April 14
is the 104th day of the year in the
Gregorian calendar (105th in
leap years). There are 261 days remaining.
*
43 BC -
Battle of Forum Gallorum.
Mark Antony, besieging
Julius Caesar's assassin
Decimus Junius Brutus in
Mutina, defeats the forces of the
consul Pansa, who is killed.
*
69 -
Vitellius,
commander of the
Rhine armies, defeats
Emperor Otho in the
Battle of Bedriacum and seizes the throne.
*
1028 -
Henry III, son of
Conrad, is elected
king of the
Germans.
*
1205 -
Battle of Adrianople between
Bulgars and
Crusaders.
*
1471 - In
England, the
Yorkists under
Edward IV defeat the
Lancastrians under
Warwick at the
battle of Barnet; the
Earl of Warwick is killed and
Edward IV resumes the throne.
*
1632 -
Battle of Rain:
Swedes under
Gustavus Adolphus defeat the
Holy Roman Empire during the
Thirty Years' War.
*
1699 -
Khalsa. Birth of
Khalsa, the brotherhood of the
Sikh religion, in
Northern India in accordance with the
Nanakshahi Calendar.
*
1775 - The first
abolition society in the
North America is established. The "
Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage" is organized in
Philadelphia by
Benjamin Franklin and
Benjamin Rush.
*
1828 -
Noah Webster copyrights the first edition of his
dictionary.
*
1831 - Soldiers marching on a bridge in
Manchester,
England cause it to collapse.
*
1846 - The
Donner Party of
pioneers departs
Springfield,
Illinois, for
California, on what will become a year-long journey of hardship,
cannibalism, and survival.
*
1849 -
Hungary declares itself independent of
Austria with
Louis Kossuth as its leader.
*
1860 - The first
Pony Express rider reaches
Sacramento, California.
*
1864 -
Battle of Dybbøl: A
Prussian-
Austrian army defeats
Denmark and gains control of
Schleswig.
Denmark surrenders the province in the following peace settlement.
*
1865 -
President Abraham Lincoln is shot by
John Wilkes Booth; he dies the next day.
*
1881 -
Four Dead in Five Seconds Gunfight erupted in
El Paso, Texas.
*
1890 - The
Pan-American Union is founded by the
First International Conference of American States at their meeting in
Washington. Known originally as the
International Bureau of American Republics,
William Elleroy Curtis becomes its first
director.
*
1894 -
Thomas Edison demonstrates the
kinetoscope, a device for peep-show viewing using
photographs that flip in sequence, a precursor to
movies.
*
1912 - The
British ocean liner
RMS Titanic strikes an iceberg in the
North Atlantic on its maiden voyage, plunging beneath the waves and taking with it over 1,500 lives at about 2:20 a.m. the following morning.
*
1915 - The
Turks invade
Armenia.
*
1927 - The first
Volvo car premieres, in
Gothenburg,
Sweden.
*
1931 -
Spanish Cortes deposes King
Alfonso XIII and proclaims the
2nd Spanish Republic.
*
1935 - "
Black Sunday", the worst dust storm of the
Dust Bowl.
* 1935 -
Babe Ruth plays his first
National League game in
Fenway Park in
Boston, Massachusetts. In this year - his last year of pro ball in the major leagues - he is playing for the
Boston Braves, not his old team the
Red Sox. In this season,
Ruth plays 28 games, getting 13 hits and six home runs, before retiring.
*
1940 -
Royal Marines land in
Namsos,
Norway, occupying key points, preparatory to a larger force arriving two days later.
*
1941 -
World War II: The
Ustashe, a
Croatian
far-right organisation that pursued
Nazi and
fascist policies, is put in charge of the
Independent State of Croatia by the
Axis Powers after the
April 6 invasion of
Yugoslavia during
Operation Castigo.
*
1944 - Huge explosion rocks the
Bombay harbour killing 300 and causing a loss of 20 million pounds at that time. See:
Bombay Explosion (1944).
*
1945 -
Osijek,
Croatia, is liberated from
fascistic occupation.
*
1956 -
Videotape is first demonstrated at the
1956 NARTB (now
NAB) convention in
Chicago, Illinois. It is the demonstration of the first practical and commercially successful format called
2" Quadruplex.
*
1958 - The
Soviet satellite Sputnik 2 falls from
orbit after a mission duration of 162 days.
*
1962 -
Georges Pompidou becomes
Prime Minister of
France.
*
1964 - A
Delta rocket's third-stage motor prematurely ignites in an assembly room at
Cape Canaveral, killing 3.
*
1968 - At the
Academy Awards, a tie between
Katharine Hepburn and
Barbra Streisand results in the two sharing the
Best Actress Oscar;
Hepburn also becomes the only actress to win three
Best Actress Oscars.
*
1970 - One of
Apollo 13's oxygen tanks explodes, causing a cancelled moon mission. The explosion occurrs on
April 13th in several time zones.
*
1986 - In retaliation for the
April 5 bombing of the
La Belle Discotheque in
West Berlin in which two
U.S. servicemen were killed,
Ronald Reagan orders
major bombing raids against
Tripoli and
Benghazi, in
Libya, which kills 60 people.
* 1986 - 2.2 lb (1 kg)
hailstones fall on the
Gopalganj district of
Bangladesh, killing 92. These are the heaviest
hailstones ever recorded.
*
1988 -
USS Samuel B. Roberts strikes a
mine in the
Persian Gulf during
Operation Earnest Will.
U.S. retaliates against
Iran on
April 18 with
Operation Praying Mantis, the world's largest naval battle since
World War II.
*
2003 -
Human Genome Project successfully completed with 99% of the human
genome sequenced to 99.99% accuracy.
*
1336 -
Emperor Go-Kogon of Japan (d.
1374)
*
1572 -
Adam Tanner, Austrian mathematician and philosopher (d.
1632)
*
1578 - King
Philip III of Spain (d.
1621)
*
1629 -
Christiaan Huygens, Dutch mathematician & astronomer (d.
1695)
*
1714 -
Adam Gib, Scottish religious leader (d.
1788)
*
1741 -
Emperor Momozono of Japan (d.
1762)
*
1773 -
Jean-Baptiste Guillaume Joseph, comte de Villèle, French statesman (d.
1854)
*
1788 -
David G. Burnet, interim president of the Republic of Texas (d.
1870)
*
1827 -
Augustus Pitt-Rivers, English archaeologist (d.
1900)
*
1866 -
Anne Sullivan,
Helen Keller's teacher (d.
1936)
*
1868 -
Peter Behrens, German architect and designer (d.
1940)
*
1870 -
Victor Borisov-Musatov, Russian painter (d.
1905)
*
1872 -
Abdullah Yusuf Ali, Islamic scholar and translator (d.
1953)
*
1886 -
Ernst Robert Curtius, Alsatian philologist (d.
1956)
*
1897 -
Claire Windsor, American actress (d.
1972)
*
1902 -
Menachem Mendel Schneerson, Ukrainian rabbi (d.
1994)
*
1904 - Sir
John Gielgud, English actor (d.
2000)
*
1904 -
George D. Sax, Drive-in bank & instant loan innovator. Owner of the Saxony Hotel (d.
1974)
*
1907 -
François Duvalier, Haitian politician (d.
1971)
*
1917 -
Marvin Miller, American labor activist
*
1921 -
Thomas Schelling, American economist,
Bank of Sweden Prize winner
*
1925 -
Abel Muzorewa, Prime Minster of Zimbabwe
* 1925 -
Gene Ammons, American jazz saxophonist (d.
1974)
* 1925 -
Rod Steiger, American actor (d.
2002)
*
1926 -
Liz Renay, American actress
*
1927 -
Alan MacDiarmid, New Zealand chemist,
Nobel Prize laureate
*
1930 -
Bradford Dillman, American actor
*
1933 -
Morton Subotnick, American composer
*
1935 -
Loretta Lynn, American singer
* 1935 -
Erich von Däniken, Swiss writer
*
1936 -
Kenneth Mars, American actor
* 1936 -
Frank Serpico, American policeman
*
1941 -
Julie Christie, British actress
* 1941 -
Pete Rose, baseball player
*
1942 -
Valeriy Brumel, Russian athlete (d.
2003)
* 1942 -
Valentin Lebedev, cosmonaut
*
1945 -
Ritchie Blackmore, English guitarist
* 1945 -
Frank DiLeo, American actor
*
1949 -
John Shea, American actor
*
1951 -
Julian Lloyd Webber, English cellist and composer
*
1960 -
Brad Garrett, American actor
*
1961 -
Robert Carlyle, British actor
*
1964 -
Brian Adams, American professional wrestler
*
1966 -
David Justice, baseball player
* 1966 -
Greg Maddux, baseball player
*
1967 -
Jeff Jarrett, American professional wrestler
*
1968 -
Anthony Michael Hall, American actor
*
1969 -
Martyn LeNoble, Musician
*
1969 -
Brad Ausmus, baseball player
*
1970 -
Shizuka Kudo, Japanese singer
*
1972 -
Paul Devlin, England-born Scottish footballer
* 1972 -
Roberto Mejia, baseball player
*
1973 -
Adrien Brody, American actor
* 1973 -
Roberto Ayala, Argentine footballer
*
1974 -
Da Brat, American rapper
*
1975 -
Amy Dumas, American professional wrestler
* 1975 -
Veronika Zemanová, Czech model and pornstar
*
1977 -
Sarah Michelle Gellar, American actress
*
1979 -
Rebecca DiPietro, American Model
*
1980 -
Ben Wells, American actor
*
1981 -
Mary Castro, American model and actress
*
1983 -
Simon Burnett, British swimmer
* 1983 -
James McFadden, Scottish footballer
*
1984 -
Adán Sánchez, Mexican-American singer (d.
2004)
*
1132 - Prince
Mstislav of Kiev (b.
1076)
*
1279 - Duke
Boleslaus of Greater Poland*
1322 -
Bartholomew de Badlesmere, 1st Lord Badlesmere, English soldier (b.
1275)
*
1345 -
Richard Aungerville, English bishop and writer (b.
1287)
*
1471 -
Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick, English kingmaker (b.
1428)
*
1574 -
Louis of Nassau, Dutch general (killed in battle) (b.
1538)
*
1578 -
James Hepburn, 4th Earl of Bothwell, consort of
Mary I of Scotland*
1599 -
Henry Wallop, English statesman
*
1612 -
Sasaki Kojiro, Japanese samurai (killed by Musashi Miyamoto)
*
1662 -
William Fiennes, 1st Viscount Saye and Sele, English statesman (b.
1582)
*
1682 -
Avvakum, Russian priest and writer (b.
1621)
*
1716 -
Arthur Herbert, 1st Earl of Torrington, British admiral
*
1721 -
Michel Chamillart, French statesman (b.
1652)
*
1759 -
George Frideric Handel, German composer (b.
1685)
*
1785 -
William Whitehead, English writer (b.
1715)
*
1792 -
Maximilian Hell, Slovakian astronomer (b.
1720)
*
1910 -
Mikhail Vrubel, Russian painter (b.
1856)
*
1912 -
Henri Brisson, French statesman (b.
1835)
*
1914 -
Hubert Bland, English co-founder of the Fabian Society (b.
1855)
*
1917 -
Ludovich Lazarus Zamenhof, Polish creator of Esperanto (b.
1859)
*
1925 -
John Singer Sargent, English artist (b.
1856)
*
1930 -
Vladimir Mayakovsky, Russian writer (b.
1893)
*
1935 -
Amalie Emmy Noether, German mathematician (b.
1882)
*
1964 -
Rachel Carson, American writer and environmentalist (b.
1907)
*
1968 -
Al Benton, baseball player (b.
1911)
*
1975 -
Fredric March, American actor (b.
1897)
*
1986 -
Simone de Beauvoir, French feminist writer (b.
1908)
*
1995 -
Burl Ives, American singer and actor (b.
1909)
*
1999 -
Ellen Corby, American actress (b.
1911)
* 1999 -
Anthony Newley, British actor and singer (b.
1931)
*
2000 -
Phil Katz, American computer programmer (b.
1962)
* 2000 -
Frenchy Bordagaray, baseball player (b.
1910)
*
2001 -
Hiroshi Teshigahara, Japanese director (b.
1927)
*
N'Ko Alphabet Day - the anniversary of the day the N'Ko alphabet was completed in
1949.
*
Tamil New Year - Celebrations for
Tamils all over the world.
*
New Year Celebrations in parts of
India and whole of
Sri Lanka.
*
Baisakhi - Celebrations in
Punjab,
India.
*
Poila Baisakh - Celebrations in
Bengal,
India.
*
Vishu - Harvest festival in
Kerala,
India.
*
Black Day - Informal celebration day for single people in
South Korea.
*
Youth Day in
Angola.
*
Mologa Day in
Yaroslavl Oblast, Russia
*
BBC: On This Day*
Today in History: April 14April 13 -
April 15 -
March 14 -
May 14 --
listing of all days
