April 8

This date in recent years

April 8 is the 98th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (99th in leap years). There are 267 days remaining.

1 Events
2 Births
3 Deaths
4 Holidays and observances
5 External links

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Events

217 - Roman emperor Caracalla is assassinated (and succeeded) by his Praetorian Guard prefect, Marcus Opellius Macrinus
1203 - Congress in Bilino Polje, where Ban Kulin officially declared his allegiance to the Catholic Church and denounced the heresy.
1730 - Shearith Israel, the first synagogue in New York City, is dedicated.
1742 - The first performance of George Frideric Handel's oratorio The Messiah, in Dublin.
1767 - Ayutthaya kingdom fell to Burmese invaders.
1820 - The Venus de Milo is discovered on the Aegean island of Melos.
1832 - Black Hawk War: Around 300 United States 6th Infantry troops leave Jefferson Barracks, St. Louis to fight the Sauk Native Americans.
1886 - William Ewart Gladstone introduces the first Home Rule bill into the House of Commons.
1893 - First recorded college basketball game occurs in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania when the Geneva College Covenanters defeated the New Brighton YMCA.
1895 - The United States Supreme Court declared income tax to be unconstitutional in Pollock v. Farmers' Loan & Trust Co.
1899 - Martha Place becomes the first woman to be executed in an electric chair.
1904 - France and the United Kingdom sign the Entente cordiale.
1904 - Longacre Square in Midtown Manhattan is renamed Times Square after The New York Times.
1910 - The Los Angeles Motordome opened near Playa del Rey, California.
1913 - The Seventeenth Amendment to the United States Constitution is ratified requiring direct election of Senators.
1916 - In Corona, California, auto racer Bob Burman crashed through a crowd barrier at the last Boulevard Race, killing himself, his mechanic and a track policeman, and badly injuring five spectators.
1918 - World War I: Actors Douglas Fairbanks and Charlie Chaplin sell war bonds on the streets of New York, New York's financial district.
1926 - Benito Mussolini is "slightly wounded in the nose" after being shot with a revolver by Violet Gibson, an Irish woman and sister of Baron Ashbourne).
1929 - Indian Independence Movement At Delhi Central Assembly, Bhagat Singh and Batukeshwar Dutt threw handouts, and bombs in a corridor not to cause injury and courted arrest.
1935 - The Works Progress Administration is formed when the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act of 1935 becomes law.
1942 - World War II: Siege of Leningrad - Soviet Union forces open a much-needed railway link to Leningrad.
1945 - At the POW camp at Flossenbürg, pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer is hanged.
1952 - In a radio address to the nation from the White House, President Harry S. Truman calls for the seizure of all steel mills in the United States in order to prevent a nationwide strike.
1953 - Mau Mau leader Jomo Kenyatta is convicted by Kenya's British rulers.
1967 - In Vienna, Austria, Sandie Shaw wins the twelfth Eurovision Song Contest for the United Kingdom singing "Puppet on a String".
1971 - a 6 pound meteorite struck the home of Robert and Wanda Donahue in Wethersfield, Connecticut
1974 - At the Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium, Hank Aaron breaks baseball great's Babe Ruth's record by hitting his 715th home run.
1975 - Frank Robinson of the Cleveland Indians manages his first game as major league baseball's first African American manager.
1975 - Vietnam War: After spending a week in South Vietnam, U.S. Army Chief of Staff Frederick Weyand gives a report to the U.S. Congress that South Vietnam will fall without additional military aid.
1985 - Bhopal disaster: India files suit against Union Carbide for the disaster which killed an estimated 2,000 and injured another 200,000.
1986 - Clint Eastwood is elected mayor of Carmel-by-the-Sea, California receiving 72% of the vote (voter turnout was also doubled over the previous mayoral election).
1987 - Los Angeles Dodgers executive Al Campanis resigns amid great controversy over racially-charged remarks he had made while on Nightline.
1989 - South Africa In Johannesburg, the Progressive Federal Party, Independent party, National Democratic Movement and the force of "Ontevrede Afrikaners" or dissatisfied Afrikaners merged to form the Democratic Party.
1990 - Twin Peaks premieres.
1992 - Retired tennis great Arthur Ashe announces to the world that he has AIDS, acquired from blood transfusions during one of his two heart surgeries.
1994 - Body of Kurt Cobain discovered in his Washington home.
1999 - Haryana Gana Parishad, a political party in the Indian state of Haryana, merges with the Indian National Congress.
2000 - A U.S. Marine Corps V-22 Osprey crashes during landing at Marana, Arizona killing 19.
2002 - Ed McMahon files a US$20 million lawsuit against his insurance company and others regarding a toxic mold infecting McMahon's Beverly Hills, California home.
2003 - US forces fire upon Al Jazeera's office's in Baghdad, Iraq killing a reporter and wounding another.
2004 - Darfur conflict: The Humanitarian Ceasefire Agreement is signed by the Sudanese government and two rebel groups.
2004 - The famous Japanese economist and former professor at Waseda University graduate school Kazuhide Uekusa was arrested on the escalator of JR Shinagawa Station because of trying to peep under a high school girl's skirt with his hand mirror.
2005 - Funeral of Pope John Paul II