April 19
1775 - The "shot heard around the world" was fired as Colonial Minute Men took on the British Army at Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts, starting the American Revolution.
1865 - A funeral was held at the White House for President Abraham Lincoln, assassinated five days earlier; his coffin was then taken to the U.S. Capitol for a private memorial service in the Rotunda.
1882 - Naturalist Charles Darwin, developer of the theory of evolution, died.
1912 - A special subcommittee of the Senate Commerce Committee opened hearings in New York into the Titanic disaster.
1933 - The United States went off the gold standard.
1943 - The Warsaw ghetto uprising began, one of the first mass rebellions against the Nazis.
1951 - Gen. Douglas MacArthur, relieved of his command by President Harry S. Truman, bid farewell to Congress, quoting a line from a ballad: "Old soldiers never die; they just fade away."
1961 - The Federal Communications Commission authorized regular FM stereo broadcasting starting on June 1, 1961.
1977 - The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in Ingraham v. Wright, that even severe spanking of school children by faculty members did not violate the Eighth Amendment ban against cruel and unusual punishment.
1989 - Forty-seven sailors were killed when a gun turret exploded aboard the USS Cockeye in the Caribbean. (The Navy initially suspected that a dead crew member had deliberately sparked the blast, but later said that there was no proof of that.)
1993 - The siege at Waco, Texas ended when FBI agents moved into the Branch Davidian compound with tear gas; cult members set fire to the compound, killing more than 80 people.
1994 - A Los Angeles jury awarded $3.8 million to beaten motorist Rodney King.
1995 - The Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City was destroyed by a truck bomb, killing 168 people, including 19 children, and injuring more than 500 in what was the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history to date. (Bomber Timothy McVeigh, who prosecutors said had planned the attack as revenge for the Waco siege of two years earlier, was convicted of federal murder charges and executed in 2001.)
2005 - Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger of Germany was elected pope and took the name Benedict XVI.
2011 - Cuba's Communist Party picked 79-year-old Raul Castro to replace his ailing brother Fidel as first secretary during a key Party Congress.
2012 - Republicans rammed an election-year, $46 billion tax cut for most of America's employers through the House, ignoring a veto threat from President Barack Obama. (The measure would be defeated in the Senate.)
2013 - Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, a 19-year-old college student wanted in the Boston Marathon bombings, was taken into custody after a manhunt that had left the city virtually paralyzed; his older brother and alleged accomplice, 26-year-old Tamerlan, was killed earlier in a furious attempt to escape police.
2015 - Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old Black man, died a week after suffering a spinal cord injury in the back of a Baltimore police van while he was handcuffed and shackled. (Six police officers were charged; three were acquitted and the city’s top prosecutor eventually dropped the three remaining cases.)
2017 - Fox News Channel’s parent company fired Bill O’Reilly following an investigation into harassment allegations, bringing a stunning end to cable news’ most popular program.
2018 - Raul Castro turned over Cuba’s presidency to Miguel Mario Diaz-Canel Bermudez, the first non-Castro to hold Cuba’s top government office since the 1959 revolution led by Fidel Castro and his younger brother Raul.
2021 - Former Vice President Walter Mondale, a liberal icon who served as a Democratic senator from Minnesota and as Jimmy Carter’s vice president before losing one of the most lopsided presidential elections in the nation’s history to Republican Ronald Reagan in 1984, died at the age of 93.
2021 - NASA’s experimental Mars helicopter named Ingenuity took flight on Mars, rising 10 feet into the thin air above the dusty red surface to achieve the first powered flight by an aircraft on another planet.
Birthdays
20 - Loren Gray (singer)
32 - Kim Chiu (actress)
34 - Patrik Laine (hockey player)
35 - Maria Sharapova (tennis player)
35 - Courtland Mead (actor)
36 - Candace Parker (basketball player)
37 - Zack Conroy (actor)
38 - Kelen Coleman (actor)
39 - Victoria Yeates (actress)
40 - Ali Wong (actress/comedian)
41 - Troy Polamalu (football player)
41 - Catalina Sandino Moreno (actress)
41 - Hayden Christensen (actor)
43 - Kate Hudson (actress)
44 - Joanna Gaines (reality star)
44 - James Franco (actor)
50 - Jennifer Taylor (actress)
50 - Jennifer Esposito (actress)
52 - Luis Miguel (singer)
53 - Jesse James (reality star)
54 - Bekka Bramlett (singer)
54 - Ashley Judd (actress)
54 - Kim Hawthorne (actress)
57 - Suge Knight (music executive)
59 - Tom Wood (actor)
60 - Al Unser Jr. (race car driver)
66 - Sue Barker (tennis player)
70 - Tony Plana (actor)
76 - Tim Curry (actor)
85 - Elinor Donahue (actress)
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Today in Sports History - April 19
1897 - The first Boston Marathon was held; the first winner was John J. McDermott who ran the race in two hours, 55 minutes and 10 seconds.
1947 - The Toronto Maple Leafs defeat the Montreal Canadiens to win the Stanley Cup.
1960 - Baseball uniforms began displaying player's names on their backs.
1968 - In Chicago, the National League approved expansion to Montreal and San Diego. Dallas-Fort Worth failed in its bid for an NL franchise.
1987 - The Los Angeles Clippers end the season with one of the worst records in NBA history at 12-70.
1988 - The Philadelphia 76ers retired Julius Erving's #6 before a home game. A Dr. J statue was also unveiled.
1992 - Michael Jordan won his sixth consecutive NBA scoring title with an average of 30.1.
1997 - The St. Louis Rams select Ohio State offensive tackle Orlando Pace with the first pick in the NFL Draft.
1999 - Cal Ripken Jr. (Baltimore Orioles) was placed on the disabled list for the first time in his 19 year career. He was suffering from a back problem.
2017 - Former New England Patriots tight end Aaron Hernandez, 27, who was serving a life sentence for a 2013 murder, hanged himself in his cell in a maximum-security prison in Massachusetts five days after being acquitted of murder charges in the shooting deaths of two men in Boston in 2012.
2021 - In Las Vegas, Nevada: San Jose Sharks forward Patrick Marleau breaks Gordie Howe's NHL record for most games played, now at 1,768 and counting.
1775 - The "shot heard around the world" was fired as Colonial Minute Men took on the British Army at Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts, starting the American Revolution.
1865 - A funeral was held at the White House for President Abraham Lincoln, assassinated five days earlier; his coffin was then taken to the U.S. Capitol for a private memorial service in the Rotunda.
1882 - Naturalist Charles Darwin, developer of the theory of evolution, died.
1912 - A special subcommittee of the Senate Commerce Committee opened hearings in New York into the Titanic disaster.
1933 - The United States went off the gold standard.
1943 - The Warsaw ghetto uprising began, one of the first mass rebellions against the Nazis.
1951 - Gen. Douglas MacArthur, relieved of his command by President Harry S. Truman, bid farewell to Congress, quoting a line from a ballad: "Old soldiers never die; they just fade away."
1961 - The Federal Communications Commission authorized regular FM stereo broadcasting starting on June 1, 1961.
1977 - The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in Ingraham v. Wright, that even severe spanking of school children by faculty members did not violate the Eighth Amendment ban against cruel and unusual punishment.
1989 - Forty-seven sailors were killed when a gun turret exploded aboard the USS Cockeye in the Caribbean. (The Navy initially suspected that a dead crew member had deliberately sparked the blast, but later said that there was no proof of that.)
1993 - The siege at Waco, Texas ended when FBI agents moved into the Branch Davidian compound with tear gas; cult members set fire to the compound, killing more than 80 people.
1994 - A Los Angeles jury awarded $3.8 million to beaten motorist Rodney King.
1995 - The Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City was destroyed by a truck bomb, killing 168 people, including 19 children, and injuring more than 500 in what was the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history to date. (Bomber Timothy McVeigh, who prosecutors said had planned the attack as revenge for the Waco siege of two years earlier, was convicted of federal murder charges and executed in 2001.)
2005 - Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger of Germany was elected pope and took the name Benedict XVI.
2011 - Cuba's Communist Party picked 79-year-old Raul Castro to replace his ailing brother Fidel as first secretary during a key Party Congress.
2012 - Republicans rammed an election-year, $46 billion tax cut for most of America's employers through the House, ignoring a veto threat from President Barack Obama. (The measure would be defeated in the Senate.)
2013 - Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, a 19-year-old college student wanted in the Boston Marathon bombings, was taken into custody after a manhunt that had left the city virtually paralyzed; his older brother and alleged accomplice, 26-year-old Tamerlan, was killed earlier in a furious attempt to escape police.
2015 - Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old Black man, died a week after suffering a spinal cord injury in the back of a Baltimore police van while he was handcuffed and shackled. (Six police officers were charged; three were acquitted and the city’s top prosecutor eventually dropped the three remaining cases.)
2017 - Fox News Channel’s parent company fired Bill O’Reilly following an investigation into harassment allegations, bringing a stunning end to cable news’ most popular program.
2018 - Raul Castro turned over Cuba’s presidency to Miguel Mario Diaz-Canel Bermudez, the first non-Castro to hold Cuba’s top government office since the 1959 revolution led by Fidel Castro and his younger brother Raul.
2021 - Former Vice President Walter Mondale, a liberal icon who served as a Democratic senator from Minnesota and as Jimmy Carter’s vice president before losing one of the most lopsided presidential elections in the nation’s history to Republican Ronald Reagan in 1984, died at the age of 93.
2021 - NASA’s experimental Mars helicopter named Ingenuity took flight on Mars, rising 10 feet into the thin air above the dusty red surface to achieve the first powered flight by an aircraft on another planet.
Birthdays
20 - Loren Gray (singer)
32 - Kim Chiu (actress)
34 - Patrik Laine (hockey player)
35 - Maria Sharapova (tennis player)
35 - Courtland Mead (actor)
36 - Candace Parker (basketball player)
37 - Zack Conroy (actor)
38 - Kelen Coleman (actor)
39 - Victoria Yeates (actress)
40 - Ali Wong (actress/comedian)
41 - Troy Polamalu (football player)
41 - Catalina Sandino Moreno (actress)
41 - Hayden Christensen (actor)
43 - Kate Hudson (actress)
44 - Joanna Gaines (reality star)
44 - James Franco (actor)
50 - Jennifer Taylor (actress)
50 - Jennifer Esposito (actress)
52 - Luis Miguel (singer)
53 - Jesse James (reality star)
54 - Bekka Bramlett (singer)
54 - Ashley Judd (actress)
54 - Kim Hawthorne (actress)
57 - Suge Knight (music executive)
59 - Tom Wood (actor)
60 - Al Unser Jr. (race car driver)
66 - Sue Barker (tennis player)
70 - Tony Plana (actor)
76 - Tim Curry (actor)
85 - Elinor Donahue (actress)
===================================
Today in Sports History - April 19
1897 - The first Boston Marathon was held; the first winner was John J. McDermott who ran the race in two hours, 55 minutes and 10 seconds.
1947 - The Toronto Maple Leafs defeat the Montreal Canadiens to win the Stanley Cup.
1960 - Baseball uniforms began displaying player's names on their backs.
1968 - In Chicago, the National League approved expansion to Montreal and San Diego. Dallas-Fort Worth failed in its bid for an NL franchise.
1987 - The Los Angeles Clippers end the season with one of the worst records in NBA history at 12-70.
1988 - The Philadelphia 76ers retired Julius Erving's #6 before a home game. A Dr. J statue was also unveiled.
1992 - Michael Jordan won his sixth consecutive NBA scoring title with an average of 30.1.
1997 - The St. Louis Rams select Ohio State offensive tackle Orlando Pace with the first pick in the NFL Draft.
1999 - Cal Ripken Jr. (Baltimore Orioles) was placed on the disabled list for the first time in his 19 year career. He was suffering from a back problem.
2017 - Former New England Patriots tight end Aaron Hernandez, 27, who was serving a life sentence for a 2013 murder, hanged himself in his cell in a maximum-security prison in Massachusetts five days after being acquitted of murder charges in the shooting deaths of two men in Boston in 2012.
2021 - In Las Vegas, Nevada: San Jose Sharks forward Patrick Marleau breaks Gordie Howe's NHL record for most games played, now at 1,768 and counting.
