Events in History on April 19 (2024)

1524 Pope Clement VII fires Dutch Inquisitor-General Frans Van der Hulst

1591 The French city of Chartres surrenders to King Henry IV

1713 Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI issues the Pragmatic Sanction, decreeing that Habsburg possessions could be inherited by a daughter

1770 British explorer Captain James Cook first sights Australia. Writes in his log book that “what we have as yet seen of this land appears rather low, and not very hilly, the face of the Country green and Woody, but the Sea shore is all a white Sand.”

1775 American Revolution begins in Lexington, Massachusetts, with the "Shot Heard Round the World" fired later that day in Concord

1775 Paul Revere, William Dawes and Samuel Prescott are captured by British troops riding from Lexington to Concord, Prescott escapes to warn Concord as does Dawes who acts as a decoy [1]

1782 John Adams secures Dutch Republic's recognition of the United States as an independent government, a house he purchased in The Hague becomes America's first embassy

1890 Henry Morton Stanley is awarded the Order of Leopold in Brussels, proclaimed a hero and taken from one banquet hall to another

1901 In the Philippines, recently captured insurgent leader Emilio Aguinaldo issues a proclamation advising his countrymen to end their rebellion and use of peaceful means to work with the US toward independence.

1911 George Bernard Shaw's play "Fanny's First Play" premieres in London

1932 Bonnie Parker is captured in a failed hardware store burglary, and subsequently jailed; a grand jury fails to indict her, however, and she is released a few months later

1932 US President Herbert Hoover suggests five-day work week

1933 FDR announces US will leave gold standard

1941 Bertolt Brecht's play "Mother Courage and her Children" premieres in Zurich

1943 Bicycle Day - Swiss chemist Dr. Albert Hofmann deliberately takes LSD for the first time

1943 Jews refuse to surrender the Warsaw Ghetto to SS officer Jürgen Stroop, who then orders its destruction, beginning the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

1948 Chiang Kai-shek elected President of Nationalist China

1951 General Douglas MacArthur ends his military career

1962 NASA civilian pilot Joseph A. Walker takes X-15 to 46,900m

1972 British Prime Minister Edward Heath confirms that a plan to conduct an arrest operation, in the event of a riot during the march on 30 January 1972, was known to British government Ministers in advance

1982 Sally Ride is named the 1st American woman astronaut

1994 Rodney King awarded $3,800,000 compensation by the Los Angeles County for his police beating

1995 Oklahoma City bombing: Timothy McVeigh sets a truck bomb at Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, killing 168. including 19 children, and injuring 500

2005 Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger elected Pope Benedict XVI on the second day of the Papal conclave.

2011 Fidel Castro resigns his position of First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba after 45 years in power [1]

2018 Miguel Diaz-Canel is elected Cuba's new president, after former president Raúl Castro steps down

2018 US Senator Tammy Duckworth (Illinois-D) is the first parent to bring a baby into the Senate chambers, a day after the Senate votes to allow babies on the chamber's floor

2020 Turkey passes Iran to become the Middle Eastern country with the most COVID-19 cases with 86,306 infections, Iran continues to have the most deaths

2020 UK COVID-19 death toll reaches 16,060 (hospitals only), as "The Sunday Times" criticizes Boris Johnson's government's response, saying they "sleepwalked into disaster"

2022 US Biden administration restores climate impacts and community say to the National Environmental Policy Act, previously removed by Donald Trump [1]