April 19

April 19 is the 109th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (110th in leap years). There are 256 days remaining.

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Events

• 1012 – Martyrdom of St Alphege in Greenwich, London.
• 1529 – At the Diet of Speyer, a group of rulers (German: Fürst) and independent cities (German: Reichsstadt) protests the reinstatement of the Edict of Worms, beginning the Protestant movement.
• 1587 – Sir Francis Drake sinks the Spanish fleet in Cádiz Harbor.
• 1713 – With no living male heirs, Emperor Charles VI issues the Pragmatic Sanction to ensure that Habsburg lands and the Austrian throne would be inherited by his daughter, Maria Theresa.
• 1770 – Captain James Cook first spots Australia.
• 1775 – American Revolutionary War: The Battle of Lexington and Concord – British General Thomas Gage attempts to confiscate American colonists' firearms. The British are driven back to Boston, Massachusetts, thus beginning the American Revolutionary War.
• 1809 – The army of Austria attacks and is defeated by the forces of the Duchy of Warsaw in the Battle of Raszyn, part of the struggles of the Fifth Coalition.
• 1810 – Venezuela achieves home rule: Emparan, Governor of the Captaincy General is removed by the people of Caracas and a Junta is installed.
• 1839 – The Treaty of London establishes Belgium as a kingdom.
• 1861 – American Civil War: A pro-Secession mob in Baltimore, Maryland, attacks United States Army troops marching through the city.
• 1892 – Charles Duryea claims to have driven the first automobile in the United States, in Springfield, Massachusetts.
• 1904 – Much of Toronto, Ontario, Canada, is destroyed by fire.
• 1909 – Joan of Arc receives beatification.
• 1919 – Leslie Irvin of the United States makes the first successful parachute jump and free fall.
• 1927 – Mae West is sentenced to 10 days in jail for obscenity for her play Sex.
• 1928 – The 125th and final fascicle of the Oxford English Dictionary is published.
• 1933 – President Franklin D. Roosevelt announces that the United States will be abandoning the gold standard.
• 1934 – Shirley Temple debuts in Stand Up and Cheer.
• 1938 – RCA–NBC begins regular television broadcasts.
• 1943 – World War II: In Poland, German troops enter the Warsaw ghetto to round up the remaining Jews, beginning the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
• 1943 – Bicycle Day – Swiss chemist Dr. Albert Hofmann deliberately takes LSD for the first time.
• 1951 – General Douglas MacArthur retires from the military.
• 1956 – Actress Grace Kelly marries Rainier III of Monaco.
• 1960 – Students in South Korea hold a nationwide pro-democracy protest against their president Syngman Rhee, eventually forcing him to resign.
• 1961 – The Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba ends in failure.
• 1971 – Sierra Leone becomes a republic, and Siaka Stevens the president.
• 1971 – Vietnam War: Vietnam Veterans Against the War begin a five-day demonstration in Washington, DC.
• 1971 – Charles Manson is sentenced to life in prison for the Sharon Tate murders.
• 1971 – Launch of Salyut 1, first human-made space station.
• 1978 – Lagumot Harris is elected President of Nauru.
• 1980 – In The Hague, Netherlands, Johnny Logan wins the twenty-fifth Eurovision Song Contest for Ireland singing "What's Another Year".
• 1989 – A gun turret explodes on the USS Iowa, killing 47 sailors.
• 1989 – Trisha Meili, the "Central Park Jogger" is raped.
• 1993 – The 50-day siege of the Branch Davidian complex outside Waco, Texas, USA, ends when a fire breaks out. Eighty-one people die.
• 1995 – Oklahoma City bombing: The Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, USA, is bombed, killing 168.
• 1999 – The German Bundestag returns to Berlin.
• 2000 – An Air Philippines Boeing 737-200 crashes near Davao International Airport, killing 131.

Births

• 1320 – King Peter I of Portugal (d. 1367)
• 1721 – Roger Sherman, signer of the U.S. Declaration of Independence (d. 1793)
• 1721 – Thomas McKean, signer of the U.S. Declaration of Independence (d. 1817)
• 1832 – José Echegaray y Eizaguirre, Spanish writer (d. 1916)
• 1883 – Richard von Mises, mathematician (d. 1953)
• 1892 – Germaine Tailleferre, French composer (d. 1983)
• 1897 – Constance Talmadge, actress (d. 1973)
• 1899 – George O'Brien, American actor (d. 1985)
• 1900 – Richard Hughes, novelist (d. 1976)
• 1903 – Eliot Ness, American lawman (d. 1957)
• 1912 – Glenn Seaborg, American chemist, Nobel Prize winner (d. 1999)
• 1925 – Hugh O'Brian, American actor
• 1928 – Alexis Korner, musician (d. 1984)
• 1930 – Dick Sargent, actor (d. 1994)
• 1933 – Jayne Mansfield, American actress (d. 1967)
• 1933 – Dickie Bird, cricket umpire
• 1935 – Dudley Moore, actor, musician, comedian, composer (d. 2002)
• 1937 – Elinor Donahue, American actress
• 1937 – Joseph Estrada, actor and President of the Phillipines
• 1944 – Bernie Worrell, keyboardist (P Funk)
• 1946 – Tim Curry, British actor
• 1947 – Murray Perahia, American pianist
• 1949 – Paloma Picasso, Spanish painter
• 1952 – Alexis Arguello, boxer
• 1953 – Ruby Wax, British television personality
• 1960 – Frank Viola, baseball player
• 1962 – Al Unser, Jr., race car driver
• 1965 – Suge Knight, record producer
• 1967 – Steven H Silver, science fiction editor
• 1967 – Dar Williams, American musician and songwriter
• 1968 – Ashley Judd, actress
• 1970 – Kelly Holmes, athlete
• 1970 – Luis Miguel, singer
• 1972 – Rivaldo, footballer
• 1978 – James Franco, American actor
• 1979 – Kate Hudson, actress
• 1981 – Hayden Christensen, actor
• 1981 – Catalina Sandino Moreno, actress
• 1987 – Maria Sharapova, Russian tennis player

Deaths

• 1012 – Alphege, Archbishop of Canterbury (b. 954)
• 1054 – Pope Leo IX (b. 1002)
• 1390 – King Robert II of Scotland (b. 1316)
• 1578 – Uesugi Kenshin, Japanese samurai and warlord (b. 1530)
• 1632 – King Sigismund I of Sweden (b. 1561)
• 1689 – Queen Christina of Sweden (b. 1626)
• 1768 – Canaletto, Italian artist (b. 1697)
• 1813 – Benjamin Rush, physician, activist (b. 1745)
• 1824 – George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron, English poet (b. 1788)
• 1881 – Benjamin Disraeli, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (b. 1804)
• 1882 – Charles Darwin, English biologist (b. 1809)
• 1906 – Pierre Curie, French physicist (b. 1859)
• 1914 – Charles Sanders Peirce, (b. 1839)
• 1930 – Georges-Casimir Dessaulles, Canadian senator (b. 1827)
• 1937 – William Martin Conway, British art critic and mountaineer (b. 1856)
• 1949 – Ulrich Salchow, Swedish figure skater (b. 1877)
• 1958 – Robert Bentley, comedian and actor
• 1967 – Konrad Adenauer, Chancellor of Germany (b. 1876)
• 1971 – Earl Thomson, Canadian athlete (b. 1895)
• 1971 – Russ Hodges, American sports broadcaster
• 1973 – Hans Kelsen, Austrian-American legal theorist
• 1974 – Ayub Khan, President of Pakistan (b. 1907)
• 1975 – Percy L. Julian, chemist (b. 1899)
• 1986 – Alvin Childress, American actor
• 1987 – Maxwell D. Taylor, general, diplomat (b. 1901)
• 1987 – Hugh Brannum, American actor
• 1989 – Daphne du Maurier, author (b. 1907)
• 1992 – Frankie Howerd, comedian, actor (b. 1917)
• 1993 – David Koresh, American cult leader (b. 1959)
• 1998 – Octavio Paz, Mexican writer and diplomat, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature (b. 1914)
• 2004 – Norris McWhirter, British writer, television presenter, activist
• 2005 – Ruth Hussey, American actress (b. 1911)
• 2005 – Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen, Danish jazz bassist (b. 1946)

Holidays and observances

• Patriots' Day (Massachusetts, Maine, and Wisconsin, USA)
• Declaration of Independence Day (Venezuela)
• Republic Day (Sierra Leone)
• Landing of the 33 (Uruguay)
• Feast day of the following saints in the Roman Catholic Church:
  • Saint Emma
  • George of Antioch
  • Ursmar
  • Expeditus
• Primrose Day (England) – primroses are placed on the statue of Benjamin Disraeli in Parliament Square, London on the anniversary of his death (1881). There was a mistaken idea that the primrose was Lord Beaconsfield's favourite flower, since Queen Victoria sent them to his funeral.
• The Roman holiday of Cerealia ends. (Roman Empire)
• Bicycle Day

• Easter Sunday 1908, 1981, 1987, 1992. In the Gregorian Calendar Easter Sunday falls on 19 April more often than on any other date.

External links

• BBC: On This Day

April 18 – April 20 – March 19 – May 19 – listing of all days