This Day in History: April 19, 2024
-
1775
The "shot heard around the world" was fired. Colonial Minute Men took on British Army regulars at Lexington and Concord, Mass., starting the American Revolution.
-
1824
Lord Byron died of a fever while helping the Greeks fight the Turks.
-
1882
Naturalist Charles Darwin, developer of the theory of evolution, died.
-
1897
The first Boston Marathon was run.
-
1933
The United States went off the gold standard.
-
1943
The Warsaw ghetto uprising began, one of the first mass rebellions against the Nazis.
-
1993
The siege at Waco, Texas, ended when FBI moved into the Branch Davidian compound with tear gas and cult members set fire to the compound killing over 80 people.
-
1995
The Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Okla., was destroyed by a car bomb. 168 people, including 19 children were killed in the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history up to that time.
-
2005
Germany's Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger became Pope Benedict XVI.