5th April |
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| 1242 Alexander Nevsky of Novgorod defeats Teutonic Knights | ||
| 1242 Battle on the More of Pskov Estonia | ||
| 1355 Charles IV was crowned in Rome as Holy Roman Emperor. | ||
| 1513 Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian, Henry VIII of England, Ferdinand of Aragon and Pope Leo X signed the Treaty of Mechlin, forming an alliance to invade France. | ||
| 1566 200 Brussel nobles offer Margaretha of Parma a petition | ||
| 1585 Clemens Crabbeels becomes bishop of Hertogenbosch | ||
| 1588 Thomas Hobbes, English philosopher, born. He developed his ideas in "Leviathan, or the Matter, Form, Power of a Commonwealth" (1651). | ||
| 1603 New English king James I departs Edinburgh for London | ||
| 1614 2nd parliament of King James I begin session (no enactments) | ||
| 1614 In the United States, Pocahontas, daughter of King Powahatan, married the farmer John Rolfe in Jamestown, Virginia. | ||
| 1614 Indian princess Pocahontas marries English colonist John Rolfe | ||
| 1621 Mayflower sails from Plymouth on a return trip to England | ||
| 1643 Charles V Leopold, Duke of Lorraine/fieldmarshal in Austria | ||
| 1648 Spanish troops/feudal barons strike down people's uprising in Naples | ||
| 1649 Elihu Yale, England, philanthropist founded Yale was born | ||
| 1676 John Winthrop, British-born colonial governor, born. He later obtained the charter uniting the colonies of Connecticut and New Haven. He was governor of Connecticut at the time of his death. | ||
| 1722 Jacob Roggeveen discovers Easter Island | ||
| 1724 Giovanni Jacopo Casanova de Seingalt, Italian lover and adventurer, born. During his life he was a seminarian, a secretary to a cardinal, a Venetian ensign, an abbe, a gambler, an alchemist, a violinist, a spy and a librarian. | ||
| 1739 French emperor Karel VI sign secret treaty | ||
| 1751 Adolf Frederik of Holstein-Gottorp crowns himself king of Sweden | ||
| 1753 British Museum forms (opens in 1759) | ||
| 1762 British take Grenada, West Indies, from French | ||
| 1768 1st US Chamber of Commerce forms (NYC) | ||
| 1792 George Washington casts 1st presidential veto | ||
| 1794 French revolutionary leader Georges Jacques Danton was guillotined for treason. He tried to temper the Revolutionary Tribunal's severity, which he himself had set up and by which he was ultimately sentenced. | ||
| 1803 1st performance of Beethoven's 2nd Symphony in D | ||
| 1806 Isaac Quintard patents apple cider | ||
| 1812 Brits storm Badajoz fortress, held by French & Spanish | ||
| 1814 Netherlands Bank issues it's 1st banknotes | ||
| 1815 Eruption of Tambora volcano (Sumbawa Java) | ||
| 1827 Joseph Lister, British surgeon and scientist, born; the pioneer of antiseptics, he revolutionised modern surgery. | ||
| 1900 Actor Spencer Tracy born. He was the first actor to win an Academy Award in successive years, for his performances in "Captains Courageous" (1937) and "Boy's Town" (1938). | ||
| 1900 Attempted assassination of Prince of Wales in Brussels, fails | ||
| 1901 Melvyn Douglas, U.S. actor of stage and screen, born as Melvyn Edouard Hesselberg; famed for his appearance with Greta Garbo in "Ninotchka." | ||
| 1902 Soccer match riot between Scotland & England kills 25 | ||
| 1908 British premier Henry Campbell-Bannerman resigns | ||
| 1908 Bette Davis, U.S. film actress, born. She won Oscars for "Dangerous" and "Jezebel" but was perhaps best remembered for her role in the film "All About Eve." | ||
| 1916 Gregory Peck, U.S. film actor, born. Best known for his role as a liberal Southern lawyer in "To Kill a Mockingbird" for which he won an Oscar. | ||
| 1916 French troops occupy Bois de Caillette | ||
| 1919 Eamon de Valera becomes president of Dail Eireann | ||
| 1919 Polish Army executes 35 young Jews | ||
| 1925 Belgian Workers Party wins parliamentary election | ||
| 1930 England out for 849 v WI Kingston, Sandham out for 325 | ||
| 1932 Dutch textile strike broken by trade unions | ||
| 1935 Croatian Farmers Party wins Yugoslavian election | ||
| 1936 Tupelo Mississippi virtually annihilated by a tornado, 216 die | ||
| 1938 Anti-Jewish riots break out in Dabrowa Poland | ||
| 1939 Membership in Hitler Youth becomes obligatory | ||
| 1941 In SF, Castro & Fillmore streetcars replaced by buses | ||
| 1943 Allies bomb Mortsel | ||
| 1943 Japanese troops conquer Indin | ||
| 1943 Poon Lim found after being adrift 133 days | ||
| 1944 140 Lancasters bomb airplane manufacturer in Toulouse | ||
| 1945 Almelo Netherlands freed | ||
| 1945 Kuniaki Koiso resigns as PM of Japan; replaced by Kantaro Suzuki | ||
| 1949 60 year old St Anthony's Hospital burns, kills 77 (Effingham Ill) | ||
| 1950 Prague espionage trial against bishops & priests begins | ||
| 1951 Julius & Ethel Rosenberg, atomic spies, sentenced to death | ||
| 1951 Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were sentenced to death for giving atomic secrets away to the Russians. | ||
| 1952 Henry Wittenberg wins his 8th AAU wrestling title | ||
| 1955 Winston Churchill resigns as British PM, Anthony Eden succeeds him | ||
| 1955 In England, Winston Churchill resigned as prime minister. | ||
| 1959 23rd Golf Masters Championship: Art Wall Jr wins, shooting a 284 | ||
| 1961 Dutch governor Platteel installs New Guinea Council | ||
| 1962 Mgr J Daems appointed bishop of Antwerp | ||
| 1962 NASA civilian pilot Neil A Armstrong takes X-15 to 54,600 m | ||
| 1962 St Bernard Tunnel finished-Swiss/Italians workers shake hands | ||
| 1962 St Bernard Tunnel finished-Swiss/Italians workers shake hands | ||
| 1963 Beatles receive their 1st silver disc (Please Please Me) | ||
| 1963 Susuga Malietoa Tanumafili II becomes chief of Western Samoa | ||
| 1964 1st driverless trains run on London Underground | ||
| 1964 Mary Lena Faulk wins LPGA St Petersburg Women's Golf Open | ||
| 1964 Douglas MacArthur, U.S. general and Pacific commander in World War II, died. | ||
| 1965 37th Academy Awards - "My Fair Lady," Rex Harrison & J Andrews win | ||
| 1965 Lava Lamp Day celebrated | ||
| 1965 US performs nuclear test at Nevada Test Site | ||
| 1968 US marine base Khe San Vietnam, appalled | ||
| 1970 Count Carl von Spreti, West German ambassador to Guatemala, was found murdered six days after his kidnapping by guerrillas. | ||
| 1971 Fran Phipps is 1st woman to reach North Pole | ||
| 1971 Mount Etna erupts in Sicily Italy | ||
| 1973 Pioneer 11 launched to Jupiter | ||
| 1975 Chiang Kai-shek, Chinese military and political leader, died; Chiang fled to Taiwan after his Nationalist forces lost the Chinese civil war against Mao Zedong in 1949. | ||
| 1976 Howard Hughes, U.S. millionaire industrialist and film producer who later became a recluse, died. | ||
| 1982 British fleet sails to Falkland Islands | ||
| 1982 Lord Carrington, British foreign sect resigns due to Falkland Is war | ||
| 1983 France throws out 47 Soviet diplomats | ||
| 1986 US soldier & Turkish woman killed in West Berlin disco bombing | ||
| 1987 16th Nabisco Dinah Shore Golf Championship won by Betsy King | ||
| 1988 Arab gunmen seized a Kuwait Airways Boeing 747 carrying 115 passengers and killed two Kuwaitis. | ||
| 1989 Solidarity grants legal status in Poland | ||
| 1989 the Polish government legalized the Solidarity union, and introduced democratic measures into the political system. | ||
| 1991 Kitty Kelly publishes a book knocking Nancy Reagan | ||
| 1991 Southeast Airlines Embracer 120 crashes in Georgia, killing 23 | ||
| 1991 US begins air drops to Kurd refugees in Northern Iraq | ||
| 1992 Comedian Sam Kenison marries live-in girlfriend Maleeka | ||
| 1992 Peru's Pres Alberto Fujimori suspend constitution & dissolved Congress | ||
| 1992 Thailand General Suchinda Kraprayoon installed as president | ||
| 1992 Suada Dilberovic, a 24-year-old Croat medical student who was shot and killed by a sniper on the Vrbania bridge in Sarajevo, became the first woman casualty of the war in Bosnia. | ||
| 1993 Republican Guard kills 64 in Chad | ||
| 1997 Allen Ginsberg, poet laureate of the beat generation, died. In 1956, he published "Howl and Other Poems," a book of free verse considered the preeminent poetic work of the beat movement of the 1950s. | ||