April 11
Napoleon Bonaparte, emperor of France and one of the greatest military leaders in history, abdicates the throne, and, in the Treaty of Fontainebleau, is banished to the Mediterranean island of Elba. – 1814.
April 12
The bloodiest four years in American history begin when Confederate shore batteries, under General P.G.T. Beauregard, open fire on Union-held Fort Sumter in South Carolina’s Charleston Bay. Two days later, U.S. president Abraham Lincoln issued a proclamation calling for 75,000 volunteer soldiers to quell the Southern insurrection. – 1861.
Aboard the spacecraft Vostok 1, Soviet cosmonaut, Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin, becomes the first human being to travel into space. – 1961.
The space shuttle Columbia is launched from Cape Canaveral, Fla., as the first reusable manned spacecraft in space. – 1981.
April 13
Disaster strikes 200,000 miles from Earth when oxygen tank No. 2 blows up on Apollo 13, the third manned lunar landing mission. Astronauts James A. Lovell, John L. Swigert, and Fred W. Haise had left Earth two days earlier for the Fra Mauro highlands of the moon, but were forced to turn their attention to simply making it home alive. – 1970.
April 14
U.S. president Abraham Lincoln is shot at a play at Ford’s Theater in Washington, D.C.. The attack came only five days after Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered his army, to effectively end the American Civil War. – 1865.
In what came to be known as Black Sunday, one of the most devastating storms of the 1930s Dust Bowl era sweeps across the plains’ states and hit Texas and Oklahoma the worst on this day. – 1935.
April 15
The RMS Titanic, billed as unsinkable, sinks into the icy waters of the North Atlantic after hitting an iceberg on its maiden voyage and kills 1,517 persons. – 1912.
Jackie Robinson, age 28, becomes the first African-American player in Major League Baseball when he steps on Ebbets Field in Brooklyn, N.Y. to play for the Brooklyn Dodgers. – 1947.
Two bombs go off near the finish line of the Boston Marathon, and kill three spectators and wound more than 260 others in attendance. – 2013.
April 16
Employers lock out 25,000 New York City garment workers in a dispute over hiring practices. The International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union calls a general strike; after 14 weeks, 60,000 strikers win union recognition and the contractual right to strike. – 1916.
In one of the deadliest shootings in U.S. history, 32 students and teachers die after being gunned down on the campus of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University by a student at the school who later dies from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. – 2007.
April 17
Heavy eruptions of the Tambora volcano in Indonesia are letting up by this day in 1815. The volcano, which began rumbling April 5, killed almost 100,000 persons directly and indirectly. The eruption was the largest ever recorded. – 1815.
The Bay of Pigs invasion begins when a CIA-financed and -trained group of Cuban refugees lands in Cuba and attempts to topple the communist government of Fidel Castro. The attack was an utter failure. – 1961.
— Source: History.com