On April 21st...

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753 BC According to tradition, Romulus and Remus founded Rome.

1509 King Henry VII of England died.

1649 The Maryland Toleration Act was passed, allowing freedom of worship in the colony.

1689 William III and Mary Stuart were proclaimed king and queen of England.

1782 Friedrich Froebel, founder of the kindergarten system, was born.

1816 Novelist Charlotte Brontë, was born.

1828 Historian and critic Hippolyte Taine was born.

1835 Samuel Slater, founder of the American factory system, died.

1836 Texans led by General Sam Houston defeated Santa Anna's army at San Jacinto.

1838 Conservationist John Muir was born.

1857 Alexander Douglas patented the bustle.

1862 Congress established the U.S. Mint in Denver, Colorado.

1870 Edwin S. Porter, early pioneer in the film-making industry, was born.

1878 First Lady Lucy Hayes hosted the first egg rolling contest on the White House lawn.

1898 The Spanish-American War began.

1910 Author Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known as Mark Twain, died.

1915 Actor Anthony Quinn was born.

1918 Manfred von Richtofen, aka the "Red Baron," was fatally wounded during a dogfight over France.

1926 Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain was born.

1930 A fire at Ohio State Penitentiary killed 322.

1946 Economist John Maynard Keynes died.

1951 Actor Tony Danza was born.

1960 The capital of Brazil was moved from Rio de Janeiro to Brasília.

1962 The Seattle World's Fair opened.

1965 Nobel Prize-winning physicist Edward Appleton died.

1966 Dr. Michael DeBakey implanted a partial artifical heart in the chest of 62-year-old Marcel De Rudder.

1977 The musical Annie opened on Broadway.
1977 Comic actor Gummo Marx died.

1986 Geraldo Rivera opened Al Capone's vault on live TV, and found nothing.

2012 Charles Colson, White House counsel during the Watergate scandal, died.

2016 Musician Prince died.

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This page was last updated on April 20, 2018.