April 12 - Events

Events

• 238 – Gordian II lost the Battle of Carthage against the Numidian forces loyal to Maximinus Thrax and is killed.Gordian I, his father, commits suicide.
• 467 – Anthemius is elevated to Emperor of the Western Roman Empire.
• 1204 – The Crusaders of the Fourth Crusade breach the walls of Constantinople and enter the city, which they completely occupy the following day.
• 1557 – Cuenca is founded in Ecuador.
• 1606 – The Union Flag is adopted as the flag of Great Britain.
• 1633 – The formal inquest of Galileo Galilei by the Inquisition begins.
• 1776 – American Revolution: With the Halifax Resolves, the North Carolina Provincial Congress authorizes itsCongressional delegation to vote for independence from Britain.
• 1820 – Alexander Ypsilantis is declared leader of Filiki Eteria, a secret organization to overthrow Ottoman rule over Greece.
• 1831 – Soldiers marching on the Broughton Suspension Bridge in Manchester, England cause it to collapse.
• 1861 – American Civil War: The war begins with Confederate forces firing on Fort Sumter, in the harbor ofCharleston, South Carolina.
• 1864 – American Civil War: The Fort Pillow massacre: Confederate forces kill most of the African Americansoldiers that surrendered at Fort Pillow, Tennessee.
• 1865 – American Civil War: Mobile, Alabama, falls to the Union Army.
• 1877 – The United Kingdom annexes the Transvaal.
• 1910 – The SMS Zrinyi, one of the last pre-dreadnoughts built by the Austro-Hungarian Navy, is launched.
• 1917 – World War I: Canadian forces successfully complete the taking of Vimy Ridge from the Germans.
• 1927 – April 12 Incident: Chiang Kai-shek orders the Communist Party of China members executed in Shanghai, ending the First United Front.
• 1934 – The strongest surface wind gust in the world at 231 mph, is measured on the summit of Mount Washington, New Hampshire.
• 1934 – The U.S. Auto-Lite Strike begins, culminating in a five-day melee between Ohio National Guard troops and 6,000 strikers and picketers.
• 1935 – First flight of the Bristol Blenheim.
• 1937 – Sir Frank Whittle ground-tests the first jet engine designed to power an aircraft, at Rugby, England.
• 1945 – U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt dies while in office; vice-president Harry Truman is sworn in as the 33rd President.
• 1954 – Bill Haley & His Comets record "Rock Around the Clock" in New York City.
• 1955 – The polio vaccine, developed by Dr. Jonas Salk, is declared safe and effective.
• 1961 – Yuri Gagarin becomes the first human to travel into outer space, in Vostok 3KA-2 (Vostok 1).
• 1963 – The Soviet nuclear powered submarine K-33 collides with the Finnish merchant vessel M/S Finnclipper in the Danish straits.
• 1968 – Nerve gas accident at Skull Valley, Utah.
• 1980 – Samuel Doe takes control of Liberia in a coup d'état, ending over 130 years of national democratic presidential succession.
• 1980 – Terry Fox begins his "Marathon of Hope" at St. John's, Newfoundland.
• 1981 – The first launch of a Space Shuttle: Columbia launches on the STS-1 mission.

April 12: First STS launch: Columbia.

• 1990 – Jim Gary's "Twentieth Century Dinosaurs" exhibition opens at theSmithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C.
• 1992 – The Euro Disney Resort officially opens with its theme park Euro Disneyland. The resort and its park's name were subsequently changed toDisneyland Paris.
• 1994 – Canter & Siegel post the first commercial mass Usenet spam.
• 1998 – An earthquake in Slovenia, measuring 5.6 on the Richter scale occurs near the town of Bovec.
• 1999 – US President Bill Clinton is cited for contempt of court for giving "intentionally false statements" in a sexual harassment civil lawsuit.
• 2002 – A female suicide bomber detonated at the entrance to Jerusalem's Mahane Yehuda open-air market, killing 7 and wounding 104.
• 2007 – A suicide bomber penetrated the Green Zone and detonated in a cafeteria within a parliament building, killing Iraqi MP Mohammed Awad and wounding more than twenty other people.
• 2010 – A train derailed near Merano, Italy, after running into a landslide, causing nine deaths and injuring 28 people.