1610: East India Company<\/a> sea captain Sir Henry Middleton sails from England with three ships with instructions to establish trading links in India<\/h4>\nHe was captured by the Turks after landing at Mocha but later escaped after hiding in an empty barrel.<\/p>\n
2 April<\/a><\/h2>\n1977: 21-year-old Charlotte Brew becomes the first woman to ride in the Grand National<\/h4>\n
Her horse, Barony Fort, refuses four fences from home.<\/p>\n
![\"Charlotte]( "\\"Charlotte")
\n<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture>\n<\/div> Charlotte Brew. (Photo by Evening Standard\/Getty Images)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\n3 April<\/a><\/h2>\n1860: Pony Express hits the road<\/h4>\n
The first rider for America\u2019s legendary mail service departed. Advertisements for their riders had requested \u201cYoung, skinny, wiry fellows not over 18,\u201d read one advert. \u201cMust be expert riders, willing to risk death daily. Orphans preferred.\u201d<\/p>\n
4 April<\/a><\/h2>\n1968: American civil rights leader Martin Luther King<\/a> is assassinated while standing on the balcony of his motel room in Memphis, Tennessee<\/h4>\n5 April<\/a><\/h2>\n1906: Restless Vesuvius blows its top, spreading panic and misery<\/h4>\n ![\"Service]( "\\"Service")
\n<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture>\n<\/div> Eruption of Vesuvius in 1906. (Photo by Touring Club Italiano\/Marka\/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\nAlthough the final death toll is uncertain, there is no doubt the eruption of 1906 wrought horrific damage. The explosion was so fierce that the tip of the volcano was reportedly blown clean off, while ash poured down on the neighbouring villages. And in the city of Naples, crowded with tens of thousands of refugees, there was total panic. \u201cThe scene was one of misery and terror,\u201d wrote another witness. \u201cSmoke and ashes made breathing difficult. Slight tremblings of the earth were felt, and frequent flashes of lightning cut through the smoke.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n- Read more |\u00a0Pliny\u2019s Rome: Vesuvius, vice and vestal virgins<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
6 April<\/a><\/h2>\n1199: Richard the Lionheart<\/a> roars his last<\/h4>\nRichard I died of gangrene after chance crossbow shot during castle siege. One version of the legend has it that when Richard\u2019s men dragged the crossbowman before him, he turned out to be a boy called Bertram de Gourdon, who said he wanted revenge for his dead father and brothers. Richard supposedly ordered him set free with 100 shillings. Meanwhile the gangrene did its work. On 6 April, Richard died in the arms of his mother, Eleanor. His heart was buried in Rouen, his entrails in Ch\u00e2lus. His brother John succeeded as king, and after that it was downhill all the way.<\/p>\n Famous births in April<\/h2>\n1 April 1779<\/h6>\n
Robert Surtees, Northumbrian historian\u00a0<\/p>\n
2 April 1618<\/h6>\n
Francesco Grimaldi, astronomer\u00a0<\/p>\n
2 April 1840<\/h6>\n
Emile Zola, writer<\/p>\n
4 April 1732<\/h6>\n
Jean-Honor\u00e9 Fragonard, French rococo painter and printmaker\u00a0<\/p>\n
5 April 1769<\/h6>\n
Thomas Masterman Hardy, captain of HMS Victory, Nelson\u2019s flagship at Trafalgar in 1805<\/p>\n
5 April 1827\u00a0<\/h6>\n
Sir Joseph Lister, pioneering surgeon\u00a0<\/p>\n
5 April 1900<\/h6>\n
Spencer Tracy, US actor<\/p>\n
7 April 1770<\/h6>\n
William Wordsworth, Romantic poet<\/p>\n
7 April 1891<\/h6>\n
Ole Kirk Christiansen, founder of the LEGO \u00ae construction toy company<\/p>\n
8 April 1692<\/h6>\n
Giuseppe Tartini, Italian composer, violinist and musical theorist\u00a0<\/p>\n
12 April 1853<\/h6>\n
James Mackenzie, cardiologist<\/p>\n
13 April 1743<\/h6>\n
Thomas Jefferson, third president of the United States\u00a0<\/p>\n
13 April 1771<\/h6>\n
Richard Trevithick, inventor, mining engineer and constructor of the world\u2019s first full-scale working railway steam locomotive<\/p>\n
15 April 1469<\/h6>\n
Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikhism<\/p>\n
20 April 1808<\/h6>\n
Prince Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, son of Napoleon I\u2019s brother, Louis<\/p>\n
22 April 1830<\/h6>\n
Emily Davies, suffragist and advocate of women\u2019s education\u00a0<\/p>\n
23 April 1858<\/h6>\n
Max Planck, German physicist\u00a0<\/p>\n
24 April 1882<\/h6>\n
Hugh Dowding, commander of Fighter Command during the Battle of Britain<\/p>\n
27 April 1759<\/h6>\n
Mary Wollstonecraft, writer and feminist\u00a0<\/p>\n
28 April 1908<\/h6>\n
Oskar Schindler, German industrialist he will save hundreds of Jews from being murdered by the Nazis by employing them in his factories.<\/p>\n
30 April 1651<\/h6>\n
Jean-Baptiste de la Salle, priest and educational reformer\u00a0<\/p>\n
<\/p><\/div> <\/section>
7 April<\/a><\/h2>\n1739: Notorious highwayman Dick Turpin<\/a> is hanged in York<\/h4>\n ![\"Dick]( "\\"Dick")
\n<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture>\n<\/div> Dick Turpin in a 19th century colour-printed wood engraving. (Photo by Universal History Archive\/Getty Images)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\nOn the day of his execution, Turpin becomes a celebrity: members of the public visit his cell to speak with him, apparently buying drinks from his gaoler. He hires five professional mourners to follow him to the gallows.<\/p>\n
8 April<\/a><\/h2>\n1318:\u00a0The Scots capture Berwick-upon-Tweed<\/h4>\n
Robert the Bruce appeared unstoppable after his decisive Scottish victory at Bannockburn in 1314.\u00a0However, he was not personally responsible for Berwick\u2019s capture. Rather, it was spearheaded by a Scottish noble called Sir James Douglas, Lord of Douglas, who led a raiding party over Berwick\u2019s walls on 8 April 1318. Fighting broke out inside the town, but Douglas and his men persevered, stoking anarchy among the townspeople and garrisoned soldiers, and ultimately capturing the town for the Scots.<\/p>\n
\n- On the podcast |\u00a0Scottish clans: everything you wanted to know<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
9 April<\/a><\/h2>\n1838: The new National Gallery building opens to the public in Trafalgar Square<\/h4>\n
It is designed by Norfolk architect William Wilkins to house the national collection which had previously been on display in a town house in Pall Mall.<\/p>\n
10 April<\/a><\/h2>\n1912: RMS Titanic<\/a> sailed from Southampton at midday<\/h4>\n ![\"The]( "\\"The")
\n<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture>\n<\/div> The first class deck of the White Star liner \u2018Titanic\u2019, from an advertising poster. (Photo by Roger Viollet via Getty Images)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\nHer first port of call was Cherbourg where more passengers joined the ship, though 24 disembarked.<\/p>\n
\n- Quiz | How much do you know about Titanic?<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
11 April<\/a><\/h2>\n1713: The Treaty of Utrecht ended the War of the Spanish Succession<\/h4>\n
Britain and her allies achieved their aim of ensuring that the crowns of France and Spain would not be unified. British territorial gains included Gibraltar, Minorca and Newfoundland.<\/p>\n
12 April<\/a><\/h2>\n1606:\u00a0Britain is united under one flag<\/h4>\n
On 12 April, then, James issued a proclamation, \u201cdeclaring what Flags South and North Britons shall bear at Sea\u201d. It was evident, he said, that \u201csome difference has arisen between our Subjects of South and North Britain, Travelling by Sea, about the bearing of their flags\u201d. So \u201chenceforth all our subjects of this Isle and Kingdom of Great Britain\u201d should fly from the maintop \u201cthe Red Cross, commonly called St George\u2019s Cross, and the White Cross, commonly called St Andrew\u2019s Cross, joined together\u201d.<\/p>\n
\n- Q&A |\u00a0When was the Union Jack or Union flag created?<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
The exact original design is now lost, but it was probably very similar to the flag generally flown before 1801, when it was adapted to include the cross of St Patrick. And to settle a hoary old question: was it the union flag, or the union jack? The answer is simple. For the first few years, at least, nobody called it either.<\/p>\n
13 April<\/a><\/h2>\n1204: Crusaders devastate Constantinople<\/h4>\n
For three days, having scaled the walls and fought their way into the centre, the crusaders ran riot. The altars were shattered, the nuns violated, the townsfolk slaughtered without mercy. Many priceless artworks were destroyed; others were taken, like the bronze horses which stand in Venice today.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo one was without a share in the grief,\u201d wrote the Byzantine official Nicetas Choniates, recalling the sound of \u201cweeping, lamentations, grief, the groaning of men, the shrieks of women, wounds, rape, captivity\u2026 All places everywhere were filled full of all kinds of crime.\u201d
14 April<\/a><\/h2>\n1471: Warwick the Kingmaker<\/a> is slain in battle<\/h4>\n ![\"Illustration]( "\\"Illustration")
\n<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture>\n<\/div> Illustration of the death of Warwick the Kingmaker by artist James William Edmund Doyle. (Photo by Historica Graphica Collection\/Heritage Images\/Getty Images)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\nAll was chaos, confusion and panic; some men were shouting about treason, others running from the field. The Yorkist reserves piled in; the Lancastrians broke. What followed was a bloody massacre. Waiting with his reserves, peering through the mist, Warwick realised that the game was up. According to the chroniclers, he was trying to get away when the Yorkist soldiers overtook him. There was, of course, no mercy.<\/p>\n
15 April<\/a><\/h2>\n1793: Faced with a shortage of gold coin, the Bank of England<\/a> issued its first five-pound notes<\/h4>\nTheir black-on-white design was to remain essentially unchanged until 1957.<\/p>\n
16 April<\/a><\/h2>\n1912: At the age of 37, Michigan-born aviator and writer Harriet Quimby became the first woman to pilot an aeroplane across the English Channel<\/h4>\n
She made the flight in just under an hour. However, her achievement received comparatively little attention at the time, being overshadowed by the news of the sinking of Titanic on the previous day. Eleven weeks later, back in America, Quimby was killed when she and her passenger fell from the Bleriot two-seater monoplane she was piloting at the Third Annual Boston Aviation Meet.<\/p>\n
17 April<\/a><\/h2>\n1961:\u00a0Bay of Pigs<\/a> fiasco fails to oust Castro<\/h4>\nRumours of the invasion had already spread to the island from Miami, and the Cuban militia were quickly on the scene. Within hours the invaders had come under heavy fire, two of their ships had been sunk and the sky was thick with fighter planes. Far from storming inland to a huge popular welcome, the exiles were bogged down on the beaches. As Castro\u2019s troops raced to the scene, where was the promised US support?<\/p>\n
Within two days it was all over. The Americans managed to rescue a handful of the exiles by sea, but the rest were killed or captured. Kennedy had been humiliated. And Castro? He stayed in power for the next 47 years.<\/p>\n
18 April<\/a><\/h2>\n1949: The Republic of Ireland Act comes into force<\/h4>\n
Ireland ceases to be a member of the commonwealth and King George VI ceases to act as Irish head of state in international relations.<\/p>\n
\n- On the podcast | The Irish across the globe<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
19 April<\/a><\/h2>\n1897: An alien being crash-lands in Texas. Or does it?<\/h4>\n
When the people of Dallas, Texas opened the local Morning News on 19 April 1897, they were in for a shock. \u201cA Windmill Demolishes it\u201d, read the headline on a story by one SE Haydon. Two days before, at six in the morning, an airship had fallen onto the little town of Aurora. \u201cIt sailed over the public square,\u201d Haydon explained, \u201cand when it reached the north part of town collided with the tower of Judge Proctor\u2019s windmill and went to pieces with a terrific explosion.\u201d<\/p>\n
But the real surprise came in the wreckage. The dead pilot was badly burned, but it was clear \u201cthat he was not an inhabitant of this world\u201d. Indeed, \u201cMr TJ Weems, the US signal service officer at this place, and an authority on astronomy, gives it as his opinion that he was a native of the planet Mars\u201d.<\/p>\n
20 April<\/a><\/h2>\n1862: Louis Pasteur and Claude Bernard completed their first test of what became known as the pasteurisation process to preserve food<\/h4>\n21 April<\/a><\/h2>\n1934: The Daily Mail<\/em> \u2018proves\u2019 the existence of the Loch Ness Monster<\/a> with a sensational front page photograph<\/h4>\n ![\"The]( "\\"The")
\n<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture>\n<\/div> The photograph of the Loch Ness Monster that was shared by the \u2018Daily Mail\u2019. (Photo by Keystone\/Getty Images)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\nAlthough the legend of a monster dates back to the sixth century, the Loch Ness Monster was really an invention of the 1930s, when a series of witnesses claimed to have seen a creature in the loch. So in December 1933, the Mail sent a big-game hunter, Marmaduke Wetherell, to locate the creature. He duly found some huge footprints on the shore. \u2018Monster of Loch Ness is Not Legend But a Fact\u2019 screamed the headline. But when the Mail<\/em> asked experts from the Natural History Museum to examine the prints, they reported that they had probably been created by the foot of a dead hippopotamus that had been converted into an umbrella stand.<\/p>\n22 April<\/a><\/h2>\n1838: The steamship Sirius arrives in New York after an 18-day journey to become the first steamer to cross the Atlantic non-stop<\/h4>\n
Brunel\u2019s Great Western arrives the next day having beaten Sirius\u2019s crossing time by more than three days.<\/p>\n Famous deaths in April<\/h2>\n3 April 1897\u00a0<\/h6>\n
Johannes Brahms, German composer<\/p>\n
6 April 1528<\/h6>\n
Albrecht D\u00fcrer, German painter, engraver, printer and mathematician\u00a0<\/p>\n
c 1823<\/h6>\n
Jacques Alexandre Cesar Charles, French inventor, physicist and balloonist\u00a0<\/p>\n
7 April 1947<\/h6>\n
Henry Ford, car manufacturer\u00a0<\/p>\n
9 April 1553<\/h6>\n
Francois Rabelais, French doctor and satirical writer\u00a0<\/p>\n
10 April 1909<\/h6>\n
Algernon Charles Swinburne, poet<\/p>\n
11 April 1240<\/h6>\n
Llywelyn ab Iorwerth, Prince of Gwynedd<\/p>\n
12 April 1912<\/h6>\n
Clarissa \u2018Clara\u2019 Barton, founder and first president of the American Red Cross<\/p>\n
16 April 1958<\/h6>\n
Rosalind Franklin, British chemist and crystallographer\u00a0<\/p>\n
18 April 1161<\/h6>\n
Theobald of Bec, Archishop of Canterbury<\/p>\n
18 April 1552<\/h6>\n
John Leland, English poet and antiquary\u00a0<\/p>\n
18 April 1882<\/h6>\n
Sir Henry Cole, organiser of the 1851 Great Exhibition<\/p>\n
19 April 1390<\/h6>\n
Robert II, King of Scots<\/p>\n
19 April 1768<\/h6>\n
Giovanni Antonio Canal \u2013\u2019Canaletto\u2019 \u2013 famous for his landscapes of Venice<\/p>\n
22 April 1833<\/h6>\n
Richard Trevithick, Cornish inventor, mining engineer and builder of the first full-scale working railway steam locomotive<\/p>\n
27 April 1810<\/h6>\n
John Metcalf, pioneering road builder\u00a0<\/p>\n
30 April 1943<\/h6>\n
Beatrice Webb, economist, socialist and reformer\u00a0<\/p>\n
<\/p><\/div> <\/section>
23 April<\/a><\/h2>\n1661: The coronation of Charles II<\/a> took place in Westminster Abbey<\/h4>\nSamuel Pepys recorded in his diary that despite having arrived seven hours early in order to secure a good spot from which to watch the proceedings, he found to his \u201cvery great grief\u201d that he was unable to see the ceremony, could hear little of the music due to the noise, and had to leave early in order to relieve himself. The day ended with a tremendous thunderstorm; contemporaries were divided over whether this was a good or bad omen.<\/p>\n
24 April<\/a><\/h2>\n1558: Mary, Queen of Scots<\/a> marries the 14-year-old French dauphin, the future Francis II, in a theatrical wedding at Notre Dame in Paris<\/h4>\n ![\"Print]( "\\"Print")
\n<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture>\n<\/div> Print from 1890-1900 depicting Mary Queen of Scots. (Photo by VCG Wilson\/Corbis via Getty Images)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\nThe pair had been engaged for ten years and had grown up together. In Edinburgh the great bombard Mons Meg is fired in celebration of the marriage. The following year Francis\u2019s father, Henry II, is mortally wounded in a jousting accident and the young married couple are crowned king and queen of France. Eighteen months later the sickly Francis dies of an ear infection and Mary returns to Scotland.<\/p>\n
25 April<\/a><\/h2>\n404 BC:\u00a0Athens surrenders to Sparta<\/h4>\n
According to the biographer Plutarch, Lysander then \u201csent for a number of flute-women out of the city, and collected together all that were in the camp, and pulled down the walls, and burnt the ships to the sound of the flute, the Spartans\u2019 allies being crowned with garlands, and making merry together\u201d. At long last, it was over.<\/p>\n
26 April<\/a><\/h2>\n1986: Chernobyl reactor explodes<\/h4>\n
The Chernobyl disaster<\/a>, which began on 26 April 1986, was the worst nuclear accident in history. Even now, its legacy continues to blight Belarus, Russia and Ukraine, the countries worst affected by the fallout. And although the Soviet authorities initially tried to cover it up, the accident dealt a hammer blow to their manicured image of socialist modernity.<\/p>\n27 April<\/a><\/h2>\n1865: The worst waterway disaster in US history claims 1,700 lives<\/h4>\n
On a late April day in 1865, the steamship\u00a0Sultana\u00a0was puffing up the Mississippi river.<\/p>\n
As the overladen vessel juddered out of Vicksburg towards Memphis, Tennessee, it battled strong currents. Seven miles after reaching Memphis, in the middle of the night, three of the ship\u2019s boilers exploded, killing some sleeping soldiers instantly and sending burning debris crashing through the vessel. The mostly wooden\u00a0Sultana\u00a0rapidly went up in flames as its screaming passengers leapt from its deck into the chilly river.<\/p>\n
Most of the men on board were killed. Of the survivors, one floated on the carcass\u00a0of a mule while others clung to trees and roots. Several died of hypothermia. The final death toll has been estimated at more than 1,700.<\/p>\n
28 April<\/a><\/h2>\n1192: In spite of his renowned vigour and intelligence, Conrad was murdered just four days after becoming king<\/h4>\n
It was lunchtime, and Conrad was returning home from the house of his friend Philip, Bishop of Beauvais when he was accosted by two men, who plunged their daggers into his body. Death almost certainly came very swiftly. One of the murderers was killed on the spot; the other, wounded, was put to torture. It turned out that he was a member of the infamous Assassins, a Nizari Shia sect led by the \u2018Old Man of the Mountain\u2019, who supposedly encouraged them to gear themselves up for murder with copious amounts of hashish.<\/p>\n
In reality, many of the lurid stories associated with the Assassins were probably invented. The real author of the plot to kill Conrad was almost certainly somebody much closer to home: Richard the Lionheart. Indeed, when Richard was later imprisoned by Leopold of Austria, Conrad\u2019s murder featured heavily on the charge sheet.<\/p>\n
29 April<\/a><\/h2>\n1770:
1977: 21-year-old Charlotte Brew becomes the first woman to ride in the Grand National<\/h4>\n
Her horse, Barony Fort, refuses four fences from home.<\/p>\n
![\"Charlotte](\"https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/7\/2023\/03\/GettyImages-3264420-fcd4256-e1679480172320.jpg?quality=90&resize=620%2C413\" "\\"Charlotte")
\n<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture>\n<\/div>3 April<\/a><\/h2>\n1860: Pony Express hits the road<\/h4>\n
The first rider for America\u2019s legendary mail service departed. Advertisements for their riders had requested \u201cYoung, skinny, wiry fellows not over 18,\u201d read one advert. \u201cMust be expert riders, willing to risk death daily. Orphans preferred.\u201d<\/p>\n
4 April<\/a><\/h2>\n1968: American civil rights leader Martin Luther King<\/a> is assassinated while standing on the balcony of his motel room in Memphis, Tennessee<\/h4>\n5 April<\/a><\/h2>\n1906: Restless Vesuvius blows its top, spreading panic and misery<\/h4>\n ![\"Service]( "\\"Service")
\n<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture>\n<\/div> Eruption of Vesuvius in 1906. (Photo by Touring Club Italiano\/Marka\/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\nAlthough the final death toll is uncertain, there is no doubt the eruption of 1906 wrought horrific damage. The explosion was so fierce that the tip of the volcano was reportedly blown clean off, while ash poured down on the neighbouring villages. And in the city of Naples, crowded with tens of thousands of refugees, there was total panic. \u201cThe scene was one of misery and terror,\u201d wrote another witness. \u201cSmoke and ashes made breathing difficult. Slight tremblings of the earth were felt, and frequent flashes of lightning cut through the smoke.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n- Read more |\u00a0Pliny\u2019s Rome: Vesuvius, vice and vestal virgins<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
6 April<\/a><\/h2>\n1199: Richard the Lionheart<\/a> roars his last<\/h4>\nRichard I died of gangrene after chance crossbow shot during castle siege. One version of the legend has it that when Richard\u2019s men dragged the crossbowman before him, he turned out to be a boy called Bertram de Gourdon, who said he wanted revenge for his dead father and brothers. Richard supposedly ordered him set free with 100 shillings. Meanwhile the gangrene did its work. On 6 April, Richard died in the arms of his mother, Eleanor. His heart was buried in Rouen, his entrails in Ch\u00e2lus. His brother John succeeded as king, and after that it was downhill all the way.<\/p>\n Famous births in April<\/h2>\n1 April 1779<\/h6>\n
Robert Surtees, Northumbrian historian\u00a0<\/p>\n
2 April 1618<\/h6>\n
Francesco Grimaldi, astronomer\u00a0<\/p>\n
2 April 1840<\/h6>\n
Emile Zola, writer<\/p>\n
4 April 1732<\/h6>\n
Jean-Honor\u00e9 Fragonard, French rococo painter and printmaker\u00a0<\/p>\n
5 April 1769<\/h6>\n
Thomas Masterman Hardy, captain of HMS Victory, Nelson\u2019s flagship at Trafalgar in 1805<\/p>\n
5 April 1827\u00a0<\/h6>\n
Sir Joseph Lister, pioneering surgeon\u00a0<\/p>\n
5 April 1900<\/h6>\n
Spencer Tracy, US actor<\/p>\n
7 April 1770<\/h6>\n
William Wordsworth, Romantic poet<\/p>\n
7 April 1891<\/h6>\n
Ole Kirk Christiansen, founder of the LEGO \u00ae construction toy company<\/p>\n
8 April 1692<\/h6>\n
Giuseppe Tartini, Italian composer, violinist and musical theorist\u00a0<\/p>\n
12 April 1853<\/h6>\n
James Mackenzie, cardiologist<\/p>\n
13 April 1743<\/h6>\n
Thomas Jefferson, third president of the United States\u00a0<\/p>\n
13 April 1771<\/h6>\n
Richard Trevithick, inventor, mining engineer and constructor of the world\u2019s first full-scale working railway steam locomotive<\/p>\n
15 April 1469<\/h6>\n
Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikhism<\/p>\n
20 April 1808<\/h6>\n
Prince Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, son of Napoleon I\u2019s brother, Louis<\/p>\n
22 April 1830<\/h6>\n
Emily Davies, suffragist and advocate of women\u2019s education\u00a0<\/p>\n
23 April 1858<\/h6>\n
Max Planck, German physicist\u00a0<\/p>\n
24 April 1882<\/h6>\n
Hugh Dowding, commander of Fighter Command during the Battle of Britain<\/p>\n
27 April 1759<\/h6>\n
Mary Wollstonecraft, writer and feminist\u00a0<\/p>\n
28 April 1908<\/h6>\n
Oskar Schindler, German industrialist he will save hundreds of Jews from being murdered by the Nazis by employing them in his factories.<\/p>\n
30 April 1651<\/h6>\n
Jean-Baptiste de la Salle, priest and educational reformer\u00a0<\/p>\n
<\/p><\/div> <\/section>
7 April<\/a><\/h2>\n1739: Notorious highwayman Dick Turpin<\/a> is hanged in York<\/h4>\n ![\"Dick]( "\\"Dick")
\n<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture>\n<\/div> Dick Turpin in a 19th century colour-printed wood engraving. (Photo by Universal History Archive\/Getty Images)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\nOn the day of his execution, Turpin becomes a celebrity: members of the public visit his cell to speak with him, apparently buying drinks from his gaoler. He hires five professional mourners to follow him to the gallows.<\/p>\n
8 April<\/a><\/h2>\n1318:\u00a0The Scots capture Berwick-upon-Tweed<\/h4>\n
Robert the Bruce appeared unstoppable after his decisive Scottish victory at Bannockburn in 1314.\u00a0However, he was not personally responsible for Berwick\u2019s capture. Rather, it was spearheaded by a Scottish noble called Sir James Douglas, Lord of Douglas, who led a raiding party over Berwick\u2019s walls on 8 April 1318. Fighting broke out inside the town, but Douglas and his men persevered, stoking anarchy among the townspeople and garrisoned soldiers, and ultimately capturing the town for the Scots.<\/p>\n
\n- On the podcast |\u00a0Scottish clans: everything you wanted to know<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
9 April<\/a><\/h2>\n1838: The new National Gallery building opens to the public in Trafalgar Square<\/h4>\n
It is designed by Norfolk architect William Wilkins to house the national collection which had previously been on display in a town house in Pall Mall.<\/p>\n
10 April<\/a><\/h2>\n1912: RMS Titanic<\/a> sailed from Southampton at midday<\/h4>\n ![\"The]( "\\"The")
\n<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture>\n<\/div> The first class deck of the White Star liner \u2018Titanic\u2019, from an advertising poster. (Photo by Roger Viollet via Getty Images)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\nHer first port of call was Cherbourg where more passengers joined the ship, though 24 disembarked.<\/p>\n
\n- Quiz | How much do you know about Titanic?<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
11 April<\/a><\/h2>\n1713: The Treaty of Utrecht ended the War of the Spanish Succession<\/h4>\n
Britain and her allies achieved their aim of ensuring that the crowns of France and Spain would not be unified. British territorial gains included Gibraltar, Minorca and Newfoundland.<\/p>\n
12 April<\/a><\/h2>\n1606:\u00a0Britain is united under one flag<\/h4>\n
On 12 April, then, James issued a proclamation, \u201cdeclaring what Flags South and North Britons shall bear at Sea\u201d. It was evident, he said, that \u201csome difference has arisen between our Subjects of South and North Britain, Travelling by Sea, about the bearing of their flags\u201d. So \u201chenceforth all our subjects of this Isle and Kingdom of Great Britain\u201d should fly from the maintop \u201cthe Red Cross, commonly called St George\u2019s Cross, and the White Cross, commonly called St Andrew\u2019s Cross, joined together\u201d.<\/p>\n
\n- Q&A |\u00a0When was the Union Jack or Union flag created?<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
The exact original design is now lost, but it was probably very similar to the flag generally flown before 1801, when it was adapted to include the cross of St Patrick. And to settle a hoary old question: was it the union flag, or the union jack? The answer is simple. For the first few years, at least, nobody called it either.<\/p>\n
13 April<\/a><\/h2>\n1204: Crusaders devastate Constantinople<\/h4>\n
For three days, having scaled the walls and fought their way into the centre, the crusaders ran riot. The altars were shattered, the nuns violated, the townsfolk slaughtered without mercy. Many priceless artworks were destroyed; others were taken, like the bronze horses which stand in Venice today.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo one was without a share in the grief,\u201d wrote the Byzantine official Nicetas Choniates, recalling the sound of \u201cweeping, lamentations, grief, the groaning of men, the shrieks of women, wounds, rape, captivity\u2026 All places everywhere were filled full of all kinds of crime.\u201d
14 April<\/a><\/h2>\n1471: Warwick the Kingmaker<\/a> is slain in battle<\/h4>\n ![\"Illustration]( "\\"Illustration")
\n<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture>\n<\/div> Illustration of the death of Warwick the Kingmaker by artist James William Edmund Doyle. (Photo by Historica Graphica Collection\/Heritage Images\/Getty Images)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\nAll was chaos, confusion and panic; some men were shouting about treason, others running from the field. The Yorkist reserves piled in; the Lancastrians broke. What followed was a bloody massacre. Waiting with his reserves, peering through the mist, Warwick realised that the game was up. According to the chroniclers, he was trying to get away when the Yorkist soldiers overtook him. There was, of course, no mercy.<\/p>\n
15 April<\/a><\/h2>\n1793: Faced with a shortage of gold coin, the Bank of England<\/a> issued its first five-pound notes<\/h4>\nTheir black-on-white design was to remain essentially unchanged until 1957.<\/p>\n
16 April<\/a><\/h2>\n1912: At the age of 37, Michigan-born aviator and writer Harriet Quimby became the first woman to pilot an aeroplane across the English Channel<\/h4>\n
She made the flight in just under an hour. However, her achievement received comparatively little attention at the time, being overshadowed by the news of the sinking of Titanic on the previous day. Eleven weeks later, back in America, Quimby was killed when she and her passenger fell from the Bleriot two-seater monoplane she was piloting at the Third Annual Boston Aviation Meet.<\/p>\n
17 April<\/a><\/h2>\n1961:\u00a0Bay of Pigs<\/a> fiasco fails to oust Castro<\/h4>\nRumours of the invasion had already spread to the island from Miami, and the Cuban militia were quickly on the scene. Within hours the invaders had come under heavy fire, two of their ships had been sunk and the sky was thick with fighter planes. Far from storming inland to a huge popular welcome, the exiles were bogged down on the beaches. As Castro\u2019s troops raced to the scene, where was the promised US support?<\/p>\n
Within two days it was all over. The Americans managed to rescue a handful of the exiles by sea, but the rest were killed or captured. Kennedy had been humiliated. And Castro? He stayed in power for the next 47 years.<\/p>\n
18 April<\/a><\/h2>\n1949: The Republic of Ireland Act comes into force<\/h4>\n
Ireland ceases to be a member of the commonwealth and King George VI ceases to act as Irish head of state in international relations.<\/p>\n
\n- On the podcast | The Irish across the globe<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
19 April<\/a><\/h2>\n1897: An alien being crash-lands in Texas. Or does it?<\/h4>\n
When the people of Dallas, Texas opened the local Morning News on 19 April 1897, they were in for a shock. \u201cA Windmill Demolishes it\u201d, read the headline on a story by one SE Haydon. Two days before, at six in the morning, an airship had fallen onto the little town of Aurora. \u201cIt sailed over the public square,\u201d Haydon explained, \u201cand when it reached the north part of town collided with the tower of Judge Proctor\u2019s windmill and went to pieces with a terrific explosion.\u201d<\/p>\n
But the real surprise came in the wreckage. The dead pilot was badly burned, but it was clear \u201cthat he was not an inhabitant of this world\u201d. Indeed, \u201cMr TJ Weems, the US signal service officer at this place, and an authority on astronomy, gives it as his opinion that he was a native of the planet Mars\u201d.<\/p>\n
20 April<\/a><\/h2>\n1862: Louis Pasteur and Claude Bernard completed their first test of what became known as the pasteurisation process to preserve food<\/h4>\n21 April<\/a><\/h2>\n1934: The Daily Mail<\/em> \u2018proves\u2019 the existence of the Loch Ness Monster<\/a> with a sensational front page photograph<\/h4>\n ![\"The]( "\\"The")
\n<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture>\n<\/div> The photograph of the Loch Ness Monster that was shared by the \u2018Daily Mail\u2019. (Photo by Keystone\/Getty Images)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\nAlthough the legend of a monster dates back to the sixth century, the Loch Ness Monster was really an invention of the 1930s, when a series of witnesses claimed to have seen a creature in the loch. So in December 1933, the Mail sent a big-game hunter, Marmaduke Wetherell, to locate the creature. He duly found some huge footprints on the shore. \u2018Monster of Loch Ness is Not Legend But a Fact\u2019 screamed the headline. But when the Mail<\/em> asked experts from the Natural History Museum to examine the prints, they reported that they had probably been created by the foot of a dead hippopotamus that had been converted into an umbrella stand.<\/p>\n22 April<\/a><\/h2>\n1838: The steamship Sirius arrives in New York after an 18-day journey to become the first steamer to cross the Atlantic non-stop<\/h4>\n
Brunel\u2019s Great Western arrives the next day having beaten Sirius\u2019s crossing time by more than three days.<\/p>\n Famous deaths in April<\/h2>\n3 April 1897\u00a0<\/h6>\n
Johannes Brahms, German composer<\/p>\n
6 April 1528<\/h6>\n
Albrecht D\u00fcrer, German painter, engraver, printer and mathematician\u00a0<\/p>\n
c 1823<\/h6>\n
Jacques Alexandre Cesar Charles, French inventor, physicist and balloonist\u00a0<\/p>\n
7 April 1947<\/h6>\n
Henry Ford, car manufacturer\u00a0<\/p>\n
9 April 1553<\/h6>\n
Francois Rabelais, French doctor and satirical writer\u00a0<\/p>\n
10 April 1909<\/h6>\n
Algernon Charles Swinburne, poet<\/p>\n
11 April 1240<\/h6>\n
Llywelyn ab Iorwerth, Prince of Gwynedd<\/p>\n
12 April 1912<\/h6>\n
Clarissa \u2018Clara\u2019 Barton, founder and first president of the American Red Cross<\/p>\n
16 April 1958<\/h6>\n
Rosalind Franklin, British chemist and crystallographer\u00a0<\/p>\n
18 April 1161<\/h6>\n
Theobald of Bec, Archishop of Canterbury<\/p>\n
18 April 1552<\/h6>\n
John Leland, English poet and antiquary\u00a0<\/p>\n
18 April 1882<\/h6>\n
Sir Henry Cole, organiser of the 1851 Great Exhibition<\/p>\n
19 April 1390<\/h6>\n
Robert II, King of Scots<\/p>\n
19 April 1768<\/h6>\n
Giovanni Antonio Canal \u2013\u2019Canaletto\u2019 \u2013 famous for his landscapes of Venice<\/p>\n
22 April 1833<\/h6>\n
Richard Trevithick, Cornish inventor, mining engineer and builder of the first full-scale working railway steam locomotive<\/p>\n
27 April 1810<\/h6>\n
John Metcalf, pioneering road builder\u00a0<\/p>\n
30 April 1943<\/h6>\n
Beatrice Webb, economist, socialist and reformer\u00a0<\/p>\n
<\/p><\/div> <\/section>
23 April<\/a><\/h2>\n1661: The coronation of Charles II<\/a> took place in Westminster Abbey<\/h4>\nSamuel Pepys recorded in his diary that despite having arrived seven hours early in order to secure a good spot from which to watch the proceedings, he found to his \u201cvery great grief\u201d that he was unable to see the ceremony, could hear little of the music due to the noise, and had to leave early in order to relieve himself. The day ended with a tremendous thunderstorm; contemporaries were divided over whether this was a good or bad omen.<\/p>\n
24 April<\/a><\/h2>\n1558: Mary, Queen of Scots<\/a> marries the 14-year-old French dauphin, the future Francis II, in a theatrical wedding at Notre Dame in Paris<\/h4>\n ![\"Print]( "\\"Print")
\n<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture>\n<\/div> Print from 1890-1900 depicting Mary Queen of Scots. (Photo by VCG Wilson\/Corbis via Getty Images)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\nThe pair had been engaged for ten years and had grown up together. In Edinburgh the great bombard Mons Meg is fired in celebration of the marriage. The following year Francis\u2019s father, Henry II, is mortally wounded in a jousting accident and the young married couple are crowned king and queen of France. Eighteen months later the sickly Francis dies of an ear infection and Mary returns to Scotland.<\/p>\n
25 April<\/a><\/h2>\n404 BC:\u00a0Athens surrenders to Sparta<\/h4>\n
According to the biographer Plutarch, Lysander then \u201csent for a number of flute-women out of the city, and collected together all that were in the camp, and pulled down the walls, and burnt the ships to the sound of the flute, the Spartans\u2019 allies being crowned with garlands, and making merry together\u201d. At long last, it was over.<\/p>\n
26 April<\/a><\/h2>\n1986: Chernobyl reactor explodes<\/h4>\n
The Chernobyl disaster<\/a>, which began on 26 April 1986, was the worst nuclear accident in history. Even now, its legacy continues to blight Belarus, Russia and Ukraine, the countries worst affected by the fallout. And although the Soviet authorities initially tried to cover it up, the accident dealt a hammer blow to their manicured image of socialist modernity.<\/p>\n27 April<\/a><\/h2>\n1865: The worst waterway disaster in US history claims 1,700 lives<\/h4>\n
On a late April day in 1865, the steamship\u00a0Sultana\u00a0was puffing up the Mississippi river.<\/p>\n
As the overladen vessel juddered out of Vicksburg towards Memphis, Tennessee, it battled strong currents. Seven miles after reaching Memphis, in the middle of the night, three of the ship\u2019s boilers exploded, killing some sleeping soldiers instantly and sending burning debris crashing through the vessel. The mostly wooden\u00a0Sultana\u00a0rapidly went up in flames as its screaming passengers leapt from its deck into the chilly river.<\/p>\n
Most of the men on board were killed. Of the survivors, one floated on the carcass\u00a0of a mule while others clung to trees and roots. Several died of hypothermia. The final death toll has been estimated at more than 1,700.<\/p>\n
28 April<\/a><\/h2>\n1192: In spite of his renowned vigour and intelligence, Conrad was murdered just four days after becoming king<\/h4>\n
It was lunchtime, and Conrad was returning home from the house of his friend Philip, Bishop of Beauvais when he was accosted by two men, who plunged their daggers into his body. Death almost certainly came very swiftly. One of the murderers was killed on the spot; the other, wounded, was put to torture. It turned out that he was a member of the infamous Assassins, a Nizari Shia sect led by the \u2018Old Man of the Mountain\u2019, who supposedly encouraged them to gear themselves up for murder with copious amounts of hashish.<\/p>\n
In reality, many of the lurid stories associated with the Assassins were probably invented. The real author of the plot to kill Conrad was almost certainly somebody much closer to home: Richard the Lionheart. Indeed, when Richard was later imprisoned by Leopold of Austria, Conrad\u2019s murder featured heavily on the charge sheet.<\/p>\n
29 April<\/a><\/h2>\n1770:
1968: American civil rights leader Martin Luther King<\/a> is assassinated while standing on the balcony of his motel room in Memphis, Tennessee<\/h4>\n5 April<\/a><\/h2>\n1906: Restless Vesuvius blows its top, spreading panic and misery<\/h4>\n ![\"Service]( "\\"Service")
\n<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture>\n<\/div> Eruption of Vesuvius in 1906. (Photo by Touring Club Italiano\/Marka\/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\nAlthough the final death toll is uncertain, there is no doubt the eruption of 1906 wrought horrific damage. The explosion was so fierce that the tip of the volcano was reportedly blown clean off, while ash poured down on the neighbouring villages. And in the city of Naples, crowded with tens of thousands of refugees, there was total panic. \u201cThe scene was one of misery and terror,\u201d wrote another witness. \u201cSmoke and ashes made breathing difficult. Slight tremblings of the earth were felt, and frequent flashes of lightning cut through the smoke.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n- Read more |\u00a0Pliny\u2019s Rome: Vesuvius, vice and vestal virgins<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
6 April<\/a><\/h2>\n1199: Richard the Lionheart<\/a> roars his last<\/h4>\nRichard I died of gangrene after chance crossbow shot during castle siege. One version of the legend has it that when Richard\u2019s men dragged the crossbowman before him, he turned out to be a boy called Bertram de Gourdon, who said he wanted revenge for his dead father and brothers. Richard supposedly ordered him set free with 100 shillings. Meanwhile the gangrene did its work. On 6 April, Richard died in the arms of his mother, Eleanor. His heart was buried in Rouen, his entrails in Ch\u00e2lus. His brother John succeeded as king, and after that it was downhill all the way.<\/p>\n Famous births in April<\/h2>\n1 April 1779<\/h6>\n
Robert Surtees, Northumbrian historian\u00a0<\/p>\n
2 April 1618<\/h6>\n
Francesco Grimaldi, astronomer\u00a0<\/p>\n
2 April 1840<\/h6>\n
Emile Zola, writer<\/p>\n
4 April 1732<\/h6>\n
Jean-Honor\u00e9 Fragonard, French rococo painter and printmaker\u00a0<\/p>\n
5 April 1769<\/h6>\n
Thomas Masterman Hardy, captain of HMS Victory, Nelson\u2019s flagship at Trafalgar in 1805<\/p>\n
5 April 1827\u00a0<\/h6>\n
Sir Joseph Lister, pioneering surgeon\u00a0<\/p>\n
5 April 1900<\/h6>\n
Spencer Tracy, US actor<\/p>\n
7 April 1770<\/h6>\n
William Wordsworth, Romantic poet<\/p>\n
7 April 1891<\/h6>\n
Ole Kirk Christiansen, founder of the LEGO \u00ae construction toy company<\/p>\n
8 April 1692<\/h6>\n
Giuseppe Tartini, Italian composer, violinist and musical theorist\u00a0<\/p>\n
12 April 1853<\/h6>\n
James Mackenzie, cardiologist<\/p>\n
13 April 1743<\/h6>\n
Thomas Jefferson, third president of the United States\u00a0<\/p>\n
13 April 1771<\/h6>\n
Richard Trevithick, inventor, mining engineer and constructor of the world\u2019s first full-scale working railway steam locomotive<\/p>\n
15 April 1469<\/h6>\n
Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikhism<\/p>\n
20 April 1808<\/h6>\n
Prince Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, son of Napoleon I\u2019s brother, Louis<\/p>\n
22 April 1830<\/h6>\n
Emily Davies, suffragist and advocate of women\u2019s education\u00a0<\/p>\n
23 April 1858<\/h6>\n
Max Planck, German physicist\u00a0<\/p>\n
24 April 1882<\/h6>\n
Hugh Dowding, commander of Fighter Command during the Battle of Britain<\/p>\n
27 April 1759<\/h6>\n
Mary Wollstonecraft, writer and feminist\u00a0<\/p>\n
28 April 1908<\/h6>\n
Oskar Schindler, German industrialist he will save hundreds of Jews from being murdered by the Nazis by employing them in his factories.<\/p>\n
30 April 1651<\/h6>\n
Jean-Baptiste de la Salle, priest and educational reformer\u00a0<\/p>\n
<\/p><\/div> <\/section>
7 April<\/a><\/h2>\n1739: Notorious highwayman Dick Turpin<\/a> is hanged in York<\/h4>\n ![\"Dick]( "\\"Dick")
\n<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture>\n<\/div> Dick Turpin in a 19th century colour-printed wood engraving. (Photo by Universal History Archive\/Getty Images)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\nOn the day of his execution, Turpin becomes a celebrity: members of the public visit his cell to speak with him, apparently buying drinks from his gaoler. He hires five professional mourners to follow him to the gallows.<\/p>\n
8 April<\/a><\/h2>\n1318:\u00a0The Scots capture Berwick-upon-Tweed<\/h4>\n
Robert the Bruce appeared unstoppable after his decisive Scottish victory at Bannockburn in 1314.\u00a0However, he was not personally responsible for Berwick\u2019s capture. Rather, it was spearheaded by a Scottish noble called Sir James Douglas, Lord of Douglas, who led a raiding party over Berwick\u2019s walls on 8 April 1318. Fighting broke out inside the town, but Douglas and his men persevered, stoking anarchy among the townspeople and garrisoned soldiers, and ultimately capturing the town for the Scots.<\/p>\n
\n- On the podcast |\u00a0Scottish clans: everything you wanted to know<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
9 April<\/a><\/h2>\n1838: The new National Gallery building opens to the public in Trafalgar Square<\/h4>\n
It is designed by Norfolk architect William Wilkins to house the national collection which had previously been on display in a town house in Pall Mall.<\/p>\n
10 April<\/a><\/h2>\n1912: RMS Titanic<\/a> sailed from Southampton at midday<\/h4>\n ![\"The]( "\\"The")
\n<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture>\n<\/div> The first class deck of the White Star liner \u2018Titanic\u2019, from an advertising poster. (Photo by Roger Viollet via Getty Images)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\nHer first port of call was Cherbourg where more passengers joined the ship, though 24 disembarked.<\/p>\n
\n- Quiz | How much do you know about Titanic?<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
11 April<\/a><\/h2>\n1713: The Treaty of Utrecht ended the War of the Spanish Succession<\/h4>\n
Britain and her allies achieved their aim of ensuring that the crowns of France and Spain would not be unified. British territorial gains included Gibraltar, Minorca and Newfoundland.<\/p>\n
12 April<\/a><\/h2>\n1606:\u00a0Britain is united under one flag<\/h4>\n
On 12 April, then, James issued a proclamation, \u201cdeclaring what Flags South and North Britons shall bear at Sea\u201d. It was evident, he said, that \u201csome difference has arisen between our Subjects of South and North Britain, Travelling by Sea, about the bearing of their flags\u201d. So \u201chenceforth all our subjects of this Isle and Kingdom of Great Britain\u201d should fly from the maintop \u201cthe Red Cross, commonly called St George\u2019s Cross, and the White Cross, commonly called St Andrew\u2019s Cross, joined together\u201d.<\/p>\n
\n- Q&A |\u00a0When was the Union Jack or Union flag created?<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
The exact original design is now lost, but it was probably very similar to the flag generally flown before 1801, when it was adapted to include the cross of St Patrick. And to settle a hoary old question: was it the union flag, or the union jack? The answer is simple. For the first few years, at least, nobody called it either.<\/p>\n
13 April<\/a><\/h2>\n1204: Crusaders devastate Constantinople<\/h4>\n
For three days, having scaled the walls and fought their way into the centre, the crusaders ran riot. The altars were shattered, the nuns violated, the townsfolk slaughtered without mercy. Many priceless artworks were destroyed; others were taken, like the bronze horses which stand in Venice today.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo one was without a share in the grief,\u201d wrote the Byzantine official Nicetas Choniates, recalling the sound of \u201cweeping, lamentations, grief, the groaning of men, the shrieks of women, wounds, rape, captivity\u2026 All places everywhere were filled full of all kinds of crime.\u201d
14 April<\/a><\/h2>\n1471: Warwick the Kingmaker<\/a> is slain in battle<\/h4>\n ![\"Illustration]( "\\"Illustration")
\n<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture>\n<\/div> Illustration of the death of Warwick the Kingmaker by artist James William Edmund Doyle. (Photo by Historica Graphica Collection\/Heritage Images\/Getty Images)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\nAll was chaos, confusion and panic; some men were shouting about treason, others running from the field. The Yorkist reserves piled in; the Lancastrians broke. What followed was a bloody massacre. Waiting with his reserves, peering through the mist, Warwick realised that the game was up. According to the chroniclers, he was trying to get away when the Yorkist soldiers overtook him. There was, of course, no mercy.<\/p>\n
15 April<\/a><\/h2>\n1793: Faced with a shortage of gold coin, the Bank of England<\/a> issued its first five-pound notes<\/h4>\nTheir black-on-white design was to remain essentially unchanged until 1957.<\/p>\n
16 April<\/a><\/h2>\n1912: At the age of 37, Michigan-born aviator and writer Harriet Quimby became the first woman to pilot an aeroplane across the English Channel<\/h4>\n
She made the flight in just under an hour. However, her achievement received comparatively little attention at the time, being overshadowed by the news of the sinking of Titanic on the previous day. Eleven weeks later, back in America, Quimby was killed when she and her passenger fell from the Bleriot two-seater monoplane she was piloting at the Third Annual Boston Aviation Meet.<\/p>\n
17 April<\/a><\/h2>\n1961:\u00a0Bay of Pigs<\/a> fiasco fails to oust Castro<\/h4>\nRumours of the invasion had already spread to the island from Miami, and the Cuban militia were quickly on the scene. Within hours the invaders had come under heavy fire, two of their ships had been sunk and the sky was thick with fighter planes. Far from storming inland to a huge popular welcome, the exiles were bogged down on the beaches. As Castro\u2019s troops raced to the scene, where was the promised US support?<\/p>\n
Within two days it was all over. The Americans managed to rescue a handful of the exiles by sea, but the rest were killed or captured. Kennedy had been humiliated. And Castro? He stayed in power for the next 47 years.<\/p>\n
18 April<\/a><\/h2>\n1949: The Republic of Ireland Act comes into force<\/h4>\n
Ireland ceases to be a member of the commonwealth and King George VI ceases to act as Irish head of state in international relations.<\/p>\n
\n- On the podcast | The Irish across the globe<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
19 April<\/a><\/h2>\n1897: An alien being crash-lands in Texas. Or does it?<\/h4>\n
When the people of Dallas, Texas opened the local Morning News on 19 April 1897, they were in for a shock. \u201cA Windmill Demolishes it\u201d, read the headline on a story by one SE Haydon. Two days before, at six in the morning, an airship had fallen onto the little town of Aurora. \u201cIt sailed over the public square,\u201d Haydon explained, \u201cand when it reached the north part of town collided with the tower of Judge Proctor\u2019s windmill and went to pieces with a terrific explosion.\u201d<\/p>\n
But the real surprise came in the wreckage. The dead pilot was badly burned, but it was clear \u201cthat he was not an inhabitant of this world\u201d. Indeed, \u201cMr TJ Weems, the US signal service officer at this place, and an authority on astronomy, gives it as his opinion that he was a native of the planet Mars\u201d.<\/p>\n
20 April<\/a><\/h2>\n1862: Louis Pasteur and Claude Bernard completed their first test of what became known as the pasteurisation process to preserve food<\/h4>\n21 April<\/a><\/h2>\n1934: The Daily Mail<\/em> \u2018proves\u2019 the existence of the Loch Ness Monster<\/a> with a sensational front page photograph<\/h4>\n ![\"The]( "\\"The")
\n<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture>\n<\/div> The photograph of the Loch Ness Monster that was shared by the \u2018Daily Mail\u2019. (Photo by Keystone\/Getty Images)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\nAlthough the legend of a monster dates back to the sixth century, the Loch Ness Monster was really an invention of the 1930s, when a series of witnesses claimed to have seen a creature in the loch. So in December 1933, the Mail sent a big-game hunter, Marmaduke Wetherell, to locate the creature. He duly found some huge footprints on the shore. \u2018Monster of Loch Ness is Not Legend But a Fact\u2019 screamed the headline. But when the Mail<\/em> asked experts from the Natural History Museum to examine the prints, they reported that they had probably been created by the foot of a dead hippopotamus that had been converted into an umbrella stand.<\/p>\n22 April<\/a><\/h2>\n1838: The steamship Sirius arrives in New York after an 18-day journey to become the first steamer to cross the Atlantic non-stop<\/h4>\n
Brunel\u2019s Great Western arrives the next day having beaten Sirius\u2019s crossing time by more than three days.<\/p>\n Famous deaths in April<\/h2>\n3 April 1897\u00a0<\/h6>\n
Johannes Brahms, German composer<\/p>\n
6 April 1528<\/h6>\n
Albrecht D\u00fcrer, German painter, engraver, printer and mathematician\u00a0<\/p>\n
c 1823<\/h6>\n
Jacques Alexandre Cesar Charles, French inventor, physicist and balloonist\u00a0<\/p>\n
7 April 1947<\/h6>\n
Henry Ford, car manufacturer\u00a0<\/p>\n
9 April 1553<\/h6>\n
Francois Rabelais, French doctor and satirical writer\u00a0<\/p>\n
10 April 1909<\/h6>\n
Algernon Charles Swinburne, poet<\/p>\n
11 April 1240<\/h6>\n
Llywelyn ab Iorwerth, Prince of Gwynedd<\/p>\n
12 April 1912<\/h6>\n
Clarissa \u2018Clara\u2019 Barton, founder and first president of the American Red Cross<\/p>\n
16 April 1958<\/h6>\n
Rosalind Franklin, British chemist and crystallographer\u00a0<\/p>\n
18 April 1161<\/h6>\n
Theobald of Bec, Archishop of Canterbury<\/p>\n
18 April 1552<\/h6>\n
John Leland, English poet and antiquary\u00a0<\/p>\n
18 April 1882<\/h6>\n
Sir Henry Cole, organiser of the 1851 Great Exhibition<\/p>\n
19 April 1390<\/h6>\n
Robert II, King of Scots<\/p>\n
19 April 1768<\/h6>\n
Giovanni Antonio Canal \u2013\u2019Canaletto\u2019 \u2013 famous for his landscapes of Venice<\/p>\n
22 April 1833<\/h6>\n
Richard Trevithick, Cornish inventor, mining engineer and builder of the first full-scale working railway steam locomotive<\/p>\n
27 April 1810<\/h6>\n
John Metcalf, pioneering road builder\u00a0<\/p>\n
30 April 1943<\/h6>\n
Beatrice Webb, economist, socialist and reformer\u00a0<\/p>\n
<\/p><\/div> <\/section>
23 April<\/a><\/h2>\n1661: The coronation of Charles II<\/a> took place in Westminster Abbey<\/h4>\nSamuel Pepys recorded in his diary that despite having arrived seven hours early in order to secure a good spot from which to watch the proceedings, he found to his \u201cvery great grief\u201d that he was unable to see the ceremony, could hear little of the music due to the noise, and had to leave early in order to relieve himself. The day ended with a tremendous thunderstorm; contemporaries were divided over whether this was a good or bad omen.<\/p>\n
24 April<\/a><\/h2>\n1558: Mary, Queen of Scots<\/a> marries the 14-year-old French dauphin, the future Francis II, in a theatrical wedding at Notre Dame in Paris<\/h4>\n ![\"Print]( "\\"Print")
\n<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture>\n<\/div> Print from 1890-1900 depicting Mary Queen of Scots. (Photo by VCG Wilson\/Corbis via Getty Images)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\nThe pair had been engaged for ten years and had grown up together. In Edinburgh the great bombard Mons Meg is fired in celebration of the marriage. The following year Francis\u2019s father, Henry II, is mortally wounded in a jousting accident and the young married couple are crowned king and queen of France. Eighteen months later the sickly Francis dies of an ear infection and Mary returns to Scotland.<\/p>\n
25 April<\/a><\/h2>\n404 BC:\u00a0Athens surrenders to Sparta<\/h4>\n
According to the biographer Plutarch, Lysander then \u201csent for a number of flute-women out of the city, and collected together all that were in the camp, and pulled down the walls, and burnt the ships to the sound of the flute, the Spartans\u2019 allies being crowned with garlands, and making merry together\u201d. At long last, it was over.<\/p>\n
26 April<\/a><\/h2>\n1986: Chernobyl reactor explodes<\/h4>\n
The Chernobyl disaster<\/a>, which began on 26 April 1986, was the worst nuclear accident in history. Even now, its legacy continues to blight Belarus, Russia and Ukraine, the countries worst affected by the fallout. And although the Soviet authorities initially tried to cover it up, the accident dealt a hammer blow to their manicured image of socialist modernity.<\/p>\n27 April<\/a><\/h2>\n1865: The worst waterway disaster in US history claims 1,700 lives<\/h4>\n
On a late April day in 1865, the steamship\u00a0Sultana\u00a0was puffing up the Mississippi river.<\/p>\n
As the overladen vessel juddered out of Vicksburg towards Memphis, Tennessee, it battled strong currents. Seven miles after reaching Memphis, in the middle of the night, three of the ship\u2019s boilers exploded, killing some sleeping soldiers instantly and sending burning debris crashing through the vessel. The mostly wooden\u00a0Sultana\u00a0rapidly went up in flames as its screaming passengers leapt from its deck into the chilly river.<\/p>\n
Most of the men on board were killed. Of the survivors, one floated on the carcass\u00a0of a mule while others clung to trees and roots. Several died of hypothermia. The final death toll has been estimated at more than 1,700.<\/p>\n
28 April<\/a><\/h2>\n1192: In spite of his renowned vigour and intelligence, Conrad was murdered just four days after becoming king<\/h4>\n
It was lunchtime, and Conrad was returning home from the house of his friend Philip, Bishop of Beauvais when he was accosted by two men, who plunged their daggers into his body. Death almost certainly came very swiftly. One of the murderers was killed on the spot; the other, wounded, was put to torture. It turned out that he was a member of the infamous Assassins, a Nizari Shia sect led by the \u2018Old Man of the Mountain\u2019, who supposedly encouraged them to gear themselves up for murder with copious amounts of hashish.<\/p>\n
In reality, many of the lurid stories associated with the Assassins were probably invented. The real author of the plot to kill Conrad was almost certainly somebody much closer to home: Richard the Lionheart. Indeed, when Richard was later imprisoned by Leopold of Austria, Conrad\u2019s murder featured heavily on the charge sheet.<\/p>\n
29 April<\/a><\/h2>\n1770:
1906: Restless Vesuvius blows its top, spreading panic and misery<\/h4>\n ![\"Service]( "\\"Service")
\n<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture>\n<\/div> Eruption of Vesuvius in 1906. (Photo by Touring Club Italiano\/Marka\/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\nAlthough the final death toll is uncertain, there is no doubt the eruption of 1906 wrought horrific damage. The explosion was so fierce that the tip of the volcano was reportedly blown clean off, while ash poured down on the neighbouring villages. And in the city of Naples, crowded with tens of thousands of refugees, there was total panic. \u201cThe scene was one of misery and terror,\u201d wrote another witness. \u201cSmoke and ashes made breathing difficult. Slight tremblings of the earth were felt, and frequent flashes of lightning cut through the smoke.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n- Read more |\u00a0Pliny\u2019s Rome: Vesuvius, vice and vestal virgins<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
6 April<\/a><\/h2>\n1199: Richard the Lionheart<\/a> roars his last<\/h4>\nRichard I died of gangrene after chance crossbow shot during castle siege. One version of the legend has it that when Richard\u2019s men dragged the crossbowman before him, he turned out to be a boy called Bertram de Gourdon, who said he wanted revenge for his dead father and brothers. Richard supposedly ordered him set free with 100 shillings. Meanwhile the gangrene did its work. On 6 April, Richard died in the arms of his mother, Eleanor. His heart was buried in Rouen, his entrails in Ch\u00e2lus. His brother John succeeded as king, and after that it was downhill all the way.<\/p>\n Famous births in April<\/h2>\n1 April 1779<\/h6>\n
Robert Surtees, Northumbrian historian\u00a0<\/p>\n
2 April 1618<\/h6>\n
Francesco Grimaldi, astronomer\u00a0<\/p>\n
2 April 1840<\/h6>\n
Emile Zola, writer<\/p>\n
4 April 1732<\/h6>\n
Jean-Honor\u00e9 Fragonard, French rococo painter and printmaker\u00a0<\/p>\n
5 April 1769<\/h6>\n
Thomas Masterman Hardy, captain of HMS Victory, Nelson\u2019s flagship at Trafalgar in 1805<\/p>\n
5 April 1827\u00a0<\/h6>\n
Sir Joseph Lister, pioneering surgeon\u00a0<\/p>\n
5 April 1900<\/h6>\n
Spencer Tracy, US actor<\/p>\n
7 April 1770<\/h6>\n
William Wordsworth, Romantic poet<\/p>\n
7 April 1891<\/h6>\n
Ole Kirk Christiansen, founder of the LEGO \u00ae construction toy company<\/p>\n
8 April 1692<\/h6>\n
Giuseppe Tartini, Italian composer, violinist and musical theorist\u00a0<\/p>\n
12 April 1853<\/h6>\n
James Mackenzie, cardiologist<\/p>\n
13 April 1743<\/h6>\n
Thomas Jefferson, third president of the United States\u00a0<\/p>\n
13 April 1771<\/h6>\n
Richard Trevithick, inventor, mining engineer and constructor of the world\u2019s first full-scale working railway steam locomotive<\/p>\n
15 April 1469<\/h6>\n
Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikhism<\/p>\n
20 April 1808<\/h6>\n
Prince Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, son of Napoleon I\u2019s brother, Louis<\/p>\n
22 April 1830<\/h6>\n
Emily Davies, suffragist and advocate of women\u2019s education\u00a0<\/p>\n
23 April 1858<\/h6>\n
Max Planck, German physicist\u00a0<\/p>\n
24 April 1882<\/h6>\n
Hugh Dowding, commander of Fighter Command during the Battle of Britain<\/p>\n
27 April 1759<\/h6>\n
Mary Wollstonecraft, writer and feminist\u00a0<\/p>\n
28 April 1908<\/h6>\n
Oskar Schindler, German industrialist he will save hundreds of Jews from being murdered by the Nazis by employing them in his factories.<\/p>\n
30 April 1651<\/h6>\n
Jean-Baptiste de la Salle, priest and educational reformer\u00a0<\/p>\n
<\/p><\/div> <\/section>
7 April<\/a><\/h2>\n1739: Notorious highwayman Dick Turpin<\/a> is hanged in York<\/h4>\n ![\"Dick]( "\\"Dick")
\n<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture>\n<\/div> Dick Turpin in a 19th century colour-printed wood engraving. (Photo by Universal History Archive\/Getty Images)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\nOn the day of his execution, Turpin becomes a celebrity: members of the public visit his cell to speak with him, apparently buying drinks from his gaoler. He hires five professional mourners to follow him to the gallows.<\/p>\n
8 April<\/a><\/h2>\n1318:\u00a0The Scots capture Berwick-upon-Tweed<\/h4>\n
Robert the Bruce appeared unstoppable after his decisive Scottish victory at Bannockburn in 1314.\u00a0However, he was not personally responsible for Berwick\u2019s capture. Rather, it was spearheaded by a Scottish noble called Sir James Douglas, Lord of Douglas, who led a raiding party over Berwick\u2019s walls on 8 April 1318. Fighting broke out inside the town, but Douglas and his men persevered, stoking anarchy among the townspeople and garrisoned soldiers, and ultimately capturing the town for the Scots.<\/p>\n
\n- On the podcast |\u00a0Scottish clans: everything you wanted to know<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
9 April<\/a><\/h2>\n1838: The new National Gallery building opens to the public in Trafalgar Square<\/h4>\n
It is designed by Norfolk architect William Wilkins to house the national collection which had previously been on display in a town house in Pall Mall.<\/p>\n
10 April<\/a><\/h2>\n1912: RMS Titanic<\/a> sailed from Southampton at midday<\/h4>\n ![\"The]( "\\"The")
\n<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture>\n<\/div> The first class deck of the White Star liner \u2018Titanic\u2019, from an advertising poster. (Photo by Roger Viollet via Getty Images)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\nHer first port of call was Cherbourg where more passengers joined the ship, though 24 disembarked.<\/p>\n
\n- Quiz | How much do you know about Titanic?<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
11 April<\/a><\/h2>\n1713: The Treaty of Utrecht ended the War of the Spanish Succession<\/h4>\n
Britain and her allies achieved their aim of ensuring that the crowns of France and Spain would not be unified. British territorial gains included Gibraltar, Minorca and Newfoundland.<\/p>\n
12 April<\/a><\/h2>\n1606:\u00a0Britain is united under one flag<\/h4>\n
On 12 April, then, James issued a proclamation, \u201cdeclaring what Flags South and North Britons shall bear at Sea\u201d. It was evident, he said, that \u201csome difference has arisen between our Subjects of South and North Britain, Travelling by Sea, about the bearing of their flags\u201d. So \u201chenceforth all our subjects of this Isle and Kingdom of Great Britain\u201d should fly from the maintop \u201cthe Red Cross, commonly called St George\u2019s Cross, and the White Cross, commonly called St Andrew\u2019s Cross, joined together\u201d.<\/p>\n
\n- Q&A |\u00a0When was the Union Jack or Union flag created?<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
The exact original design is now lost, but it was probably very similar to the flag generally flown before 1801, when it was adapted to include the cross of St Patrick. And to settle a hoary old question: was it the union flag, or the union jack? The answer is simple. For the first few years, at least, nobody called it either.<\/p>\n
13 April<\/a><\/h2>\n1204: Crusaders devastate Constantinople<\/h4>\n
For three days, having scaled the walls and fought their way into the centre, the crusaders ran riot. The altars were shattered, the nuns violated, the townsfolk slaughtered without mercy. Many priceless artworks were destroyed; others were taken, like the bronze horses which stand in Venice today.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo one was without a share in the grief,\u201d wrote the Byzantine official Nicetas Choniates, recalling the sound of \u201cweeping, lamentations, grief, the groaning of men, the shrieks of women, wounds, rape, captivity\u2026 All places everywhere were filled full of all kinds of crime.\u201d
14 April<\/a><\/h2>\n1471: Warwick the Kingmaker<\/a> is slain in battle<\/h4>\n ![\"Illustration]( "\\"Illustration")
\n<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture>\n<\/div> Illustration of the death of Warwick the Kingmaker by artist James William Edmund Doyle. (Photo by Historica Graphica Collection\/Heritage Images\/Getty Images)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\nAll was chaos, confusion and panic; some men were shouting about treason, others running from the field. The Yorkist reserves piled in; the Lancastrians broke. What followed was a bloody massacre. Waiting with his reserves, peering through the mist, Warwick realised that the game was up. According to the chroniclers, he was trying to get away when the Yorkist soldiers overtook him. There was, of course, no mercy.<\/p>\n
15 April<\/a><\/h2>\n1793: Faced with a shortage of gold coin, the Bank of England<\/a> issued its first five-pound notes<\/h4>\nTheir black-on-white design was to remain essentially unchanged until 1957.<\/p>\n
16 April<\/a><\/h2>\n1912: At the age of 37, Michigan-born aviator and writer Harriet Quimby became the first woman to pilot an aeroplane across the English Channel<\/h4>\n
She made the flight in just under an hour. However, her achievement received comparatively little attention at the time, being overshadowed by the news of the sinking of Titanic on the previous day. Eleven weeks later, back in America, Quimby was killed when she and her passenger fell from the Bleriot two-seater monoplane she was piloting at the Third Annual Boston Aviation Meet.<\/p>\n
17 April<\/a><\/h2>\n1961:\u00a0Bay of Pigs<\/a> fiasco fails to oust Castro<\/h4>\nRumours of the invasion had already spread to the island from Miami, and the Cuban militia were quickly on the scene. Within hours the invaders had come under heavy fire, two of their ships had been sunk and the sky was thick with fighter planes. Far from storming inland to a huge popular welcome, the exiles were bogged down on the beaches. As Castro\u2019s troops raced to the scene, where was the promised US support?<\/p>\n
Within two days it was all over. The Americans managed to rescue a handful of the exiles by sea, but the rest were killed or captured. Kennedy had been humiliated. And Castro? He stayed in power for the next 47 years.<\/p>\n
18 April<\/a><\/h2>\n1949: The Republic of Ireland Act comes into force<\/h4>\n
Ireland ceases to be a member of the commonwealth and King George VI ceases to act as Irish head of state in international relations.<\/p>\n
\n- On the podcast | The Irish across the globe<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
19 April<\/a><\/h2>\n1897: An alien being crash-lands in Texas. Or does it?<\/h4>\n
When the people of Dallas, Texas opened the local Morning News on 19 April 1897, they were in for a shock. \u201cA Windmill Demolishes it\u201d, read the headline on a story by one SE Haydon. Two days before, at six in the morning, an airship had fallen onto the little town of Aurora. \u201cIt sailed over the public square,\u201d Haydon explained, \u201cand when it reached the north part of town collided with the tower of Judge Proctor\u2019s windmill and went to pieces with a terrific explosion.\u201d<\/p>\n
But the real surprise came in the wreckage. The dead pilot was badly burned, but it was clear \u201cthat he was not an inhabitant of this world\u201d. Indeed, \u201cMr TJ Weems, the US signal service officer at this place, and an authority on astronomy, gives it as his opinion that he was a native of the planet Mars\u201d.<\/p>\n
20 April<\/a><\/h2>\n1862: Louis Pasteur and Claude Bernard completed their first test of what became known as the pasteurisation process to preserve food<\/h4>\n21 April<\/a><\/h2>\n1934: The Daily Mail<\/em> \u2018proves\u2019 the existence of the Loch Ness Monster<\/a> with a sensational front page photograph<\/h4>\n ![\"The]( "\\"The")
\n<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture>\n<\/div> The photograph of the Loch Ness Monster that was shared by the \u2018Daily Mail\u2019. (Photo by Keystone\/Getty Images)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\nAlthough the legend of a monster dates back to the sixth century, the Loch Ness Monster was really an invention of the 1930s, when a series of witnesses claimed to have seen a creature in the loch. So in December 1933, the Mail sent a big-game hunter, Marmaduke Wetherell, to locate the creature. He duly found some huge footprints on the shore. \u2018Monster of Loch Ness is Not Legend But a Fact\u2019 screamed the headline. But when the Mail<\/em> asked experts from the Natural History Museum to examine the prints, they reported that they had probably been created by the foot of a dead hippopotamus that had been converted into an umbrella stand.<\/p>\n22 April<\/a><\/h2>\n1838: The steamship Sirius arrives in New York after an 18-day journey to become the first steamer to cross the Atlantic non-stop<\/h4>\n
Brunel\u2019s Great Western arrives the next day having beaten Sirius\u2019s crossing time by more than three days.<\/p>\n Famous deaths in April<\/h2>\n3 April 1897\u00a0<\/h6>\n
Johannes Brahms, German composer<\/p>\n
6 April 1528<\/h6>\n
Albrecht D\u00fcrer, German painter, engraver, printer and mathematician\u00a0<\/p>\n
c 1823<\/h6>\n
Jacques Alexandre Cesar Charles, French inventor, physicist and balloonist\u00a0<\/p>\n
7 April 1947<\/h6>\n
Henry Ford, car manufacturer\u00a0<\/p>\n
9 April 1553<\/h6>\n
Francois Rabelais, French doctor and satirical writer\u00a0<\/p>\n
10 April 1909<\/h6>\n
Algernon Charles Swinburne, poet<\/p>\n
11 April 1240<\/h6>\n
Llywelyn ab Iorwerth, Prince of Gwynedd<\/p>\n
12 April 1912<\/h6>\n
Clarissa \u2018Clara\u2019 Barton, founder and first president of the American Red Cross<\/p>\n
16 April 1958<\/h6>\n
Rosalind Franklin, British chemist and crystallographer\u00a0<\/p>\n
18 April 1161<\/h6>\n
Theobald of Bec, Archishop of Canterbury<\/p>\n
18 April 1552<\/h6>\n
John Leland, English poet and antiquary\u00a0<\/p>\n
18 April 1882<\/h6>\n
Sir Henry Cole, organiser of the 1851 Great Exhibition<\/p>\n
19 April 1390<\/h6>\n
Robert II, King of Scots<\/p>\n
19 April 1768<\/h6>\n
Giovanni Antonio Canal \u2013\u2019Canaletto\u2019 \u2013 famous for his landscapes of Venice<\/p>\n
22 April 1833<\/h6>\n
Richard Trevithick, Cornish inventor, mining engineer and builder of the first full-scale working railway steam locomotive<\/p>\n
27 April 1810<\/h6>\n
John Metcalf, pioneering road builder\u00a0<\/p>\n
30 April 1943<\/h6>\n
Beatrice Webb, economist, socialist and reformer\u00a0<\/p>\n
<\/p><\/div> <\/section>
23 April<\/a><\/h2>\n1661: The coronation of Charles II<\/a> took place in Westminster Abbey<\/h4>\nSamuel Pepys recorded in his diary that despite having arrived seven hours early in order to secure a good spot from which to watch the proceedings, he found to his \u201cvery great grief\u201d that he was unable to see the ceremony, could hear little of the music due to the noise, and had to leave early in order to relieve himself. The day ended with a tremendous thunderstorm; contemporaries were divided over whether this was a good or bad omen.<\/p>\n
24 April<\/a><\/h2>\n1558: Mary, Queen of Scots<\/a> marries the 14-year-old French dauphin, the future Francis II, in a theatrical wedding at Notre Dame in Paris<\/h4>\n ![\"Print]( "\\"Print")
\n<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture>\n<\/div> Print from 1890-1900 depicting Mary Queen of Scots. (Photo by VCG Wilson\/Corbis via Getty Images)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\nThe pair had been engaged for ten years and had grown up together. In Edinburgh the great bombard Mons Meg is fired in celebration of the marriage. The following year Francis\u2019s father, Henry II, is mortally wounded in a jousting accident and the young married couple are crowned king and queen of France. Eighteen months later the sickly Francis dies of an ear infection and Mary returns to Scotland.<\/p>\n
25 April<\/a><\/h2>\n404 BC:\u00a0Athens surrenders to Sparta<\/h4>\n
According to the biographer Plutarch, Lysander then \u201csent for a number of flute-women out of the city, and collected together all that were in the camp, and pulled down the walls, and burnt the ships to the sound of the flute, the Spartans\u2019 allies being crowned with garlands, and making merry together\u201d. At long last, it was over.<\/p>\n
26 April<\/a><\/h2>\n1986: Chernobyl reactor explodes<\/h4>\n
The Chernobyl disaster<\/a>, which began on 26 April 1986, was the worst nuclear accident in history. Even now, its legacy continues to blight Belarus, Russia and Ukraine, the countries worst affected by the fallout. And although the Soviet authorities initially tried to cover it up, the accident dealt a hammer blow to their manicured image of socialist modernity.<\/p>\n27 April<\/a><\/h2>\n1865: The worst waterway disaster in US history claims 1,700 lives<\/h4>\n
On a late April day in 1865, the steamship\u00a0Sultana\u00a0was puffing up the Mississippi river.<\/p>\n
As the overladen vessel juddered out of Vicksburg towards Memphis, Tennessee, it battled strong currents. Seven miles after reaching Memphis, in the middle of the night, three of the ship\u2019s boilers exploded, killing some sleeping soldiers instantly and sending burning debris crashing through the vessel. The mostly wooden\u00a0Sultana\u00a0rapidly went up in flames as its screaming passengers leapt from its deck into the chilly river.<\/p>\n
Most of the men on board were killed. Of the survivors, one floated on the carcass\u00a0of a mule while others clung to trees and roots. Several died of hypothermia. The final death toll has been estimated at more than 1,700.<\/p>\n
28 April<\/a><\/h2>\n1192: In spite of his renowned vigour and intelligence, Conrad was murdered just four days after becoming king<\/h4>\n
It was lunchtime, and Conrad was returning home from the house of his friend Philip, Bishop of Beauvais when he was accosted by two men, who plunged their daggers into his body. Death almost certainly came very swiftly. One of the murderers was killed on the spot; the other, wounded, was put to torture. It turned out that he was a member of the infamous Assassins, a Nizari Shia sect led by the \u2018Old Man of the Mountain\u2019, who supposedly encouraged them to gear themselves up for murder with copious amounts of hashish.<\/p>\n
In reality, many of the lurid stories associated with the Assassins were probably invented. The real author of the plot to kill Conrad was almost certainly somebody much closer to home: Richard the Lionheart. Indeed, when Richard was later imprisoned by Leopold of Austria, Conrad\u2019s murder featured heavily on the charge sheet.<\/p>\n
29 April<\/a><\/h2>\n1770:
![\"Service](\"https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/7\/2023\/03\/GettyImages-1177025147-a04f95d-e1679480073822.jpg?quality=90&resize=620%2C412\" "\\"Service")
\n<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture>\n<\/div>Although the final death toll is uncertain, there is no doubt the eruption of 1906 wrought horrific damage. The explosion was so fierce that the tip of the volcano was reportedly blown clean off, while ash poured down on the neighbouring villages. And in the city of Naples, crowded with tens of thousands of refugees, there was total panic. \u201cThe scene was one of misery and terror,\u201d wrote another witness. \u201cSmoke and ashes made breathing difficult. Slight tremblings of the earth were felt, and frequent flashes of lightning cut through the smoke.\u201d<\/p>\n
- \n
- Read more |\u00a0Pliny\u2019s Rome: Vesuvius, vice and vestal virgins<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
6 April<\/a><\/h2>\n
1199: Richard the Lionheart<\/a> roars his last<\/h4>\n
Richard I died of gangrene after chance crossbow shot during castle siege. One version of the legend has it that when Richard\u2019s men dragged the crossbowman before him, he turned out to be a boy called Bertram de Gourdon, who said he wanted revenge for his dead father and brothers. Richard supposedly ordered him set free with 100 shillings. Meanwhile the gangrene did its work. On 6 April, Richard died in the arms of his mother, Eleanor. His heart was buried in Rouen, his entrails in Ch\u00e2lus. His brother John succeeded as king, and after that it was downhill all the way.<\/p>\n
Famous births in April<\/h2>\n
1 April 1779<\/h6>\n
Robert Surtees, Northumbrian historian\u00a0<\/p>\n
2 April 1618<\/h6>\n
Francesco Grimaldi, astronomer\u00a0<\/p>\n
2 April 1840<\/h6>\n
Emile Zola, writer<\/p>\n
4 April 1732<\/h6>\n
Jean-Honor\u00e9 Fragonard, French rococo painter and printmaker\u00a0<\/p>\n
5 April 1769<\/h6>\n
Thomas Masterman Hardy, captain of HMS Victory, Nelson\u2019s flagship at Trafalgar in 1805<\/p>\n
5 April 1827\u00a0<\/h6>\n
Sir Joseph Lister, pioneering surgeon\u00a0<\/p>\n
5 April 1900<\/h6>\n
Spencer Tracy, US actor<\/p>\n
7 April 1770<\/h6>\n
William Wordsworth, Romantic poet<\/p>\n
7 April 1891<\/h6>\n
Ole Kirk Christiansen, founder of the LEGO \u00ae construction toy company<\/p>\n
8 April 1692<\/h6>\n
Giuseppe Tartini, Italian composer, violinist and musical theorist\u00a0<\/p>\n
12 April 1853<\/h6>\n
James Mackenzie, cardiologist<\/p>\n
13 April 1743<\/h6>\n
Thomas Jefferson, third president of the United States\u00a0<\/p>\n
13 April 1771<\/h6>\n
Richard Trevithick, inventor, mining engineer and constructor of the world\u2019s first full-scale working railway steam locomotive<\/p>\n
15 April 1469<\/h6>\n
Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikhism<\/p>\n
20 April 1808<\/h6>\n
Prince Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, son of Napoleon I\u2019s brother, Louis<\/p>\n
22 April 1830<\/h6>\n
Emily Davies, suffragist and advocate of women\u2019s education\u00a0<\/p>\n
23 April 1858<\/h6>\n
Max Planck, German physicist\u00a0<\/p>\n
24 April 1882<\/h6>\n
Hugh Dowding, commander of Fighter Command during the Battle of Britain<\/p>\n
27 April 1759<\/h6>\n
Mary Wollstonecraft, writer and feminist\u00a0<\/p>\n
28 April 1908<\/h6>\n
Oskar Schindler, German industrialist he will save hundreds of Jews from being murdered by the Nazis by employing them in his factories.<\/p>\n
30 April 1651<\/h6>\n
Jean-Baptiste de la Salle, priest and educational reformer\u00a0<\/p>\n
<\/p><\/div> <\/section>
7 April<\/a><\/h2>\n
1739: Notorious highwayman Dick Turpin<\/a> is hanged in York<\/h4>\n
![\"Dick]( "\\"Dick")
\n<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture>\n<\/div>Dick Turpin in a 19th century colour-printed wood engraving. (Photo by Universal History Archive\/Getty Images)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\n On the day of his execution, Turpin becomes a celebrity: members of the public visit his cell to speak with him, apparently buying drinks from his gaoler. He hires five professional mourners to follow him to the gallows.<\/p>\n
8 April<\/a><\/h2>\n
1318:\u00a0The Scots capture Berwick-upon-Tweed<\/h4>\n
Robert the Bruce appeared unstoppable after his decisive Scottish victory at Bannockburn in 1314.\u00a0However, he was not personally responsible for Berwick\u2019s capture. Rather, it was spearheaded by a Scottish noble called Sir James Douglas, Lord of Douglas, who led a raiding party over Berwick\u2019s walls on 8 April 1318. Fighting broke out inside the town, but Douglas and his men persevered, stoking anarchy among the townspeople and garrisoned soldiers, and ultimately capturing the town for the Scots.<\/p>\n
- \n
- On the podcast |\u00a0Scottish clans: everything you wanted to know<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
9 April<\/a><\/h2>\n
1838: The new National Gallery building opens to the public in Trafalgar Square<\/h4>\n
It is designed by Norfolk architect William Wilkins to house the national collection which had previously been on display in a town house in Pall Mall.<\/p>\n
10 April<\/a><\/h2>\n
1912: RMS Titanic<\/a> sailed from Southampton at midday<\/h4>\n
![\"The]( "\\"The")
\n<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture>\n<\/div>The first class deck of the White Star liner \u2018Titanic\u2019, from an advertising poster. (Photo by Roger Viollet via Getty Images)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\n Her first port of call was Cherbourg where more passengers joined the ship, though 24 disembarked.<\/p>\n
- \n
- Quiz | How much do you know about Titanic?<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
11 April<\/a><\/h2>\n
1713: The Treaty of Utrecht ended the War of the Spanish Succession<\/h4>\n
Britain and her allies achieved their aim of ensuring that the crowns of France and Spain would not be unified. British territorial gains included Gibraltar, Minorca and Newfoundland.<\/p>\n
12 April<\/a><\/h2>\n
1606:\u00a0Britain is united under one flag<\/h4>\n
On 12 April, then, James issued a proclamation, \u201cdeclaring what Flags South and North Britons shall bear at Sea\u201d. It was evident, he said, that \u201csome difference has arisen between our Subjects of South and North Britain, Travelling by Sea, about the bearing of their flags\u201d. So \u201chenceforth all our subjects of this Isle and Kingdom of Great Britain\u201d should fly from the maintop \u201cthe Red Cross, commonly called St George\u2019s Cross, and the White Cross, commonly called St Andrew\u2019s Cross, joined together\u201d.<\/p>\n
- \n
- Q&A |\u00a0When was the Union Jack or Union flag created?<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
The exact original design is now lost, but it was probably very similar to the flag generally flown before 1801, when it was adapted to include the cross of St Patrick. And to settle a hoary old question: was it the union flag, or the union jack? The answer is simple. For the first few years, at least, nobody called it either.<\/p>\n
13 April<\/a><\/h2>\n
1204: Crusaders devastate Constantinople<\/h4>\n
For three days, having scaled the walls and fought their way into the centre, the crusaders ran riot. The altars were shattered, the nuns violated, the townsfolk slaughtered without mercy. Many priceless artworks were destroyed; others were taken, like the bronze horses which stand in Venice today.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo one was without a share in the grief,\u201d wrote the Byzantine official Nicetas Choniates, recalling the sound of \u201cweeping, lamentations, grief, the groaning of men, the shrieks of women, wounds, rape, captivity\u2026 All places everywhere were filled full of all kinds of crime.\u201d
14 April<\/a><\/h2>\n
1471: Warwick the Kingmaker<\/a> is slain in battle<\/h4>\n
![\"Illustration]( "\\"Illustration")
\n<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture>\n<\/div>Illustration of the death of Warwick the Kingmaker by artist James William Edmund Doyle. (Photo by Historica Graphica Collection\/Heritage Images\/Getty Images)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\n All was chaos, confusion and panic; some men were shouting about treason, others running from the field. The Yorkist reserves piled in; the Lancastrians broke. What followed was a bloody massacre. Waiting with his reserves, peering through the mist, Warwick realised that the game was up. According to the chroniclers, he was trying to get away when the Yorkist soldiers overtook him. There was, of course, no mercy.<\/p>\n
15 April<\/a><\/h2>\n
1793: Faced with a shortage of gold coin, the Bank of England<\/a> issued its first five-pound notes<\/h4>\n
Their black-on-white design was to remain essentially unchanged until 1957.<\/p>\n
16 April<\/a><\/h2>\n
1912: At the age of 37, Michigan-born aviator and writer Harriet Quimby became the first woman to pilot an aeroplane across the English Channel<\/h4>\n
She made the flight in just under an hour. However, her achievement received comparatively little attention at the time, being overshadowed by the news of the sinking of Titanic on the previous day. Eleven weeks later, back in America, Quimby was killed when she and her passenger fell from the Bleriot two-seater monoplane she was piloting at the Third Annual Boston Aviation Meet.<\/p>\n
17 April<\/a><\/h2>\n
1961:\u00a0Bay of Pigs<\/a> fiasco fails to oust Castro<\/h4>\n
Rumours of the invasion had already spread to the island from Miami, and the Cuban militia were quickly on the scene. Within hours the invaders had come under heavy fire, two of their ships had been sunk and the sky was thick with fighter planes. Far from storming inland to a huge popular welcome, the exiles were bogged down on the beaches. As Castro\u2019s troops raced to the scene, where was the promised US support?<\/p>\n
Within two days it was all over. The Americans managed to rescue a handful of the exiles by sea, but the rest were killed or captured. Kennedy had been humiliated. And Castro? He stayed in power for the next 47 years.<\/p>\n
18 April<\/a><\/h2>\n
1949: The Republic of Ireland Act comes into force<\/h4>\n
Ireland ceases to be a member of the commonwealth and King George VI ceases to act as Irish head of state in international relations.<\/p>\n
- \n
- On the podcast | The Irish across the globe<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
19 April<\/a><\/h2>\n
1897: An alien being crash-lands in Texas. Or does it?<\/h4>\n
When the people of Dallas, Texas opened the local Morning News on 19 April 1897, they were in for a shock. \u201cA Windmill Demolishes it\u201d, read the headline on a story by one SE Haydon. Two days before, at six in the morning, an airship had fallen onto the little town of Aurora. \u201cIt sailed over the public square,\u201d Haydon explained, \u201cand when it reached the north part of town collided with the tower of Judge Proctor\u2019s windmill and went to pieces with a terrific explosion.\u201d<\/p>\n
But the real surprise came in the wreckage. The dead pilot was badly burned, but it was clear \u201cthat he was not an inhabitant of this world\u201d. Indeed, \u201cMr TJ Weems, the US signal service officer at this place, and an authority on astronomy, gives it as his opinion that he was a native of the planet Mars\u201d.<\/p>\n
20 April<\/a><\/h2>\n
1862: Louis Pasteur and Claude Bernard completed their first test of what became known as the pasteurisation process to preserve food<\/h4>\n
21 April<\/a><\/h2>\n
1934: The Daily Mail<\/em> \u2018proves\u2019 the existence of the Loch Ness Monster<\/a> with a sensational front page photograph<\/h4>\n
![\"The]( "\\"The")
\n<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture>\n<\/div>The photograph of the Loch Ness Monster that was shared by the \u2018Daily Mail\u2019. (Photo by Keystone\/Getty Images)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\n Although the legend of a monster dates back to the sixth century, the Loch Ness Monster was really an invention of the 1930s, when a series of witnesses claimed to have seen a creature in the loch. So in December 1933, the Mail sent a big-game hunter, Marmaduke Wetherell, to locate the creature. He duly found some huge footprints on the shore. \u2018Monster of Loch Ness is Not Legend But a Fact\u2019 screamed the headline. But when the Mail<\/em> asked experts from the Natural History Museum to examine the prints, they reported that they had probably been created by the foot of a dead hippopotamus that had been converted into an umbrella stand.<\/p>\n
22 April<\/a><\/h2>\n
1838: The steamship Sirius arrives in New York after an 18-day journey to become the first steamer to cross the Atlantic non-stop<\/h4>\n
Brunel\u2019s Great Western arrives the next day having beaten Sirius\u2019s crossing time by more than three days.<\/p>\n
Famous deaths in April<\/h2>\n
3 April 1897\u00a0<\/h6>\n
Johannes Brahms, German composer<\/p>\n
6 April 1528<\/h6>\n
Albrecht D\u00fcrer, German painter, engraver, printer and mathematician\u00a0<\/p>\n
c 1823<\/h6>\n
Jacques Alexandre Cesar Charles, French inventor, physicist and balloonist\u00a0<\/p>\n
7 April 1947<\/h6>\n
Henry Ford, car manufacturer\u00a0<\/p>\n
9 April 1553<\/h6>\n
Francois Rabelais, French doctor and satirical writer\u00a0<\/p>\n
10 April 1909<\/h6>\n
Algernon Charles Swinburne, poet<\/p>\n
11 April 1240<\/h6>\n
Llywelyn ab Iorwerth, Prince of Gwynedd<\/p>\n
12 April 1912<\/h6>\n
Clarissa \u2018Clara\u2019 Barton, founder and first president of the American Red Cross<\/p>\n
16 April 1958<\/h6>\n
Rosalind Franklin, British chemist and crystallographer\u00a0<\/p>\n
18 April 1161<\/h6>\n
Theobald of Bec, Archishop of Canterbury<\/p>\n
18 April 1552<\/h6>\n
John Leland, English poet and antiquary\u00a0<\/p>\n
18 April 1882<\/h6>\n
Sir Henry Cole, organiser of the 1851 Great Exhibition<\/p>\n
19 April 1390<\/h6>\n
Robert II, King of Scots<\/p>\n
19 April 1768<\/h6>\n
Giovanni Antonio Canal \u2013\u2019Canaletto\u2019 \u2013 famous for his landscapes of Venice<\/p>\n
22 April 1833<\/h6>\n
Richard Trevithick, Cornish inventor, mining engineer and builder of the first full-scale working railway steam locomotive<\/p>\n
27 April 1810<\/h6>\n
John Metcalf, pioneering road builder\u00a0<\/p>\n
30 April 1943<\/h6>\n
Beatrice Webb, economist, socialist and reformer\u00a0<\/p>\n
<\/p><\/div> <\/section>
23 April<\/a><\/h2>\n
1661: The coronation of Charles II<\/a> took place in Westminster Abbey<\/h4>\n
Samuel Pepys recorded in his diary that despite having arrived seven hours early in order to secure a good spot from which to watch the proceedings, he found to his \u201cvery great grief\u201d that he was unable to see the ceremony, could hear little of the music due to the noise, and had to leave early in order to relieve himself. The day ended with a tremendous thunderstorm; contemporaries were divided over whether this was a good or bad omen.<\/p>\n
24 April<\/a><\/h2>\n
1558: Mary, Queen of Scots<\/a> marries the 14-year-old French dauphin, the future Francis II, in a theatrical wedding at Notre Dame in Paris<\/h4>\n
![\"Print]( "\\"Print")
\n<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture>\n<\/div>Print from 1890-1900 depicting Mary Queen of Scots. (Photo by VCG Wilson\/Corbis via Getty Images)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\n The pair had been engaged for ten years and had grown up together. In Edinburgh the great bombard Mons Meg is fired in celebration of the marriage. The following year Francis\u2019s father, Henry II, is mortally wounded in a jousting accident and the young married couple are crowned king and queen of France. Eighteen months later the sickly Francis dies of an ear infection and Mary returns to Scotland.<\/p>\n
25 April<\/a><\/h2>\n
404 BC:\u00a0Athens surrenders to Sparta<\/h4>\n
According to the biographer Plutarch, Lysander then \u201csent for a number of flute-women out of the city, and collected together all that were in the camp, and pulled down the walls, and burnt the ships to the sound of the flute, the Spartans\u2019 allies being crowned with garlands, and making merry together\u201d. At long last, it was over.<\/p>\n
26 April<\/a><\/h2>\n
1986: Chernobyl reactor explodes<\/h4>\n
The Chernobyl disaster<\/a>, which began on 26 April 1986, was the worst nuclear accident in history. Even now, its legacy continues to blight Belarus, Russia and Ukraine, the countries worst affected by the fallout. And although the Soviet authorities initially tried to cover it up, the accident dealt a hammer blow to their manicured image of socialist modernity.<\/p>\n
27 April<\/a><\/h2>\n
1865: The worst waterway disaster in US history claims 1,700 lives<\/h4>\n
On a late April day in 1865, the steamship\u00a0Sultana\u00a0was puffing up the Mississippi river.<\/p>\n
As the overladen vessel juddered out of Vicksburg towards Memphis, Tennessee, it battled strong currents. Seven miles after reaching Memphis, in the middle of the night, three of the ship\u2019s boilers exploded, killing some sleeping soldiers instantly and sending burning debris crashing through the vessel. The mostly wooden\u00a0Sultana\u00a0rapidly went up in flames as its screaming passengers leapt from its deck into the chilly river.<\/p>\n
Most of the men on board were killed. Of the survivors, one floated on the carcass\u00a0of a mule while others clung to trees and roots. Several died of hypothermia. The final death toll has been estimated at more than 1,700.<\/p>\n
28 April<\/a><\/h2>\n
1192: In spite of his renowned vigour and intelligence, Conrad was murdered just four days after becoming king<\/h4>\n
It was lunchtime, and Conrad was returning home from the house of his friend Philip, Bishop of Beauvais when he was accosted by two men, who plunged their daggers into his body. Death almost certainly came very swiftly. One of the murderers was killed on the spot; the other, wounded, was put to torture. It turned out that he was a member of the infamous Assassins, a Nizari Shia sect led by the \u2018Old Man of the Mountain\u2019, who supposedly encouraged them to gear themselves up for murder with copious amounts of hashish.<\/p>\n
In reality, many of the lurid stories associated with the Assassins were probably invented. The real author of the plot to kill Conrad was almost certainly somebody much closer to home: Richard the Lionheart. Indeed, when Richard was later imprisoned by Leopold of Austria, Conrad\u2019s murder featured heavily on the charge sheet.<\/p>\n
29 April<\/a><\/h2>\n
1770:
- On the podcast | The Irish across the globe<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
- Q&A |\u00a0When was the Union Jack or Union flag created?<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
- Quiz | How much do you know about Titanic?<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
- On the podcast |\u00a0Scottish clans: everything you wanted to know<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
![\"Dick](\"https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/7\/2023\/03\/GettyImages-113635628-266e9cc-e1679480039875.jpg?quality=90&resize=617%2C413\" "\\"Dick")
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