This date in history

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1828 British 18-gun sloop HMS Acorn sinks off Halifax with 115 men aboard.

1865 US President Abraham Lincoln is shot in the head by John Wilkes Booth at Ford's Theater in Washington; he dies a day later.

1912 RMS Titanic, the world's largest ocean liner, hits an iceberg at 11.40pm off Newfoundland, sinks in the early hours of April 15

1942 Destroyer Roper sinks German U-85 of US east coast.

1943 A JN-25 decrypt by American intelligence detailing a forthcoming visit by Marshal Admiral Yamamoto to Balalae Island results in his plane shot down 4 days later.

1944 General Eisenhower becomes the Supreme Allied Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force.

1945 American planes bomb Tokyo & damage the Imperial Palace.

1958 Soviet spacecraft Sputnik 2 with space dog Laika aboard burns up during reentry into Earth's atmosphere.

1960 1st underwater launching of Polaris missile.

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1865 Abraham Lincoln dies nine hours after he is shot by John Wilkes Booth while attending the play "Our American Cousin" at Ford's Theatre in Washington.

1912 RMS Titanic sinks at 2:27 AM off Newfoundland as the band plays on, with the loss of between 1,490 and 1,635 people.

1942 George VI awards George Cross to people of Malta.

1945 34th US President FDR buried in grounds of his Hyde Park home, New York state.

1945 British Army liberates Nazi concentration camp Bergen-Belsen.

1972 A member of the British Army is shot dead by the Official IRA in the Divis area of Belfast.

1972 A member of the Official Irish Republican Army is shot dead by British soldiers at Joy Street in the Markets area of Belfast close to his home.

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1918 The British House of Commons passes a new Military Service Bill, taking men up to 55 years old and extending to Ireland.

1939 The Soviet Union proposes an alliance with Britain and France to counter Nazi Germany; the Soviets would later sign a secret agreement with the Nazis.

1944 Nazis led by Klaus Barbie raid Izieu Jewish children's home, near Lyon, taking 44 children and seven adults to exterminations camps.

1945 American troops liberate Colditz Castle, the high-security prisoner of war camp in Saxony, Germany.

1946 Dutch Special Court of Justice sentences Frederik Müller, Socialist mayor of Rotterdam, to 10 years in jail for his wartime support of Germany.

1948 Organization for European Economic Cooperation (EEC) forms in Paris.

1951 British submarine Affray sank in English Channel, killing 75

1953 British royal yacht Britannia launched by Queen Elizabeth II

1972 Two British soldiers are shot dead by the Official Irish Republican Army (OIRA) in separate incidents in Derry.

2003 Treaty of Accession is signed in Athens, admitting 10 new member states to the European Union.

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1492 Christopher Columbus signs a contract with the Spanish monarchs to find the "Indies" with the stated goal of converting people to Catholicism. This promises him 10% of all riches found, and the governorship of any lands encountered.

1808 Bayonne Decree by Napoleon I of France orders seizure of US ships.

1875 Modern Snooker invented by Sir Neville Chamberlain, a bored British officer in Jabalpur, India.

1941 Egyptian steamer SS Zamzam attacked and later scuttled by German cruiser Atlantis (all on board rescued)

1943 Marshal Admiral Yamamoto flies from Truk to Rabaul (he is shot down the next day by US bombers after intelligence intercepts his itinerary)

1961 1,400 Cuban exiles land in the Bay of Pigs in a doomed attempt to overthrow Fidel Castro.

1979 Four Royal Ulster Constabulary officers are killed by a Provisional Irish Republican Army van bomb in Bessbrook, County Armagh; the bomb is believed to be the largest PIRA bomb used up to that point.

1986 Netherlands & Scilly Islands sign peace treaty (war of 1651)

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1783 American Revolution: George Washington issues General Orders announcing the end of hostilities with Britain, giving thanks to the Almighty, and offering congratulations and authorizing an extra ration of alcohol to the troops to celebrate.

1915 French pilot Roland Garros is shot down and glides to a landing on the German side of the lines during World War I.

1916 US Secretary of State Warns Germany that the USA may break diplomatic relations unless torpedo attacks on unarmed ships stop.

1934 Adolf Hitler names Joachim von Ribbentrop ambassador for disarmament.

1942 "Stars & Stripes" paper for US armed forces starts.

1942 The Doolittle Raid: James Doolittle leads the first air raid on mainland Japan, bombing Tokyo & other Japanese cities.

1943 Operation Vengeance: US Army Air Force P-38G fighter aircraft from Kukum Field on Guadalcanal ambush and shoot down the transport bomber aircraft of Isoroku Yamamoto, commander-in-chief of the Imperial Japanese Navy and mastermind behind the Pearl Harbor attack.

1945 Epe freed (by corporal G van Aken)

1949 Republic of Ireland withdraws from British Commonwealth.

1968 London Bridge is sold to US oil company (to be erected in Arizona)

1975 John Lennon gives what becomes his final public performance at a gala salute to British media mogul Lew Grade at the Grand Ballroom of the Hilton Hotel, NYC; he performed 3 songs - Little Richard’s “Slippin’ and Slidin’”, Ben E. King’s “Stand By Me”, and closed with his own “Imagine”

1994 Former US President Richard Nixon suffers a stroke and passes away 4 days later.

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1770 British explorer Captain James Cook first sights Australia. Writes in his log book that “what we have as yet seen of this land appears rather low, and not very hilly, the face of the Country green and Woody, but the Sea shore is all a white Sand.”

1916 Alderman Kelly reads the 'Castle Order' to a meeting of Dublin Corporation; this forged document supposedly from Dublin Castle, indicated that there was to be mass arrests of Irish Volunteers to prevent "trouble"

1932 Bonnie Parker is captured in a failed hardware store burglary, and subsequently jailed; a grand jury fails to indict her, however, and she is released a few months later.

1943 Jews refuse to surrender the Warsaw Ghetto to SS officer Jürgen Stroop, who then orders its destruction, beginning the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

1945 US aircraft carrier Franklin heavy damaged in Japanese air raid.

1951 General Douglas MacArthur ends his military career.

1967 The Beatles sign a contract agreeing to stay together for 10 years (they don't)

1969 Serious rioting in the Bogside area of Derry following clashes between Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association marchers and Loyalists and members of the Royal Ulster Constabulary.

1989 Gun turret explodes on USS Iowa, killing 47 sailors.

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1818 Napoleon Bonaparte bids emotional farewell to his old guard at Palace of Fontainebleau.

1899 David Beatty is appointed executive officer of the HMS Barfleur, a small battleship and flagship of the China Station.

1918 Manfred von Richthofen, aka The Red Baron, shoots down his 79th and 80th victims marking his final victories before his death the following day.

1934 Heinrich Himmler appointed chief of all German police including the Prussian secret state police.

1945 Soviet artillery begins shelling Berlin.

1951 Huge ticker-tape parade held in NYC for World War II and Korean War General Douglas MacArthur after he was relieved of Command by President Truman.

1968 British politician Enoch Powell makes his controversial "Rivers of Blood" speech.

1982 The Provisional Irish Republican Army explode bombs in Belfast, Derry, Armagh, Ballymena, Bessbrook and Magherafelt; 2 civilians are killed and 12 injured.

1993 Uranus passes Neptune (once every 171 years)

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1916 The Aud, carrying a cargo of 20,000 rifles to assist Irish republicans in staging what would become the 1916 Rising, is captured by the British Navy and forced to sail towards Cork Harbour.

1916 Ulster Protestant and Irish nationalist Sir Roger Casement lands at Tralee Bay, Ireland from a German submarine; discovered at McKenna's Fort and arrested by the Royal Irish Constabulary.

1918 German World War I fighter ace Baron Manfred von Richthofen aka "The Red Baron", is shot down and killed over Vaux sur Somme in France. Canadian pilot Arthur Roy Brown is credited with the kill.

1945 Allied troops occupy German nuclear laboratory in Haigerloch.

1945 Soviet army arrives at outskirts of Berlin, Germany.

1967 Joseph Stalin's daughter Svetlana Allilueva arrives in New York City after defecting to the US

1989 Thousands of Chinese crowd into Beijing's Tiananmen Square cheering students demanding greater political freedom.

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1721 HMS Seahorse infected with smallpox arrives in Boston harbor, causing the first outbreak in two decades. - half of the population catch it, causing 850 deaths.

1915 First military use of poison gas occurs when Germany uses chlorine gas against the Allies at Ypres in World War I

1916 Chief of Staff of the Irish Volunteers Eóin MacNeill issues the Countermanding order in Dublin to try to stop what would become the Easter Rising.

1940 Rear Admiral Joseph Taussig testifies before US Senate Naval Affairs Committee that war with Japan is inevitable.

1945 Battle of Berlin: Upon being informed that a planned counter-attack never happened, Adolf Hitler flies into a rage, denounces the German Army and concedes World War II is lost.

1945 SS chief Heinrich Himmler secretly meets with Count Folke Bernadotte of Sweden, asking him to act as an intermediary for a surrender offer to the Western Allies. The Allies do not take the offer seriously.

2016 Paris Agreement on climate change signed in New York binding 195 nations to an increase in the global average temperature to less than 2°C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the increase to 1.5°C

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1867 Queen Victoria and Napoleon III turn down plans for a channel tunnel.

1918 Raid of Zeebrugge; the British navy attempts to block German vessels from leaving port by sinking obsolete ships - mostly fails.

1941 Greek Army surrenders to Germany; British RAF evacuates the Greek King George II to Egypt.

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1184 BC The Greeks enter Troy using the Trojan Horse (traditional date)

1914 A shipment of 35,000 rifles and 5 million rounds of ammunition are landed at Larne for the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF, an Ulster loyalist paramilitary group in Northern Ireland.

1916 Easter Rising of Irish republicans against British occupation begins in Dublin.

1953 Winston Churchill knighted by Queen Elizabeth II

1961 JFK accepts "sole responsibility" following Bay of Pigs.

1962 1st Lockheed A-12 is taxi tested.

1967 American General William Westmoreland says in a Vietnam War news conference that the enemy has "gained support in the United States that gives him hope that he can win politically that which he cannot win militarily"

1969 Paul McCartney says there is no truth to rumours he is dead.

1993 The IRA explodes a 1000kg car bomb in Bishopsgate, London, killing a news photographer and injuring 44 others.