Events

• 1607 – The Virginia Company colonists make landfall at Cape Henry.
• 1794 – Battle of Beaumont during the Flanders Campaign of the War of the First Coalition.
• 1802 – Napoleon Bonaparte signs a general amnesty to allow all but about one thousand of the most notorious émigrés of the French Revolution to return to France.
• 1803 – Thousands of meteor fragments fall from the skies of L’Aigle, France; the event convinces European scientists that meteors exist.
• 1805 – First Barbary War: United States Marines captured Derne under the command of First Lieutenant Presley O’Bannon.
• 1865 – American Civil War: Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston surrenders his army to General William Tecumseh Sherman at the Bennett Place near Durham, North Carolina.
  • Also the date of Confederate Memorial Day for two states.
  • Confederate Memorial Day (Florida, US).
• 1865 – Union cavalry troopers corner and shoot dead John Wilkes Booth, assassin of President Abraham Lincoln, in Virginia.
• 1925 – Paul von Hindenburg defeats Wilhelm Marx in the second round of the German presidential election to become the first directly elected head of state of the Weimar Republic.
• 1933 – The Gestapo, the official secret police force of Nazi Germany, is established.
• 1937 – Spanish Civil War: Guernica, Spain, is bombed by German Luftwaffe.
• 1943 – The Easter Riots break out in Uppsala, Sweden.
• 1944 – Georgios Papandreou becomes head of the Greek government-in-exile based in Egypt.
• 1944 – Heinrich Kreipe is captured by Allied commandos in occupied Crete.
• 1945 – World War II: Battle of Bautzen: Last successful German tank-offensive of the war and last noteworthy victory of the Wehrmacht.
• 1945 – World War II: Filipino troops of the 66th Infantry Regiment, Philippine Commonwealth Army, USAFIP-NL and the American troops of the 33rd and 37th Infantry Division, United States Army are liberated in Baguio and they fight against the Japanese forces under General Tomoyuki Yamashita.
• 1954 – The Geneva Conference, an effort to restore peace in Indochina and Korea, begins.
• 1956 – SS Ideal X, the world’s first successful container ship, leaves Port Newark, New Jersey, for Houston, Texas.
• 1960 – Forced out by the April Revolution, President of South Korea Syngman Rhee resigns after 12 years of dictatorial rule.
• 2005 – Under international pressure, Syria withdraws the last of its 14,000 military garrison in Lebanon, ending its 29-year military domination of that country (Syrian occupation of Lebanon).
• Union Day (Tanzania).

People (Births)

• 121 – Marcus Aurelius, Roman emperor (d. 180).
• 1718 – Esek Hopkins, American commander (d. 1802).
• 1876 – Ernst Felle, German rower (d. 1959).
• 1896 – Ernst Udet, German colonel and pilot (d. 1941).
• 1911 – Paul Verner, German soldier and politician (d. 1986).
• 1916 – Ken Wallis, English commander, engineer, and pilot (d. 2013).
• 1918 – Fanny Blankers-Koen, Dutch sprinter and long jumper (d. 2004).
• 1924 – Browning Ross, American runner and soldier (d. 1998).
• 1926 – Michael Mathias Prechtl, German soldier and illustrator (d. 2003).
• 1930 – Roger Moens, Belgian runner and sportscaster.
• 1933 – Filiberto Ojeda Ríos, Puerto Rican-American general (d. 2005).
• 1963 – Cornelia Ullrich, German hurdler.
• 1983 – Jessica Lynch, American soldier.
• 1986 – Yuliya Zaripova, Russian runner.
• 1991 – Wojciech Pszczolarski, Polish bicycle racer.

People (Deaths)

• 893 – Chen Jingxuan, general of the Tang Dynasty.
• 1489 – Ashikaga Yoshihisa, Japanese shōgun (b. 1465).
• 1686 – Magnus Gabriel De la Gardie, Swedish statesman and military man (b. 1622).
• 1789 – Petr Ivanovich Panin, Russian general (b. 1721).
• 1881 – Ludwig Freiherr von und zu der Tann-Rathsamhausen, German general (b. 1815).
• 1945 – Pavlo Skoropadskyi, German-Ukrainian general and politician, Hetman of Ukraine (b. 1871).
• 1957 – Gichin Funakoshi, Japanese martial artist, founded Shotokan (b. 1868).
• 1969 – Morihei Ueshiba, Japanese martial artist, founded aikido (b. 1883).
• 1994 – Masutatsu Ōyama, Japanese martial artist, founded Kyokushin kaikan (b. 1923).
• 2003 – Edward Max Nicholson, Irish environmentalist, co-founded the World Wide Fund for Nature (b. 1904).