April 19

Events

1587 – Francis Drake sinks the Spanish fleet in Cádiz harbor.
1770 – Captain James Cook sights Australia.
1775 – American Revolutionary War: The Battle of Lexington and Concord which began the American Revolutionary War.
1861 – American Civil War: Baltimore riot of 1861, a pro-Secession mob in Baltimore, Maryland, attacks United States Army troops marching through the city.
1936 – First day of the Great Uprising in Palestine.
1961 – The unsuccessful Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba
1971 – Charles Manson is sentenced to death for the Sharon Tate murders.
1993 – The 51-day siege of the Branch Davidian building outside Waco, Texas, USA, ends when a fire breaks out. Eighty-one people die.
1995 - Oklahoma City bombing: The Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, USA, is bombed, killing 168. That same day convicted murderer Richard Wayne Snell, who had ties to bombing suspect Timothy McVeigh, was executed in Arkansas.
1999 – The German Bundestag returns to Berlin.
2005 - Benedict XVI becomes Pope by election in papal conclave.

1894 - Elizabeth Dilling, Anti-communist writer and defendant in the Great Sedition Trial of 1944 (d. 1966)
1922 - Erich Hartmann, German fighter pilot (d. 1993)
1956 - Volen Siderov, Bulgarian politician and chairman of the National Union Ataka.