On April 22nd...

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1370 Building began on the Bastille in Paris, France.

1451 Queen Isabella of Spain, was born.

1500 Pedro Ãlvares Cabral sighted the coast of Brazil.

1521 King François I of France declared war on Spain.

1526 The first slave revolt in the American colonies took place in South Carolina.

1529 Spain and Portugal divided the Eastern Hemisphere.

1610 Pope Alexander VIII was born.

1616 Author Miguel de Cervantes died.

1659 Lord Protector Richard Cromwell disbanded the English Parliament.

1707 Author and playwright Henry Fielding was born.

1724 Philosopher Immanuel Kant was born.

1793 President George Washington issued the Neutrality Proclamation to keep the United States out of the war between France and Great Britain.

1823 R. J. Tyers patented roller skates.

1832 Julius Sterling Morton, the founder of Arbor Day, was born.

1870 Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, Russian Bolshevik leader, was born.

1889 The Oklahoma Land Rush officially began.

1903 TheAmerican Power Boat Association was formed.

1904 Physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer was born.

1906 Actor Eddie Albert was born.

1915 Germany introduced the use of poison gas on the battlefield.
1915 The New York Yankees donned pinstripes with the "hat-in-the-ring" logo for the first time.

1923 Television producer Aaron Spelling was born.

1924 The Hague Chambers of Commerce was formed.

1926 Actress Charlotte Rae was born.

1933 Henry Royce, designer of the first Rolls-Royce, died.

1936 Singer Glen Campbell was born.

1937 Actor Jack Nicholson was born.

1943 Singer Mel Carter was born.

1945 The Toronto Maple Leafs beat the Detroit Red Wings to win the Stanley Cup.

1946 Film director John Waters was born.
1946 Harlan Fiske Stone, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, died.

1947 Terrorists blew up a train near Rehovoth, Palestine, killing 8 persons and injuring 41.

1950 Musician Peter Frampton was born.

1952 The first ever test of an atomic bomb to be televised live was carried out at Yucca Flats, Nevada.
1952 Pornstar Marilyn Chambers was born.

1954 The U.S. Senate McCarthy Army hearings began.
1954 Achiel van Acker formed a new government in Belgium.
1954 The NBA adopted a 24-second shot clock and a 6 team-foul rule.
1954 Actor Joseph Bottoms was born.

1957 The Oklahoma Semi-Centennial Celebration opened.

1958 The first Parliament of the Federation of the West Indies was opened in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, by Princess Margaret of the United Kingdom.

1959 Christian A. Herter was sworn in as U.S. Secretary of State.
1959 Actor Ryan Stiles was born.

1960 Charles De Gaulle and his wife arrived in Washington, D.C., for four days of meetings.
1960 A Belgian airliner crashed while on approach to Bunia Airport in the Western Congo, killing all 35 persons aboard.
1960 The American Lutheran Church was formed in Minneapolis, Minnesota, by the merger of the Evangelical Lutheran, American Lutheran, and United Evangelical Lutheran denominations.

1962 The Toronto Maple Leafs defeated the Chicago Blackhawks to win the Stanley Cup.

1964 The New York World's Fair opened to the general public.

1969 Bernadette Devlin became the youngest person to take a seat in the British House of Commons.
1969 Joe Frazier KO'd Dave Zyglewick in the 1st round for the heavyweight boxing title.

1970 The first Earth Day was celebrated.

1971 Haitian dictator François "Papa Doc" Duvalier died.

1978 Actor Will Geer died.

1979 A locomotive rammed a stopped passenger train near Karachi, Pakistan, killing 44 persons.

1984 Photographer Ansel Adams died.

1989 Activist Huey Newton died.

1991 An earthquake killed 95 persons in Costa Rica and Panama.

1992 A sewer gas explosion killed 200 persons in Guadalajara, Mexico.
1992 A plane crash at Perris Valley Airport in California killed 16 parachutists.

1993 The Holocaust Memorial Museum was dedicated in Washington, D.C.

1994 Approximately 7,000 Tutsi's were massacred by Hutu's in the stadium at Kibuye, Rwanda.
1994 Michael Moorer defeated Evander Holyfield in 12 rounds to win the heavyweight boxing title.
1994 Richard Milhous Nixon, 37th President of the United States, died.

1995 George Foreman defeated Axel Schulz in 12 rounds to win the heavyweight boxing title.

1996 Columnist Erma Bombeck died.

1977 The first "space burial" of the cremains of 22 individuals, including Gene Roddenberry and Timothy Leary, was launched.

1998 Disney's Animal Kingdom opened at Walt Disney World.

2000 Federal agents seized six-year-old Elián González from his relatives' home in Miami, Florida.

2002 Pornstar Linda Lovelace died.

2004 Two fuel trains collided in Ryongchon, North Korea, killing up to 150 people.

2006 Nepali security forces opened fire on a demonstration against King Gyanendra, injuring 243 persons.
2006 Four Canadian soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan.

2010 The oil rig Deepwater Horizon sank in the Gulf of Mexico.

2016 The Paris Agreement on Climate Change was signed in New York.

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This page was last updated on July 12, 2018.