April 12

2024 Calendar

April 12 is the 102nd day of the year (103rd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 263 days remaining until the end of the year.

Events

Up to 1900

238 - Gordian II loses the Battle of Carthage against Numidian forces loyal to Maximus Thrax and is killed. His father, Gordian I, commits suicide.
240 - Shapur I is crowned as King of the Sasanian Empire.
467 – Anthemius becomes Emperor of the West Roman Empire.
627 - King Edwin of Northumbria is converted to Christianity by Bishop Paulinus of York.
1204 - Crusaders of the Fourth Crusade breach the walls of Constantinople (present-day Istanbul) and enter the city, which they completely occupy the following day.
1557 – The city of Cuenca, in Ecuador, is founded.
1606 – The Union Flag is adopted as the flag of the two united Kingdoms of Scotland and England.
1633 – Galileo Galilei's trial before the inquisition begins.
1831 - Soldiers marching on the Broughton Suspension Bridge in Manchester cause it to collapse.
1861 – The American Civil War begins when Fort Sumter, South Carolina, is attacked.
1865 – American Civil War: Mobile, Alabama falls to the Union Army.
1877 – The United Kingdom annexes Transvaal.

1901 – 2000

1917 - World War I: Canadian forces successfully complete the taking of Vimy Ridge from the Germans.
1927 - Chiang Kai-shek orders Communist Party of China members to be executed in Shanghai, ending the First United Front.
1928 - The Bremen, a German Junkers W33 type aircraft, takes off for the first successful transatlantic aeroplane flight from east to west.
1934 – The strongest wind gust, outside of Antarctica or not within a tornado, is measured at Mt. Washington, New Hampshire, at 231 miles per hour (372 kilometres per hour).
1935 - First flight of the Bristol Blenheim aircraft.
1937 – Frank Whittle ground-tests the first jet engine to power an aircraft.
1945 – US President Franklin Roosevelt dies. Harry S. Truman is sworn in as his successor.
1946 - The last French troops leave Syria.
1954 – Bill Haley and His Comets record their hit song Rock Around the Clock.
1955 - The polio vaccine developed by Jonas Salk is declared safe and effective.
1961 – Yuri Gagarin is the first cosmonaut in space, sent by the U.S.S.R on Vostok 1.
1963 - Soviet nuclear-powered submarine K-33 collides with the Finnish merchant navy vessel M/S Finnclipper in the Danish straits.
1968 - A day after the attack on student activist Rudi Dutschke, protests and riots erupt across several cities in West Germany.
1970 - Soviet submarine K-8, carrying four nuclear torpedoes, sinks in the Bay of Biscay near France and Spain four days after a fire on board.
1980 – Terry Fox starts his Marathon of Hope across Canada in St. John's, Newfoundland.
1980 – In Liberia, Samuel K. Doe takes power in a coup, in which President William Tolbert is killed.
1981 – Space Shuttle Columbia is launched.
1992 – Disneyland Paris opens, as Euro Disneyland.
1998 – A magnitude 5.6 earthquake hits Slovenia.

From 2001

2002 - In a US-backed military coup in Venezuela, President Hugo Chávez is replaced as Head of State by Pedro Carmona. After 36 hours, Chavez is reinstated as president.
2002 – A female suicide bomber detonates herself in Jerusalem, killing 7 people and injuring 104.
2007 – A suicide bomber attacks the Iraqi parliament.
2009 – Zimbabwe abandons the Zimbabwean dollar as its official currency, after a severe economic crisis in the country.
2010 - A train crash near Merano, Italy, kills 9 people, after running into a landslide.
2014 - A wildfire ravages the Chilean city of Valparaiso, killing 16 people, displacing nearly 10,000, and destroying over 2,000 homes.