April 7, 1943: In Terebovlia, Ukraine, Germans order 1,100 Jews to undress and march through the city to the nearby village of Plebanivka, where they are shot and buried in ditches.
April 7, 1940: Booker T. Washington becomes the first black American to be honored on a US postage stamp when the US Post Office issues a ten-cent stamp bearing his likeness as part of its “Famous Americans” series.
-“BB”-
April 8, 1974: At Atlanta–Fulton County Stadium, Hank Aaron hits his 715th career home run, to surpass Babe Ruth’s 39-year-old record.
April 8, 1864: The U. S. Senate passed, 38-6, the 13th Amendment to the U. S. Constitution abolishing slavery.
April 9, 1939: Marian Anderson sings at the Lincoln Memorial, after being denied the right to sing to an integrated audience at the Daughters of the American Revolution’s Constitution Hall. The incident placed Anderson into the spotlight of the international community on a level unusual for a classical musician, especially a Black one. With the aid of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and her husband Franklin D. Roosevelt, Anderson performed a critically acclaimed open-air concert on Easter Sunday, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. She sang before a crowd of more than 75,000 people and a radio audience in the millions.
link to 1m 50s newsreel of Marian Anderson at Lincoln Memorial-sings “My Country 'tis of Thee”:
“Marian Anderson Sings at the Lincoln Memorial” Newreel Story - Bing video
April 9, 1917: The four divisions of the Canadian Corps begin the first wave of attack at Vimy Ridge.
April 10, 1970: Paul McCartney announces that he is leaving The Beatles for personal and professional reasons.
April 11, 1976: The Apple I is created. To finance its creation, Steve Jobs sold his only motorized means of transportation, a VW Microbus, for a few hundred dollars, and Steve Wozniak sold his HP-65 calculator for $500.
April 11, 1965: The Palm Sunday tornado outbreak kills 271.
April 12, 1961: The Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin becomes the first human to travel into outer space and perform the first manned orbital flight, Vostok 1.
April 12, 1861: Confederate Brigadier General PGT Beauregard ordered cannons to fire on Fort Sumter located in the harbor outside of Charleston South Carolina. This was the first battle in the American Civil War.
April 13, 1964: At the Academy Awards, Sidney Poitier becomes the first African-American male to win the Best Actor award for the 1963 film Lilies of the Field.
April 13, 1873: The Colfax Massacre in Louisiana.
April 14, 1561: Around dawn, residents of Nuremberg, Germany see what they describe as an aerial battle, followed by the appearance of a large black triangular object and then a large crash outside of the city. According to witnesses, there are hundreds of spheres, cylinders and other odd-shaped objects that move erratically overhead. The phenomenon has been interpreted by some modern UFO enthusiasts as an aerial battle of extraterrestrial origin.
April 15, 1970: During the Cambodian Civil War, massacre of the Vietnamese minority results in 800 bodies flowing down the Mekong river into South Vietnam.
April 16, 1943: Albert Hofmann accidentally discovers the hallucinogenic effects of the research drug LSD, by accidentally touching his hand to his mouth. He intentionally takes the drug three days later on April 19. This day is now known as “Bicycle Day”, because he begins to feel the effects of the drug as he rides home on his bike. This is the first intentional LSD trip.
April 16, 1947: A freighter’s payload explodes and wipes out Texas City - Ammonium nitrate fertilizer catches fire on a vessel in Galveston Bay and explodes , flattening much of the town of Texas City, Texas. The disaster will kill nearly 600 and wound over 3,000, becoming the worst industrial accident in US history.
April 17, 1961: A group of Cuban exiles financed and trained by the CIA lands at the Bay of Pigs in Cuba with the aim of ousting Fidel Castro. It doesn’t end well.