1916 German parliament approves unrestricted submarine warfare.

1917 US declares war on Germany, enters World War I

1945 Battle of Okinawa: Giant Japanese battleship Yamato heads to Okinawa with orders to beach herself and be destroyed defending the island.

1994 Plane carrying Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana and Burundian President Cyprien Ntaryamira is shot down by surface-to-air missiles, abruptly ending peace negotiations and sparking the Rwandan Genocide. Those responsible have never been identified.

1912 RMS Titanic sets sail from Southampton for her maiden (and final) voyage.

1923 Adolf Hitler demands "hatred & more hatred" in Berlin, Germany.

1932 Paul von Hindenburg is re-elected President of Germany in a runoff election against Adolf Hitler.

1963 USS Thresher, a nuclear powered submarine, sinks 220 miles east of Boston killing 129 men, including 17 civilians.

1971 The Republican commemorations is held in Belfast of the Easter Rising (in 1916 in Dublin), revealing conflicts between the two wings of the Irish Republican Army.

1972 US, USSR & 70 other nations agree to ban biological weapons.

1981 Imprisoned Provisional IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands elected to British Parliament for Northern Ireland county of Fermanagh and South Tyrone.

1998 The Good Friday Agreement [Belfast Agreement] for Northern Ireland is signed by the British and Irish governments.

1782 Battle at Les Saintes: British fleet under Admiral George Rodney defeats the French fleet under Comte de Grasse off Dominica in the West Indies. Prevents a planned French and Spanish invasion of Jamaica.

1916 Irish nationalist activist and poet Roger Casement boards submarine U-19 at Wilmshaven, Germany, bound for a rendezvous with the Aud at Tralee.

1941 Vichy-France's head of government Admiral François Darlan consults with Adolf Hitler.

1945 Canadian troops liberate Nazi concentration camp Westerbork, Netherlands.

1945 US President Franklin D. Roosevelt dies in office and Vice President Harry Truman is sworn in as 33rd US President.

1961 Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin becomes the first person to orbit Earth (Vostok 1)

1906 Mutiny on Portuguese battleships Dom Carlos & Vasco da Gama.

1912 Royal Flying Corps forms (later Royal Air Force)

1940 Second battle of Narvik; 3 German destroyers and one U-boat sunk by the Royal Navy, 5 more German destroyers scuttled.

1944 Transport #71 departs Drancy (France) internment camp, taking 1,500 French Jews to Auschwitz concentration camp in Nazi German occupied Poland; an estimated 91 survived.

1945 Canadian soldier Léo Major single-handedly liberates Dutch town of Zwolle by fooling Germans into thinking a raid had begun.

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 15 April.

1918 Douglas Campbell is 1st US ace pilot (shooting down 5th German plane)

1922 Republic rebels occupies 4 government courts in Dublin.

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.

1994 US F-15 accidentally shoots 2 US helicopters down over Iraq, 26 die.

1917 [OS Apr 3] Lenin arrives back from exile in Russia at Finland Station, Petrograd to join the Russian Revolution.

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.

1945 World War II: Dutch town of Arnhem, site of failed Operation Market Garden, is freed by British and Canadian forces.

1945 Battle of Berlin: Red Army begins its attack on the capital of Nazi Germany.

1945 Colditz Castle, the high-security prisoner of war camp in Germany, is liberated by American troops.

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

1964 9 men sentenced 25-30 years for Britain's 1963 "Great Train Robbery"

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

2004 The super liner Queen Mary 2 embarks on her first Transatlantic crossing, linking the golden age of ocean travel to the modern age of ocean travel.

1865 Mary Surratt is arrested as a conspirator in Abraham' Lincoln's assassination.

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

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

1961 Jimmy Stewart accepts an honorary Oscar on behalf of his friend Gary Cooper, who is too ill to attend.

1994 US F-15 accidentally shoots 2 US helicopters down over Iraq, 26 die.

The british lost more casualties to the USA than the Iraqi's

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.”

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.

1951 General Douglas MacArthur ends his military career.

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

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

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 becomes inspector Prussian secret state police.

1974 'The Troubles', the Northern Ireland conflict between republican and loyalist paramilitaries, British security forces, and civil rights groups, claims its 1000th victim.

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

1867 Queen Victoria & 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.

1968 1st decimal coins issued in Britain (5 & 10 new pence, replacing shilling and two-shilling pieces)

1984 AIDS-virus identified as HTLV-III (acquired immune deficiency syndrome)

1865 Confederate General J E Johnston surrenders remaining forces to Union General William Sherman at Bennett Place in Durham, North Carolina, ending the US Civil War.

1915 Italy secretly signs the "Treaty of London" with Britain, France and Russia, bringing Italy into World War I on the Allied side.

1944 1st B-29 attacked by Japanese fighters, one fighter shot down.

1945 Marshal Philippe Pétain, leader of France's Vichy collaborationist regime during World War II, arrested for treason.

1982 Argentina surrenders to Great Britain on South Georgia Island, near the Falkland Islands.

1986 World's worst nuclear disaster: 4th reactor at Chernobyl nuclear power station in USSR explodes, 31 die, radioactive contamination reaches much of Western Europe.