Patriots’ Day, sometimes spelled Patriot’s Day, is an annual civic holiday, celebrated in Massachusetts, Maine, and Wisconsin, that commemorates the anniversary of the Battles of Lexington and Concord that occured on April 19th, 1775. The Battles of Lexington and Concord were the first battles of the Revolutionary War in the United States. Patriots’ Day is celebrated every year on the third Monday in April.
4/20: How ‘Weed Day’ Got Its Name
295 – 8th recorded perihelion passage of Halley’s Comet
1505 – Jews are expelled from Orange Burgandy by Philibert of Luxembourg
1534 – Jacques Cartier begins the voyage during which he discovers Canada and Labrador.
1535 – The Sun dog phenomenon observed over Stockholm and depicted in the famous painting Vädersolstavlan.
1611 – First known performance of Shakespeare’s tragedy Macbeth at the Globe Theatre, London recorded by Simon Forman
1650 – Dutch East India Company (VOC) management sets new guidelines
1653 – Cromwell routes English parliament to house
1657 – Freedom of religion is granted to the Jews of New Amsterdam (later New York City).
1689 – The former King James II of England, now deposed, lays siege to Derry.
1702 – Comet C/1702 H1 approaches within 0.0437 AUs of Earth
1736 – French mathematician Pierre Louis Maupertuis begins his expedition to Lapland to measure a degree of latitude and prove the shape of the earth, he is joined by fellow scientists Anders Celsius, Charles Etienne Louis Camus, Alexis Claude Clairaut, and Pierre-Charles Le Monnier
1759 – George Frederic Handel is buried in Westminster Abbey, London
1775 – American Revolutionary War: The Siege of Boston begins, following the battles at Lexington and Concord.
1786 – John Goodricke, English deaf & dumb astronomer, dies at 21
1789 – President George Washington arrives in Philadelphia after his inauguration to elaborate welcome at Gray’s Ferry just after noon first inauguration of George Washington
1792 – France declares war against the “King of Hungary and Bohemia”, the beginning of French Revolutionary Wars.
1809 – Napoleon I and French forces defeat Austria at Battle of Abensberg, Bavaria
1818 – The case of Ashford v Thornton ends, with Abraham Thornton allowed to go free rather than face a retrial for murder, after his demand for trial by battle is upheld.
1836 – Territory of Wisconsin created
1841 – 1st detective story (Edgar Allen Poe’s “Murders in Rue Morgue”) published
1850 – Daniel Chester French, American sculptor, designed the Lincoln statue (d. 1931) was born.
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.
1862 – Louis Pasteur and Claude Bernard complete the experiment falsifying the theory of spontaneous generation.
1871 – 3rd Enforcement Act (President can suspend writ of habeas corpus)
1871 – The Civil Rights Act of 1871 becomes law.
1893 – Harold Lloyd, Burchard Neb, silent comic (Why Worry, Safety Last) Born
1884 – Pope Leo XIII encyclical “On Freemasonry”
1889 – Adolf Hitler, Austrian-German soldier and politician, Chancellor of Germany (d. 1945) was birthed.
1902 – Pierre and Marie Curie refine radium chloride.
1910 – Halley’s Comet passes 29th recorded perihelion at 87.9 million km
1912 – Fenway Park officially opens, Red Sox beat NY Highlanders 7-6 in 11
1912 – Bram Stoker, Irish author (b. 1847) died.
1914 – Nineteen men, women, and children die in the Ludlow Massacre during a Colorado coal-miner’s strike.
1914 – US President W Wilson, having dispatched more naval ships to Mexico, asks a joint session of Congress to approve armed force if necessary; Congress approves
1915 – The Armenians rise and seize the Turkish town of Van, which they hold until Russians relieve them on 19 May; thousands of Armenians are killed
1916 – The Chicago Cubs play their first game at Weeghman Park (currently Wrigley Field), defeating the Cincinnati Reds 7–6 in 11 innings.
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.
1919 – Polish Army captures Vilno, Lithuania from Soviet Army
1919 – King Nicholas of Montenegro abdicates under duress
1920 – John Paul Stevens, Illinois, 103rd Supreme Court Justice (1975- ) Born
1920 – Balfour Declaration recognized (Jewish Homeland), makes Palestine a British Mandate
1922 – The Soviet government creates South Ossetian Autonomous Oblast within Georgian SSR.
1923 – Tito Puente, Puerto Rico, bandleader (Dance Mania) Born
1926 – Western Electric and Warner Bros. announce Vitaphone, a process to add sound to film.
1931 – Sir Cosmo Duff-Gordon, 5th Baronet, Scottish fencer and businessman, Titanic Survivor (b. 1862) died.
1931 – Lee H Hamilton, Daytona Beach Fla, (Rep-D-Ind, 1965- ) Warren commission (JFK), 911 commission chair – Birthed
1935 – Lucy, Lady Duff-Gordon, English fashion designer, Titanic (b. 1863) died.
On 14 April, at 11:40 pm the Titanic struck an iceberg and began to sink. During the evacuation, the Duff Gordons escaped in Lifeboat 1. Although the boat was designed to hold 40 people, it was lowered with only 12 (seven of them male crew).
1939 – Ted Williams’ 1st hit (off of Yankee Red Ruffing) a double
1939 – Adolf Hitler’s 50th birthday is celebrated as a national holiday in Nazi Germany.
1939 – Billie Holiday records the first civil rights song “Strange Fruit”.
1940 – George Takei, actor (Sulu-Star Trek, Green Berets), born in Los Angeles, California
1941 – 100 German bombers attack Athens
1941 – Ryan O’Neal, actor (Love Story, Paper Moon) born
1943 – Edie Sedgwick, actor (Ciao Manhattan), born in Santa Barbara, California
1945 – World War II: US troops capture Leipzig, Germany, only to later cede the city to the Soviet Union.
1945 – World War II: Führerbunker: 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.
1947 – Björn Skifs, Swedish singer, songwriter, actor, and screenwriter (Blue Swede and Slam Creepers) was born.
1948 – Craig Frost, American pianist and songwriter (Grand Funk) was born.
1949 – Jessica Lange, Cloquet Minnesota, actress (King Kong, Tootsie) Born
1951 – Dan Gavriliu performs the first surgical replacement of a human organ.
1951 – Luther Vandross, rock vocalist (Dance with my Father), born in NYC, New York (d. 2005)
1961 – Failure of the Bay of Pigs Invasion of US-backed Cuban exiles against Cuba.
1962 – NASA civilian pilot Neil Armstrong takes X-15 to 63,250 m
1962 – New Orleans Citizens Co gives free 1-way ride to blacks to move North
1963 – Kal Swan, heavy metal rocker born
1964 – BBC Two launches with a power cut because of the fire at Battersea Power Station.
1967 – US planes bomb Haiphong for 1st time during Vietnam War
1967 – Mike Portnoy, American drummer (Dream Theater) Born
1968 – English politician Enoch Powell makes his controversial Rivers of Blood speech.
Enoch Powell’s April 20, 1968 address to the General Meeting of the West Midlands Area Conservative Political Centre (commonly called “Rivers of Blood”) was a speech criticising Commonwealth immigration, and anti-discrimination legislation that had been proposed in the United Kingdom. Powell (1912–1998) was the Conservative Member of Parliament for Wolverhampton South West. Though Powell referred to the speech as “the Birmingham speech”, it is otherwise known as the “Rivers of Blood” speech, a title derived from its allusion to a line from Virgil’s Aeneid. Although the phrase “rivers of blood” does not appear in the speech, the name alludes to the line, “As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding; like the Roman, I seem to see ‘the River Tiber foaming with much blood.'”
The speech caused a political storm, making Powell one of the most talked about, though divisive, politicians in the country, and leading to his controversial dismissal from the Shadow Cabinet by Conservative party leader Edward Heath
1969 – Bombs planted by Loyalists members of the Ulster Volunteer Force and the Ulster Protestant Volunteers explode at Silent Valley reservoir in County Down and at an electricity pylon at Kilmore, County Armagh
1971 – US Supreme Court upholds use of busing to achieve racial desegregation
1972 – Carmen Electra [Tara Leigh Patrick], Sharonville, Ohio, American model and actress (Scary Movie, Meet the Spartans) Born
1972 – Stephen Marley, American singer, guitarist, and producer (Ziggy Marley and the Melody Makers) was born.
1974 – ‘The Troubles’, a period of conflict in Northern Ireland involving republican and loyalist paramilitaries, the British security forces, and civil rights groups. claims its 1000th victim
1977 – Supreme Court rules “Live Free or Die” may be covered on NH licenses
1980 – Climax of Berber Spring in Algeria as hundreds of Berber political activists are arrested.
1981 – Rocker Papa John Phillips arrested for drug possession
1983 – President Reagan signs a $165B bail out for Social Security
1984 – The Good Friday Massacre, an extremely violent ice hockey playoff game, is played in Montreal, Canada.
1985 – ATF raid on The Covenant, The Sword, and the Arm of the Lord compound in northern Arkansas.
The siege:
The ATF positioned around 300 federal agents in Elijah. It was necessary to keep the operation a secret, but this was not easy in the small community. However, the ATF agents took advantage of Elijah being a common destination for anglers by pretending to be fishermen and registering at different motels near the various fishing destinations. On the morning of April 19, 1985, they moved in and surrounded the CSA compound, putting some in fishing boats to seal off the lakeside area of the Compound. There they waited, until a few hours later when two guards emerged from the compound. They appeared to be unaware of the presence of the officers, and walked towards a sniper hold-out, until finally an officer yelled commands to return to the compound, with which the guards complied. Later, an unnamed individual emerged from the compound and talked with the federal agents and reported to Ellison that the FBI were outside to negotiate his surrender and the emptying of the Compound. Ellison emerged later. FBI agents had expected he would not go down without a firefight, but the FBI negotiators convinced him that the CSA would certainly lose if they had one. They convinced him that they wanted peaceful cooperation, and he asked that his spiritual adviser, assumed to be Millar, come to the compound to instruct him. The individual was flown to the area and seemed eager to convince Ellison to stand down, understanding that otherwise there would be certain bloodshed. They allowed the individual into the compound, and the FBI instructed him to call in every 30 minutes to report how negotiations were going. The date of the siege, coincidentally, was the 210th anniversary of “the shot heard round the world” from the Revolutionary War. Eight years later in 1993, this was the date of the burning of the church in Waco, after specifically having studied the outcome of the CSA standoff. Two years after that, in 1995, this was the date chosen by Timothy McVeigh, in protest against the Waco incident among others, to bomb the Federal building in Oklahoma City.
Attorney Asa Hutchinson, who would later go on to successfully prosecute Ellison and other leaders of the CSA, put on an FBI flak jacket and entered the compound to personally join negotiations, ultimately leading to a peaceful conclusion to the armed stand-off. After several calls requesting more time, early on the morning of the 4th day of the siege, Ellison, his command, and all of the males in the compound emerged, and surrendered themselves to authorities. Women and children were earlier evacuated to nearby motel housing at government expense
1987 – Sri Lanka: Tamils shoot 122 Singalezen dead
1987 – US deports Karl Linnas to USSR, charged with Nazi war crimes
1988 – US accuses Renamo of killing 100,000 Mozambiquians
1990 – Pete Rose pleads guilty to hiding $300,000 in income
1991 – Steve Marriott, English guitarist (Small Faces), dies in a fire at 44
1992 – All star concert in memory of Freddie Mercury held at Wembley Stadium
1992 – Madonna signs $60-million deal with Time Warner
1992 – Benny Hill, comedian (Benny Hill Show), dies of a heart attack at 67
1992 – Johnny Shines, Delta blues singer/guitarist, dies at 76
1993 – Uranus passes Neptune (once every 171 years)
1994 – Danny Harold Rolling sentenced to death in Florida for killing 5
1994 – Serbian army bombs hospital in Goradze Bosnia, 47 killed
1998 – TAME Boeing 727-200 chartered by Air France crashes into Cerro El Cable mountain after takeoff from Bogotá, Colombia, killing 53.
1998 – German terrorist group Red Army Faction announces their dissolution after 28 years.
1999 – Columbine High School massacre: Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold killed 13 people and injured 21 others before committing suicide at Columbine High School in Columbine, Colorado.
Columbine Shooting: Evan Long on The Jack Blood Show, 16 April 2012 from Evan Long on Vimeo.
1999 – Rick Rude, American wrestler (b. 1958) died.
2004 – In Iraq, 12 mortars are fired on Abu Ghraib Prison by insurgents, killing 22 detainees and wounding 92.
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.
2007 – Andrew Hill, American jazz composer and pianist (b. 1931) dies
2008 – Danica Patrick wins the Indy Japan 300 becoming the first female driver in history to win an Indy car race.
2010 – Deepwater Horizon drilling rig explosion kills 11 and causes rig to sink, initiating a massive oil discharge in the Gulf of Mexico.
2012 – 40 people are killed and 27 injured after a tractor trailer collided with a bus in Alamo, Mexico
2013 – 193 people are killed and 11,826 are injured after a magnitude 7.0 earthquake strikes Lushan County, China
2013 – 5 snowboarders are killed by an avalanche in Loveland Pass, Colorado
2013 – Giorgio Napolitano is re-elected President of Italy
2014 – Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, American boxer whose murder convictions were overturned after 19 years in prison, dies of prostate cancer at 76