On this day for the United States
January • February • March • April • May • June • July • August • September • October • November • December
| << | April | >> | ||||
| S | M | T | W | T | F | S |
| 1 | 2 | |||||
| 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 |
| 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 |
| 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 |
| 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 |
Events
- 1776 - North Carolina's Provincial Congress authorized its delegates to the Second Continental Congress to vote for independence by issuing the Halifax Resolves.
- 1861 - American Civil War: The war begins with Confederate forces firing on Fort Sumter, in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina.
- 1864 - American Civil War: Fort Pillow massacre -- Confederate forces under General Nathan Bedford Forrest kill most of the African American soldiers who had surrendered at Fort Pillow, Tennessee.
- 1865 - American Civil War: Mobile, Alabama, falls to the Union Army.
- 1934 - The strongest surface wind gust in the world, 231 mph, was measured by the staff of the Mount Washington Observatory on the summit of Mount Washington
- 1934 - The Auto-Lite Strike, which culminated in a five-day melee between Ohio National Guard troops and 6,000 strikers and picketers, began.
- 1945 - President Franklin D. Roosevelt dies while in office; vice-president Harry S. Truman is sworn in as the 33rd President of the United States.
- 1955 - The polio vaccine, developed by Dr. Jonas Salk, is declared safe and effective.
- 1968 - Nerve gas accident at Skull Valley, Utah.
- 1981 - Human spaceflight: The first launch of a Space Shuttle: Columbia launches on the STS-1 mission.
- 1990 - opening of Jim Gary's Twentieth Century Dinosaurs exhibition, the work of the only living sculptor ever invited to present a solo exhibition at the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C.
- 1999 - American President Bill Clinton was cited for contempt of court for giving "intentionally false statements" in the Paula Jones sexual harassment civil lawsuit.