- 1513: Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de León landed in Florida.
- 1801: The British navy defeated the Danish fleet in the Battle of Copenhagen.
- 1917: President Woodrow Wilson asked Congress to declare war on Germany, leading the United States to enter World War I.
Argentine army soldiers during the invasion of the Falkland Islands
- 1982: Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands, leading to a conflict with the United Kingdom.
- 2005: Pope John Paul II died in the Vatican after serving as the head of the Catholic Church for 26 years.
- 1805: Hans Christian Andersen, the Danish author of famous fairy tales, such as “The Little Mermaid” and “The Ugly Duckling,” was born.
- 1865: Confederate President Jefferson Davis fled Richmond, Virginia, as Union troops captured the city near the end of the American Civil War.
- 1911: The RMS Titanic, the largest and most luxurious ship of its time, was launched in Belfast, Northern Ireland.
- 1956: The soap opera “As the World Turns” premiered on CBS, becoming the longest-running daytime drama in American television history.
- 1975: Construction of the CN Tower in Toronto, Canada, was completed. At the time, it was the world’s tallest freestanding structure.
- 2012: French police surrounded the apartment of Mohamed Merah, a French-Algerian Islamist terrorist who had killed seven people, including three Jewish children, in a series of shootings earlier that month. Merah was killed in a shootout with police after a 32-hour standoff.