April 9
At Appomattox, Va., Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrenders his 28,000 troops to Union General Ulysses S. Grant, effectively ending the American Civil War. Forced to abandon the Confederate capital of Richmond, Va., blocked from joining the surviving Confederate force in North Carolina, and harassed constantly by Union cavalry, Lee had no other option. – 1865.
April 10
The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) is founded in New York City by philanthropist and diplomat Henry Bergh. – 1866.
U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt establishes the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), an innovative federally-funded organization that put thousands of Americans to work during the Great Depression on projects with environmental benefits. – 1933.
The USS Thresher, an atomic submarine, sinks in the Atlantic Ocean and kills the entire crew. One hundred and twenty-nine sailors and civilians died when the sub unexpectedly plunged to the sea floor 300 miles off the coast of New England. – 1963.
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.
U.S. president Jimmy Carter, along with first lady, Rosalynn Carter, were hosts to children at the traditional White House “Easter egg roll.” – 1977.
Some 25,000 marchers in Watsonville, Calif. show support for United Farm Workers organizing campaign among strawberry workers. – 1997.
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., to become the first reusable manned spacecraft to travel into 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. High winds kicked up clouds of millions of tons of dirt and dust so dense and dark that some eyewitnesses believed the world was coming to an end. – 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.
April 16
Vladimir Lenin, leader of the revolutionary Bolshevik Party, returns to Petrograd after a decade of exile to take the reins of the Russian Revolution. One month earlier, Czar Nicholas II had been forced from power when Russian army troops joined a workers’ revolt in Petrograd, the Russian capital. – 1917.
An estimated 20,000 global justice activists blockade Washington, D.C. meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. – 2000.
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.