TODAY IN HISTORY: APRIL 20

 

April 20

 

1303 – The Sapienza University of Rome is instituted by a bull of Pope Boniface VIII.

1653 – Oliver Cromwell dissolves England's Rump Parliament.

1657 – English Admiral Robert Blake destroys a Spanish silver fleet, under heavy fire from the shore, at the Battle of Santa Cruz de Tenerife.

1657 – Freedom of religion is granted to the Jews of New Amsterdam (later New York City).

1752 – Start of Konbaung–Hanthawaddy War, a new phase in the Burmese Civil War (1740–57).

1770 – The Georgian king, Erekle II, abandoned by his Russian ally Count Totleben, wins a victory over Ottoman forces at Aspindza.

1775 – American Revolutionary War: The Siege of Boston begins, following the battles at Lexington and Concord.

1789 – George Washington arrives at Grays Ferry, Philadelphia, while en route to Manhattan for his inauguration.

1792 – France declares war against the "King of Hungary and Bohemia", the beginning of the French Revolutionary Wars.

1800 – The Septinsular Republic is established.

1809 – Two Austrian army corps in Bavaria are defeated by a First French Empire army led by Napoleon at the Battle of Abensberg on the second day of a four-day campaign that ended in a French victory.

1828 – René Caillié becomes the second non-Muslim to enter Timbuktu, following Major Gordon Laing. He would also be the first to return alive.

1836 – U.S. Congress passes an act creating the Wisconsin Territory.

1861 – American Civil War: Robert E. Lee resigns his commission in the United States Army in order to command the forces of the state of Virginia.

1861 – Thaddeus S. C. Lowe, attempting to display the value of balloons, makes record journey, flying 900 miles from Cincinnati to South Carolina.

1862 – Louis Pasteur and Claude Bernard complete the experiment disproving the theory of spontaneous generation.

1865 – Astronomer Angelo Secchi demonstrates the Secchi disk, which measures water clarity, aboard Pope Pius IX's yacht, the L'Immaculata Concezion.

1876 – The April Uprising begins. Its suppression shocks European opinion, and Bulgarian independence becomes a condition for ending the Russo-Turkish War.

1884 – Pope Leo XIII publishes the encyclical Humanum genus, condemning Freemasonry.

1898 – U.S. President William McKinley signs a joint resolution to Congress for declaration of war against Spain, beginning the Spanish–American War.

1902 – Pierre and Marie Curie refine radium chloride.

1914 – Nineteen men, women, and children participating in a strike are killed in the Ludlow Massacre during the Colorado Coalfield War.

1918 – Manfred von Richthofen, a.k.a. The Red Baron, shoots down his 79th and 80th victims, his final victories before his death the following day.

1922 – The Soviet government creates South Ossetian Autonomous Oblast within Georgian SSR.

1945 – World War II: U.S. troops capture Leipzig, Germany, only to later cede the city to the Soviet Union.

1945 – World War II: Führerbunker: On his 56th birthday Adolf Hitler makes his last trip to the surface to award Iron Crosses to boy soldiers of the Hitler Youth.

1945 – Twenty Jewish children used in medical experiments at Neuengamme are killed in the basement of the Bullenhuser Damm school.

1946 – The League of Nations officially dissolves, giving most of its power to the United Nations.

1961 – Cold War: Failure of the Bay of Pigs Invasion of US-backed Cuban exiles against Cuba.

1968 – English politician Enoch Powell makes his controversial "Rivers of Blood" speech.

1968 – South African Airways Flight 228 crashes near the Hosea Kutako International Airport in South West Africa (now Namibia), killing 123 people.

1972 – Apollo program: Apollo 16 lunar module, commanded by John Young and piloted by Charles Duke, lands on the moon.

1998 – Air France Flight 422 crashes after taking off from El Dorado International Airport in Bogotá, Colombia, killing all 53 people on board.

1999 – Columbine High School massacre: Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold kill 13 people and injure 24 others before committing suicide at Columbine High School in Columbine, Colorado.

2007 – Johnson Space Center shooting: William Phillips with a handgun barricades himself in NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas before killing a male hostage and himself.

2008 – Danica Patrick wins the Indy Japan 300 becoming the first female driver in history to win an Indy car race.

2010 – The Deepwater Horizon drilling rig explodes in the Gulf of Mexico, killing eleven workers and beginning an oil spill that would last six months.

2012 – One hundred twenty-seven people are killed when a plane crashes in a residential area near the Benazir Bhutto International Airport near Islamabad, Pakistan.

2013 – A 6.6-magnitude earthquake strikes Lushan County, Ya'an, in China's Sichuan province, killing more than 150 people and injuring thousands.

2015 – Ten people are killed in a bomb attack on a convoy carrying food supplies to a United Nations compound in Garowe in the Somali region of Puntland.

2020 – For the first time in history, oil prices drop below zero.

2021 – State of Minnesota v. Derek Michael Chauvin: Derek Chauvin is found guilty of all charges in the murder of George Floyd by the Fourth Judicial District Court of Minnesota.