 1901)
• 1989 - Daphne du Maurier, author (b. 1907)
• 1992 - Frankie Howerd, comedian, actor (b. 1917)
• 1993 - David Koresh, cult leader (b. 1959)
• 1998 - Octavio Paz, Mexican writer, diplomat and Nobel laureate (b. 1914)
  

  Holidays and observances

• Patriots' Day (Massachusetts, Maine, and Wisconsin, USA)
• Declaration of Independence Day (Venezuela)
• Republic Day (Sierra Leone)
• Landing of the 33 (Uruguay)
• Feast day of the following saints in the Roman Catholic Church:
• *Saint Emma
• *George of Antioch
• *Ursmar
• *Expeditus
• Primrose Day (England) – primroses are placed on the statue of Benjamin Disraeli in Parliament Square, London on the anniversary of his death (1881). There was a mistaken idea that the primrose was Lord Beaconsfield's favourite flower, since Queen Victoria sent them to his funeral.
• The Roman holiday of Cerealia ends. (Roman Empire)
• Bicycle Day

• Easter Sunday 1908, 1981, 1987, 1992. In the Gregorian Calendar Easter Sunday falls on 19 April more often than on any other date.
  

  External links

• BBC: On This Day

April 18 - April 20 - March 19 - May 19 – listing of all days