20 April 2025 (MIA)

1653 – Oliver Cromwell dissolves the Rump Parliament.

1657 – Freedom of religion is granted to the Jews of New Amsterdam (later New York City).

1770 – The Georgian king Erekle II, abandoned by his Russian ally Count Totleben, wins a victory over Ottoman forces at Aspindza.

1775 – American Revolutionary War: the Siege of Boston begins, following the battles at Lexington and Concord.

1792 – France declares war against the “King of Hungary and Bohemia”, the beginning of French Revolutionary Wars.

1809 – Two Austrian army corps in Bavaria are defeated by a First French Empire army led by Napoleon I of France at the Battle of Abensberg on the second day of a four day campaign that ended in a French victory.

1810 – The Governor of Caracas declares independence from Spain.

1836 – U.S. Congress passes an act creating the Wisconsin Territory.

1862 – Louis Pasteur and Claude Bernard complete the first pasteurization tests.

1876 – The April Uprising, a key point in modern Bulgarian history, leading to the Russo-Turkish War and the liberation of Bulgaria from domination as an independent part of the Ottoman Empire.

1902 – Pierre and Marie Curie refine radium chloride.

1914 – 19 men, women, and children die in the Ludlow Massacre during a Colorado coal-miner’s strike.

1922 – The Soviet government creates South Ossetian Autonomous Oblast within Georgian SSR.

1926 – Western Electric and Warner Bros. announce Vitaphone, a process to add sound to film.

1939 – Adolf Hitler’s 50th birthday is celebrated as a national holiday in Nazi Germany.

1939 – Billie Holiday records the first Civil Rights song “Strange Fruit”.

1945 – World War II: US troops capture Leipzig, Germany, only to later cede the city to the Soviet Union.

1951– Dan Gavriliu performs the first surgical replacement of a human organ.

1961 – Failure of the Bay of Pigs Invasion of US-backed Cuban exiles against Cuba.

1972 – Apollo 16, commanded by John Young, lands on the moon.

1978 – Korean Air Flight 902 is shot down by the Soviet Union.

1980 – Climax of Berber Spring in Algeria as hundreds of Berber political activists are arrested.

1982 – Macedonian writer and academic Aco Sopov dies in Skopje. His famous works include “On Gramos”, “Verses for Pain and Joy” etc.

1982 – Macedonian author and academician Aco Sopov passed away in Skopje. He published his first book of poetry in 1944, followed by a number of other works. Sopov was born in Stip on 20 December 1923.

1986 – Pianist Vladimir Horowitz performs in his native Russia for the first time in 61 years.

1998 – German terrorist group the Red Army Faction announces their dissolution after 28 years.

1999 – Columbine High School massacre: Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold kill 13 people and injure 24 others before committing suicide at Columbine High School in Columbine, Colorado.

2007 – Johnson Space Center Shooting: A man with a handgun barricades himself in NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas before killing a male hostage and himself.

2008 – Danica Patrick wins the Indy Japan 300 becoming the first female driver in history to win an Indy car race.

2010 – The Deepwater Horizon drilling rig explodes in the Gulf of Mexico, killing eleven workers and beginning an oil spill that would last six months.

2012 – One hundred twenty-seven people are killed when a plane crashes in a residential area near the Benazir Bhutto International Airport near Islamabad, Pakistan.

2013 – A 6.6-magnitude earthquake strikes Lushan County, Ya’an, in China’s Sichuan province, killing more than 150 people and injuring thousands.

2015 – 10 people are killed in a bomb attack on a convoy carrying food supplies to a United Nations compound in Garowe in the Somali region of Puntland.