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On this day: April 23

2026-04-23T00:00:00Z

April 23: National Sovereignty and Children's Day in Turkey (1920)

Blanco Encalada

1016 – Edmund Ironside became King of England, reigning for only seven months before the country was conquered by Cnut the Great.
1891 – Chilean Civil War: The armored frigate Blanco Encalada (pictured) was sunk at the Battle of Caldera Bay, the first ironclad warship lost to a self-propelled torpedo.
1976 – The American band the Ramones released their debut album, which became highly influential on the emerging punk rock movement.
2009 – The gamma-ray burst GRB 090423 was detected coming from the most distant astronomical object of any kind known at the time.

Ngaio Marsh (b. 1895)
E. B. Ford (b. 1901)
Patricia Paputsakis (b. 1986)
Dan Kaminsky (d. 2021)

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On this day: April 24

2026-04-24T00:00:00Z

April 24: Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day (1915)

Max Bruch

1866 – German composer Max Bruch (pictured) conducted the premiere of his first violin concerto.
1915 – The Armenian genocide in the Ottoman Empire began with the arrest and deportation of hundreds of prominent Armenians in Constantinople.
1944 – World War II: The British Special Boat Service executed a successful raid to destroy an Axis radio station on the Greek island of Santorini.
2011 – Secret documents relating to detainees at the United States' Guantanamo Bay detention camp were released on WikiLeaks and several independent news organizations.

Vincent de Paul (b. 1581)
Marilyn Erskine (b. 1926)
Hedda Berntsen and Steve Finnan (b. 1976)

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On this day: April 25

2026-04-25T00:00:00Z

April 25: Liberation Day in Italy (1945); Anzac Day in Australia and New Zealand; Flag Day in the Faroe Islands

Mswati III

775 – The Abbasid army won a decisive victory over the forces of rebelling Armenian princes at the Battle of Bagrevand.
1644 – Ming–Qing transition: The Ming dynasty of China fell when the Chongzhen Emperor committed suicide during a peasant rebellion led by Li Zicheng.
1920 – A march by blind people from across the United Kingdom to protest poor working conditions ended at Trafalgar Square, London.
1986 – Mswati III (pictured) was crowned King of Swaziland, succeeding his father Sobhuza II.
2014 – A water crisis began when officials in Flint, Michigan, switched the city's water supply to the Flint River, leading to contamination.

Princess Alice of the United Kingdom (b. 1843)
Joel Brand (b. 1906)
John McFall (b. 1981)
Satou Sabally (b. 1998)

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On this day: April 26

2026-04-26T00:00:00Z

April 26

Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant

1803 – Thousands of meteor fragments fell over L'Aigle, France, becoming a milestone in the understanding of meteorites.
1941 – Boris Kidrič and Edvard Kardelj founded the Liberation Front of the Slovene Nation, the main anti-fascist Slovene civil-resistance and political organization during World War II.
1986 – The Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant (pictured) near Chernobyl, Ukrainian SSR, suffered a steam explosion, resulting in a fire, a nuclear meltdown, and the evacuation and resettlement of over 336,000 people around Europe.
2017 – The Shandong was launched for the People's Liberation Army Navy, China's first domestically built aircraft carrier.

Ma Rainey (b. 1886)
Margaret Gowing (b. 1921)
Arnold Sommerfeld (d. 1951)
Thiago Almada (b. 2001)

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On this day: April 27

2026-04-27T00:00:00Z

April 27: Koningsdag in the Netherlands

Für Elise

395 – Aelia Eudoxia married Byzantine emperor Arcadius without the knowledge or consent of Rufinus, the Praetorian prefect who had intended for his own daughter to wed the emperor.
1810 – Ludwig van Beethoven composed his Bagatelle No. 25 in A minor, better known as "Für Elise" (audio featured), one of his most popular compositions.
1961 – Prime Minister Milton Margai led the Sierra Leone Colony and Protectorate to independence from the United Kingdom.
1997 – American spree killer Andrew Cunanan murdered Jeffrey Trail, a former friend and a Gulf War veteran, who became the first victim of Cunanan's killing spree.

Mary Wollstonecraft (b. 1759)
Margaret Macpherson Grant (b. 1834)
Basil A. Paterson (b. 1926)
Cristian Romero (b. 1998)

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On this day: April 28

2026-04-28T00:00:00Z

April 28: Workers' Memorial Day; Heroes' Day in Barbados

University of Santo Tomas Central Seminary building

224 – The ancient Iranian Parthian Empire fell to the Sasanids after its forces were defeated at the Battle of Hormozdgan.
1611 – The University of Santo Tomas (seminary building pictured) in Manila, one of the oldest existing universities in Asia and one of the world's largest Catholic universities by enrollment, was founded.
1972 – Scottish trade unionist Jimmy Reid condemned the capitalist "rat race" in his inaugural address as Rector of the University of Glasgow.
1996 – A spree shooter carried out the Port Arthur massacre, killing 35 people and injuring 23, in Tasmania, prompting stricter gun laws in Australia.

Rhys ap Gruffudd (d. 1197)
Hertha Ayrton (b. 1854)
Harper Lee (b. 1926)
Anthony Volpe (b. 2001)

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On this day: April 29

2026-04-29T00:00:00Z

April 29

Centaurus A

1386 – The Grand Duchy of Lithuania decisively won the Battle of the Vikhra River, forcibly making the Principality of Smolensk a vassal state.
1826 – In Parramatta, Australia, Scottish astronomer James Dunlop discovered Centaurus A (pictured), which was later recognised as one of the nearest radio galaxies to Earth.
1922 - Sixteen-year-old Lilian Salkeld became the first woman to walk from London to Brighton.
1991 – A powerful tropical cyclone struck Chittagong, Bangladesh, killing at least 138,000 people and leaving up to 10 million homeless across the region.
2011 – Watched by a worldwide television audience of tens of millions, Prince William and Catherine Middleton were married at Westminster Abbey in London.

James Butler, 2nd Duke of Ormonde (b. 1665)
Georgia Hopley (b. 1858)
Elisabeth Mills Reid (d. 1931)
JJ (b. 2001)

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On this day: April 30

2026-04-30T00:00:00Z

April 30: International Jazz Day; Persian Gulf National Day in Iran

George Washington

313 – Civil wars of the Tetrarchy: An outnumbered army led by Roman emperor Licinius defeated his rival Maximinus II's forces at the Battle of Tzirallum.
1006 – SN 1006, the brightest supernova in recorded history, first appeared in the constellation Lupus.
1789 – George Washington (pictured) took the oath of office as the first president of the United States at Federal Hall in New York City.
1927 – Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford became the first two celebrities to make imprints of their hands and feet in cement at Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, California.
1994 – Riverdance was performed for the first time, as the interval act for the Eurovision Song Contest.
2014 – A bomb blast in Ürümqi, China, killed three people and injured 79 others.

Hildegard (d. 783)
Cloris Leachman (b. 1926)
Victor Glover (b. 1976)
Gerry Ryan (d. 2010)

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On this day: May 1

2026-05-01T00:00:00Z

May 1: Beltane and Samhain in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, respectively; Third Month Fair begins in southwest China (2026); Maharashtra Day in Maharashtra, India (1960); Pesach Sheni (Judaism, 2026); Loyalty Day in the United States

Anna Jagiellon

880 – The Nea Ekklesia church in Constantinople, on which many later cross-in-square Eastern Orthodox churches were based, was consecrated.
1576 – Stephen Báthory and Anna Jagiellon (pictured) were crowned as the elected rulers of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.
1941 – Citizen Kane, a widely acclaimed film by actor and director Orson Welles, premiered.
1991 – In Major League Baseball, Rickey Henderson broke the record for stolen bases on the same night that Nolan Ryan broke his own record for no-hitters.

Edmund Fitzalan, 2nd Earl of Arundel (b. 1285)
Honora Sneyd (d. 1780)
Peter Lax (b. 1926)
Charli D'Amelio (b. 2004)

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On this day: May 2

2026-05-02T00:00:00Z

May 2: Flag Day in Poland

Great Mill Disaster illustration

1194 – King Richard I of England gave the city of Portsmouth its first royal charter.
1878 – A dust explosion (depicted) at the world's largest flour mill in Minneapolis resulted in 18 deaths.
1986 – Henri Toivonen was killed in an accident while leading the Tour de Corse rally, resulting in FISA banning the popular Group B rally cars for the following season.
2003 – Cyclone Manou formed in the Indian Ocean; over the next two weeks it struck Madagascar and left more than 100,000 people homeless.
2011 – Osama bin Laden was killed by U.S. Navy SEAL Team Six in his private residential compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

Yongle Emperor (b. 1360)
Catherine Labouré (b. 1806)
George Went Hensley (b. 1881)
Princess Charlotte of Wales (b. 2015)

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