Today in history. April 20.
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- 27 July 2024 | 08:15:45
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- 1534: Jacques Cartier sets sail on his first voyage to what is now Canada, with the goal of claiming the land for France.
- 1653: Oliver Cromwell dissolves the English Parliament and becomes Lord Protector of England, Scotland, and Ireland.
- 1657: English Admiral Robert Blake destroys a Spanish silver fleet under heavy fire at Santa Cruz de Tenerife in the Canary Islands.
- 1770: Captain James Cook first sights Australia.
- 1775: The Siege of Boston begins during the American Revolutionary War.
- 1792: France declares war on Austria, marking the start of the French Revolutionary Wars.
- 1809: Napoleon I of France defeats Austria at the Battle of Eckmühl, during the War of the Fifth Coalition.
- 1836: The U.S. Congress passes an act creating the Wisconsin Territory.
- 1861: Robert E. Lee resigns from the United States Army two days after he was offered command of the Union Army and three days after Virginia seceded from the Union.
- 1862: Louis Pasteur and Claude Bernard successfully test a rabies vaccine on a boy who had been bitten by a rabid dog, marking a breakthrough in medical science.
- 1889: Adolf Hitler, the dictator of Nazi Germany, was born in Braunau am Inn, Austria.
- 1902: Pierre and Marie Curie isolated radium.
- 1940: The British War Cabinet approves the Gallipoli Campaign, aimed at capturing Constantinople and knocking the Ottoman Empire out of World War I.
- 1945: During World War II, U.S. troops capture Leipzig, Germany, near the end of the war in Europe.
- 1971: The Soviet Union launches the world's first space station, Salyut 1, into orbit.
- 1972: Apollo 16 astronauts John Young and Charles Duke explore the Moon's Descartes Highlands.
- 1999: The Columbine High School massacre occurs in Colorado, USA, resulting in the deaths of 13 victims and the perpetrators.
- 2010: An explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico leads to one of the largest oil spills in history.
- 2013: A series of bombings in Iraq, including a car bomb attack in Baghdad, kills dozens of people and injures many more.
- 2018: Former U.S. President George H.W. Bush is hospitalized a day after his wife Barbara Bush's funeral, suffering from a blood infection.
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