April 17
1961: Some 1,400 CIA-trained Cuban exiles launched the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in an attempt to topple Fidel Castro, whose forces crushed the incursion within three days.
1970: Apollo 13 astronauts James A. Lovell, Fred W. Haise and Jack Swigert splashed down safely in the Pacific.
1975: Cambodia’s capital Phnom Penh fell to the Khmer Rouge, which instituted brutal, radical policies that claimed an estimated 1.7 million lives.
April 18
1775: Paul Revere began his famous ride from Charlestown to Lexington, Massachusetts, warning colonists that British Regular troops were approaching.
1906: The deadliest earthquake in U.S. history struck San Francisco killing over 3,000 people.
1955: Physicist Albert Einstein died at age 76.
1983: 63 people, including 17 Americans, were killed at the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, by a suicide bomber driving a van laden with explosives.
April 19
1775: The American Revolutionary War began with the Battles of Lexington and Concord—the start of an eight-year armed conflict between American colonists and the British Army.
1993: The 51-day siege at the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas, ended as the Davidians set fire to their compound.
1995: Timothy McVeigh destroyed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people.
April 20
1812: The fourth vice president of the United States, George Clinton, died in Washington at age 72, becoming the first vice president to die while in office.
1912: Boston’s Fenway Park, the oldest active stadium in Major League Baseball, hosted its first official baseball game.
1999: Two students shot and killed 12 classmates and one teacher and injured 23 others before taking their own lives at Columbine High School, near Denver, Colorado.
April 21
1836: An army of Texans, led by Sam Houston, defeated the Mexican Army, led by Antonio López de Santa Anna, in the Battle of San Jacinto.
1910: Author Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known as Mark Twain, died at age 74.
1918: German Air Force pilot Manfred von Richthofen nicknamed “The Red Baron,” was killed after being shot during a World War I air battle over Vaux-sur-Somme, France.
2016: Prince, one of the most inventive and influential musicians of modern times, was found dead at his home from an accidental fentanyl overdose; he was 57.
April 22
1889: The Oklahoma Land Rush began at noon as thousands of homesteaders staked claims to nearly 1.9 million acres of land that was formerly part of Indian Territory.
1954: The publicly televised sessions of the Senate Army-McCarthy hearings began.
1994: Richard M. Nixon died four days after having a stroke; he was 81.
April 23
1635: The Boston Latin School, the first public school in what would become the United States, was established.
1898: Spain declared war on the United States, which responded in kind two days later.
1971: Hundreds of Vietnam War veterans opposed to the conflict protested by tossing their medals and ribbons over a wire fence constructed in front of the U.S. Capitol.
1993: Labor leader Cesar Chavez died at age 66.
