April 18
At 5:13 a.m., an earthquake estimated at close to 8.0 on the Richter scale strikes San Francisco, Calif. and kills hundreds of residents when it topples numerous buildings. The quake was caused by a slip of the San Andreas Fault over a segment about 275 miles long, and shock waves could be felt from southern Oregon down to Los Angeles. It was estimated that approximately 3,000 residents died as a result of the earthquake and 30,000 buildings were destroyed, including most of the city’s homes and nearly all the central business district. – 1906.
April 19
At approximately 5 a.m., 700 British troops, on a mission to capture Patriot leaders and seize a Patriot arsenal, march into Lexington, Mass. to find 77 armed minutemen under Captain John Parker waiting for them on the town’s common green. British Major John Pitcairn ordered the outnumbered Patriots to disperse, and after a moment’s hesitation the Americans began to drift off the green. Suddenly, the “shot heard around the world” was fired from an undetermined gun, and a cloud of musket smoke soon covered the green. When the brief Battle of Lexington ended, eight Americans lay dead or dying and 10 others were wounded. Only one British soldier was injured, but the American Revolution had begun. – 1775.
An American domestic terrorist’s bomb destroys the Oklahoma City federal building and kills 168 persons, 99 of whom were government employees. – 1995.
April 20
Ludlow massacre: Colorado state militia, using machine guns and fire, kill approximately 20 persons, including 11 children, at a tent city set up by striking coal miners. The deaths occurred after a day-long fight between strikers and the Guard. – 1914.
Two teenage gunmen kill 13 and wound another 23 in a shooting spree at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo.. – 1999.
An explosion and fire aboard the Deepwater Horizon oil drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico, approximately 50 miles off the Louisiana coast, kills 11 workers and triggers the largest offshore oil spill in American history. By the time the well was capped three months later, an estimated 4.9 Million barrels, 206 Million gallons, of crude oil had poured into the Gulf. – 2012.
April 21
According to tradition, April 21, 753 B.C., Romulus and his twin brother, Remus, found Rome on the site where they were suckled by a she-wolf as orphaned infants. Actually, the Romulus and Remus myth originated some time in the Fourth Century B.C., and the exact date of Rome’s founding was set by the Roman scholar Marcus Terentius Varro in the first century B.C.. – 753 B.C..
April 22
Adolf Hitler, learning from one of his generals that no German defense was offered to the Russian assault at Eberswalde, admits to all in his underground bunker that the war is lost and that suicide is his only recourse. – 1945.
Earth Day, an event to increase public awareness of the world’s environmental problems, is celebrated in the United States for the first time. – 1970.
April 23
Historians believe legendary English dramatist and poet William Shakespeare is born in Stratford-on-Avon on this day in 1564, the same day he died in 1616. – 1564.
April 24
On Easter Monday in Dublin, the Irish Republican Brotherhood, a secret organization of Irish nationalists led by Patrick Pearse, launches the so-called Easter Rebellion, an armed uprising against British rule. They riot and attack British provincial government headquarters across Dublin and seize the Irish capital’s General Post Office. Later that day, however, British authorities launch a counteroffensive, and by April 29 the uprising was crushed. Nevertheless, the Easter Rebellion is considered a significant marker on the road to establishing an independent Irish republic. – 1916.
Sources: History.com, Toil and Trouble, by Thomas R. Brooks; American Labor Struggles, by Samuel Yellen; IWW calendar, Solidarity Forever; Historical Encyclopedia of American Labor, edited by Robert E. Weir and James P. Hanlan; Southwest Labor History Archives/George Meany Center; Geov Parrish’s Radical History; workday Minnesota; Andy Richards and Adam Wright, AFL-CIO Washington DC Metro Council.