Marie and Pierre Curie proved the existence of the new element radium when they chemically isolated one-tenth of a gram of pure radium chloride. Marie and Pierre Curie were both pioneering scientists in their own…

On the 19th April 1770, the British explorer Captain James Cook first caught sight of Australia.  Or at least that’s what the log of HMS Endeavour said.  The problem was, Cook and his crew had…

Pope Julius II laid the cornerstone of the current St. Peter’s Basilica, one of Catholicism’s most sacred buildings. St. Peter’s Basilica, whose enormous Michelangelo-designed dome makes it one of the most dominant features on the…

On the 17th April 1492, the Catholic Monarchs of Spain – Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand – signed an agreement to support Christopher Columbus’ voyage in which he crossed the Atlantic and discovered the Americas….

Vladimir Lenin arrived in Russia after a decade of self-imposed exile. Lenin, the leader of the Bolshevik Party, had left Russia in 1907 after Tsar Nicholas II cancelled many of the reforms he had promised…

On 15th April 1755, Samuel Johnson published “A Dictionary of the English Language” in London. Johnson was not the first to write a dictionary, but his was the most comprehensive and detailed to date. The…

The future Roman Emperor Titus began the Siege of Jerusalem, during which the Second Temple was burned and destroyed. The Roman attack on Jerusalem came four years into the First Jewish–Roman War. Triggered by ethnic…

Late on the 13th April 1970, the spacecraft Apollo 13 was rocked by an explosion from one of its oxygen tanks. The resulting emergency led to the calm announcement by the crew of, “Houston we’ve…

The Canadian Corps successfully captured Vimy Ridge in the First World War. Vimy Ridge was a 7km ridge that had been held by the Germans since the Race to the Sea in 1914. French forces…

On the 11th April 1961, the trial of Nazi SS Lieutenant Colonel Adolf Eichmann began in Israel. Eichmann was known as the architect of the Final Solution, the man who coordinated the transportation of Jews…

The United States table tennis team heralded the era of ‘ping pong diplomacy’ by becoming the first official American delegation to visit China in 20 years. Relations between America and China had soured in the…

On the 9th April 1865, after four years of Civil War, approximately 630,000 deaths and over 1 million casualties, Confederate States Army General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant. This triggered…

Times Square in New York was given its name shortly after the offices of The New York Times moved to the area. Having once belonged to the prominent real estate investor John Jacob Astor, the…

On the 7th April 1498, a group of Franciscan monks met their Dominican rivals in the Piazza della Signoria in Florence to take part in the first trial by fire in 400 years. The belief…