April 20
The Fidel Castro regime announces that all Cubans seeking to emigrate to the U.S. are free to board boats at the port of Mariel, west of Havana and launched the Mariel Boatlift. The first of 125,000 Cuban refugees from Mariel reached Florida the next day. – 1980.
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..
A fire at an Ohio prison kills 320 inmates, some of whom burn to death when they are not unlocked from their cells. It is one of the worst prison disasters in American history. – 1930.
April 22
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
A single tornado twists 150 miles through Louisiana and Mississippi and leaves 143 dead. In total, 311 lost their lives to twisters during the deadly month of April 1908 in the southeastern United States. Another 1,600 were seriously injured. – 1908.
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.
April 25
The New York Times declares the struggle for an eight-hour work-day to be “un-American” and calls public demonstrations for the shorter hours “labor disturbances brought about by foreigners.” Other publications declare that an eight-hour work-day day would bring about “loafing and gambling, rioting, debauchery, and drunkenness.” – 1886.
The Soviet Union releases a letter that Russian leader Yuri Andropov wrote to Samantha Smith, an American fifth-grader from Manchester, Maine to invite her to visit his country. Andropov’s letter came in response to a note Smith had sent him in December 1982, asking if the Soviets were planning to start a nuclear war. – 1983.
The crew of the U.S. space shuttle Discovery places the Hubble Space Telescope, a long-term space-based observatory, into a low orbit around Earth. – 1990.
April 26
On the orders of president Franklin Roosevelt, the U.S. Army seizes the Chicago headquarters of the unionized Montgomery Ward & Co. after management defies the National Labor Relations Board. – 1944.
The world’s worst nuclear accident occurs at the Chernobyl nuclear plant near Kiev in Ukraine. The full toll from this disaster is still being tallied, but experts believe that thousands of residents died and as many as 70,000 suffered severe poisoning. In addition, a large area of land may not be livable for as long as 150 years. The 18-mile radius around Chernobyl was home to almost 150,000 residents who had to be permanently relocated. – 1986.
The Salk polio vaccine field trials, involving 1.8 million children, begin at the Franklin Sherman Elementary School in McLean, Va.. April 12, 1955. Researchers announced the vaccine was safe and effective and it quickly became a standard part of childhood immunizations in America. – 1954.