Events Pre-1600 1289 – Following weeks of bombardment, the city of Tripoli falls to the Mamluks under Qalawun. The Mamluks massacre all men they find and enslave the women and children. 1326 – The kingdom of France and the kingdom of Scotland agree on a treaty of mutual aid at Corbeil. 1336 – Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch) ascends Mont Ventoux. 1478 – The Pazzi family attack on Lorenzo de' Medici in order to displace the ruling Medici family kills his brother Giuliano during High Mass in Florence Cathedral. 1564 – Playwright William Shakespeare is baptized in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England (date of birth is unknown).
1601–1900 1607 – The Virginia Company colonists make landfall at Cape Henry. 1721 – A massive earthquake devastates the Iranian city of Tabriz. 1777 – Sybil Ludington, aged 16, allegedly rides to alert American colonial forces to the approach of British regular forces. 1794 – Battle of Beaumont during the Flanders Campaign of the War of the First Coalition. 1802 – Napoleon Bonaparte signs a general amnesty to allow all but about one thousand of the most notorious émigrés of the French Revolution to return to France. 1803 – Thousands of meteor fragments fall from the skies of L'Aigle, France; the event convinces European scientists that meteors exist. 1805 – First Barbary War: United States Marines capture Derne under the command of First Lieutenant Presley O'Bannon. 1865 – Union cavalry troopers corner and shoot dead John Wilkes Booth, assassin of President Abraham Lincoln, in Virginia. 1900 – Fires destroy Canadian cities Ottawa and Hull, reducing them to ashes in 12 hours. Twelve thousand people are left without a home.|
1901–present 1903 – Atlético Madrid Association football club is founded. 1915 – World War I: Italy secretly signs the Treaty of London pledging to join the Allied Powers. 1916 – Easter Rising: Battle of Mount Street Bridge. 1920 – Ice hockey makes its Olympic debut at the Antwerp Games with center Frank Fredrickson scoring seven goals in Canada's 12–1 drubbing of Sweden in the gold medal match."Winners in first Olympic ice hockey tournament" Victoria Daily Times, April 28, 1920 (p. 10). Retrieved 2020-07-27. 1923 – The Duke of York (the future King George VI) weds Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon at Westminster Abbey. 1925 – Paul von Hindenburg defeats Wilhelm Marx in the second round of the German presidential election to become the first directly elected head of state of the Weimar Republic. 1933 – The Gestapo, the official secret police force of Nazi Germany, is established by Hermann Göring. 1937 – Spanish Civil War: Guernica, Spain, is bombed by the German Condor Legion and the Italian Aviazione Legionaria. 1942 – Benxihu Colliery accident in Manchukuo leaves 1,549 Chinese miners dead. 1943 – The Easter Riots break out in Uppsala, Sweden. 1944 – Georgios Papandreou becomes head of the Greek government-in-exile based in Egypt. 1944 – World War II: Heinrich Kreipe is captured by Allied commandos in occupied Crete. 1945 – World War II: Battle of Bautzen: Last successful German tank-offensive of the war and last noteworthy victory of the Wehrmacht. 1945 – World War II: Filipino troops of the 66th Infantry Regiment, Philippine Commonwealth Army, USAFIP-NL and the American troops of the 33rd and 37th Infantry Division, United States Army liberate Baguio as they fight against the Japanese forces under General Tomoyuki Yamashita. 1954 – The Geneva Conference, an effort to restore peace in Indochina and Korea, begins. 1954 – The first clinical trials of Jonas Salk's polio vaccine begin in Fairfax County, Virginia. 1956 – , the world's first successful container ship, leaves Port Newark, New Jersey, for Houston, Texas. 1958 – Final run of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad's Royal Blue from Washington, D.C., to New York City after 68 years, the first U.S. passenger train to use electric locomotives. 1960 – Forced out by the April Revolution, President of South Korea Syngman Rhee resigns after 12 years of dictatorial rule. 1962 – NASA's Ranger 4 spacecraft crashes into the Moon. 1962 – The British space programme launches its first satellite, the Ariel 1. 1963 – In Libya, amendments to the constitution transform Libya (United Kingdom of Libya) into one national unity (Kingdom of Libya) and allow for female participation in elections. 1964 – Tanganyika and Zanzibar merge to form the United Republic of Tanzania. 1966 – The magnitude 5.1 Tashkent earthquake affects the largest city in Soviet Central Asia with a maximum MSK intensity of VII (Very strong). Tashkent is mostly destroyed and 15–200 are killed. 1966 – A new government is formed in the Republic of the Congo, led by Ambroise Noumazalaye. 1970 – The Convention Establishing the World Intellectual Property Organization enters into force. 1981 – Dr. Michael R. Harrison of the University of California, San Francisco Medical Center performs the world's first human open fetal surgery. 1986 – The Chernobyl disaster occurs in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. 1989 – The deadliest known tornado strikes Central Bangladesh, killing upwards of 1,300, injuring 12,000, and leaving as many as 80,000 homeless. 1989 – People's Daily publishes the April 26 Editorial which inflames the nascent Tiananmen Square protests. 1991 – Fifty-five tornadoes break out in the central United States. Before the outbreak's end, Andover, Kansas, would record the year's only F5 tornado. 1993 – The Space Shuttle Columbia is launched on mission STS-55 to conduct experiments aboard the Spacelab module. 1994 – China Airlines Flight 140 crashes at Nagoya Airport in Japan, killing 264 of the 271 people on board. 1994 – South Africa begins its first multiracial election, which is won by Nelson Mandela's African National Congress. 1999 – Outbreak of CIH computer virus. 2002 – Robert Steinhäuser kills 16 at Gutenberg-Gymnasium in Erfurt, Germany, before committing suicide. 2005 – Cedar Revolution: Under international pressure, Syria withdraws the last of its 14,000 troop military garrison in Lebanon, ending its 29-year military domination of that country (Syrian occupation of Lebanon). 2015 – Nursultan Nazarbayev is re-elected President of Kazakhstan with 97.7% of the vote, one of the biggest vote shares in Kazakhstan's history. 2015 – Peaceful protesters install the first anti-monument in Mexico, Antimonumento +43, as a call for justice and remembrance to commemorate the 2014 Iguala mass kidnapping, later inspiring similar memorials elsewhere in the country and Latin America. 2025 – A car ramming attack at a Lapu-Lapu Day festival kills 11 people and injures at least 30 in Vancouver, Canada.
Births Pre-1600
121 – Marcus Aurelius, Roman emperor (died 180) 757 – Hisham I of Córdoba (died 796) 764 – Al-Hadi, Abbasid caliph (died 786) 1284 – Alice de Toeni, Countess of Warwick (died 1324) 1319 – John II of France (died 1364) 1538 – Gian Paolo Lomazzo, Italian painter and academic (died 1600) 1575 – Marie de' Medici, wife of Henry IV of France (died 1642)
1601–1900 1647 – William Ashhurst, English banker, Sheriff of London, Lord Mayor of London and politician (died 1720) 1648 – Peter II of Portugal (died 1706) 1697 – Adam Falckenhagen, German lute player and composer (died 1754) 1710 – Thomas Reid, Scottish philosopher and academic (died 1796) 1718 – Esek Hopkins, American commander (died 1802) 1774 – Christian Leopold von Buch, German geologist and paleontologist (died 1853) 1782 – Maria Amalia of Naples and Sicily, Queen of France (died 1866) 1785 – John James Audubon, French-American ornithologist and painter (died 1851) 1787 – Ludwig Uhland, German poet, philologist, and historian (died 1862) 1798 – Eugène Delacroix, French painter and lithographer (died 1863) 1801 – Ambrose Dudley Mann, American politician and diplomat, 1st United States Assistant Secretary of State (died 1889) 1804 – Charles Goodyear, American banker, lawyer, and politician (died 1876) 1822 – Frederick Law Olmsted, American journalist and designer, co-designed Central Park (died 1903) 1834 – Charles Farrar Browne, American author (died 1867) 1856 – Joseph Ward, Australian-New Zealand businessman and politician, 17th Prime Minister of New Zealand (died 1930) 1862 – Edmund C. Tarbell, American painter and educator (died 1938) 1865 – Akseli Gallen-Kallela, Finnish artist (died 1931) 1876 – Ernst Felle, German rower (died 1959) 1877 – James Dooley, Irish-Australian politician, 21st Premier of New South Wales (died 1950) 1878 – Rafael Guízar y Valencia, Mexican bishop and saint (died 1938) 1879 – Eric Campbell, British actor (died 1917) 1879 – Owen Willans Richardson, English physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (died 1959) 1886 – Ma Rainey, American singer-songwriter (died 1939) 1886 – Ğabdulla Tuqay, Russian poet and publicist (died 1913) 1889 – Anita Loos, American author, playwright, and screenwriter (died 1981) 1889 – Ludwig Wittgenstein, Austrian-English philosopher and academic (died 1951) 1894 – Rudolf Hess, German politician and Deputy Führer in Nazi regime until 1941 (died 1987) 1896 – Ruut Tarmo, Estonian actor and director (died 1967) 1896 – Ernst Udet, leading German fighter pilot in World War I and Chief of Procurement and Supply in the Luftwaffe (died 1941) 1897 – Eddie Eagan, American boxer and bobsledder (died 1967) 1897 – Douglas Sirk, German-American director and screenwriter (died 1987) 1898 – Vicente Aleixandre, Spanish poet and author, Nobel Prize laureate (died 1984) 1898 – John Grierson, Scottish director and producer (died 1972) 1899 – Oscar Rabin, Latvian-English saxophonist and bandleader (died 1958) 1900 – Eva Aschoff, German bookbinder and calligrapher (died 1969) 1900 – Charles Francis Richter, American seismologist and physicist (died 1985) 1900 – Hack Wilson, American baseball player (died 1948)
1901–present 1904 – Paul-Émile Léger, Canadian cardinal (died 1991) 1904 – Xenophon Zolotas, Greek economist and politician, 177th Prime Minister of Greece (died 2004) 1905 – Jean Vigo, French director and screenwriter (died 1934) 1907 – Ilias Tsirimokos, Greek politician, Prime Minister of Greece (died 1968) 1909 – Marianne Hoppe, German actress (died 2002) 1910 – Tomoyuki Tanaka, Japanese screenwriter and producer (died 1997) 1911 – Paul Verner, German soldier and politician (died 1986) 1912 – A. E. van Vogt, Canadian-American author (died 2000) 1914 – Bernard Malamud, American novelist and short story writer (died 1986) 1914 – James Rouse, American real estate developer (died 1996) 1916 – Eyvind Earle, American artist, author, and illustrator (died 2000) 1916 – Ken Wallis, English commander, engineer, and pilot (died 2013) 1916 – Morris West, Australian author and playwright (died 1999) 1917 – Sal Maglie, American baseball player and coach (died 1992) 1917 – I. M. Pei, Chinese-American architect, designed the National Gallery of Art and Bank of China Tower (died 2019) 1917 – Virgil Trucks, American baseball player and coach (died 2013) 1918 – Fanny Blankers-Koen, Dutch sprinter and long jumper (died 2004) 1921 – Jimmy Giuffre, American clarinet player, saxophonist, and composer (died 2008) 1922 – J. C. Holt, English historian and academic (died 2014) 1922 – Jeanne Sauvé, Canadian journalist and politician, Governor General of Canada (died 1993) 1922 – Margaret Scott, South African-Australian ballerina and choreographer (died 2019) 1924 – Browning Ross, American runner and soldier (died 1998) 1925 – Vladimir Boltyansky, Russian mathematician, educator and author (died 2019) 1925 – Gerard Cafesjian, American businessman and philanthropist (died 2013) 1925 – Michele Ferrero, Italian entrepreneur (died 2015) 1925 – Frank Hahn, British economist (died 2013) 1926 – David Coleman, British sports commentator and television presenter (died 2013) 1926 – Michael Mathias Prechtl, German soldier and illustrator (died 2003) 1927 – Jack Douglas, English actor (died 2008)