4.19.2005
IT HAPPENED TODAY APRIL 19 -APRIL 30

April 19
1775 The American Revolution Begins
British troops and colonial Patriots engaged in the first battle of the American Revolution on this date in Lexington, Massachusetts. At about 5 A.M., several hundred British troops, on a mission to capture Patriot leaders and seize a Patriot arsenal, marched into Lexington to find about seventy armed minutemen under Captain John Parker waiting for them on the town's common green. British Major John Pitcairn ordered the outnumbered Patriots to disperse, and after a moment's hesitation the Americans began to drift off the green. Suddenly, the "shot heard around the world" was fired from an undetermined gun, and a cloud of musket smoke soon covered the green. When the brief Battle of Lexington ended, eight Americans lay dead or dying and ten others were wounded. Only one British soldier was injured, but the American Revolution had begun. By 1775, tensions between the American colonies and the British government had reached the breaking point, especially in Massachusetts, where Patriot leaders formed a shadow revolutionary government and trained militias to prepare for armed conflict with the British troops occupying Boston. In the spring of 1775, General Thomas Gage, the British governor of Massachusetts, received instructions from England to seize all stores of weapons and gunpowder accessible to the American insurgents. On April 18, he ordered British troops to march against the Patriot arsenal at Concord, and to capture Patriot leaders Samuel Adams and John Hancock, known to be hiding at Lexington. The Boston Patriots had been preparing for such a military action by the British for some time, and upon learning of the British plan, Patriots Paul Revere and William Dawes were ordered to set out to rouse the militiamen and to warn Adams and Hancock. When the British troops arrived at Lexington, Adams, Hancock, and Revere had already fled to Philadelphia, and a group of militiamen were waiting. The Patriots were routed within minutes, but the first shots of the American Revolution had been fired, leading to calls to arms across the Massachusetts countryside. When the British troops reached Concord at about 7 A.M., they found themselves encircled by thousands of armed Patriots. They managed to destroy the military supplies that the Americans had collected, but were soon advanced against by a gang of minutemen, who inflicted numerous casualties. Lieutenant Colonel Frances Smith, the overall commander of the British force, ordered his men to return to Boston without directly engaging the Americans. As the British retraced their sixteen-mile journey, their lines were constantly beset by Patriot marksmen firing at them Indian-style from behind trees, rocks, and stone walls. At Lexington, Captain Parker's militia had its revenge, killing several British soldiers as the Red Coats hastily marched through his town. By the time the British finally reached the safety of Boston, nearly three hundred British soldiers had been killed, wounded, or were missing in action. The Patriots suffered less than one hundred casualties. The battles of Lexington and Concord were the first battles of the American Revolution, a conflict that would escalate from a colonial uprising into a world war that, seven years later, would give birth to the independent United States of America.
April 20
1689 Siege of Londonderry Begins
James II, the former British king, began a siege of Londonderry, a Protestant stronghold in Northern Ireland. In the previous year, James, a Catholic, had been deposed by his Protestant daughter, Mary, and her husband, William of Orange, in a bloodless coup known as the Glorious Revolution. James fled to France and in 1689 landed in Ireland, hoping to incite his Catholic supporters there and regain the British throne. Aided by French forces, James captured Dublin in late March and in April marched on Londonderry, the northern town where Irish supporters of Britain had fled. On April 20, 1689, James, having encircled Londonderry, began a bombardment of the fortified city, causing devastating fires and significant loss of life. However, despite this and other assaults, the city refused to surrender, and its poorly supplied defenders managed to repulse wave after wave of attacks from James's soldiers. In the face of famine conditions, George Walker, the joint governor of the town and an Anglican clergyman, gave inspired public sermons that roused the people to a fierce resistance. Finally on August 1, after 105 days of siege, British forces arrived to relieve the defiant Protestant city and James retreated. Eleven months later, at the Battle of Boyne in eastern Ireland, James suffered a final defeat against the forces of William and Mary. George Walker, the defender of Londonderry, was killed during the battle.
April 21
1918 Red Baron Killed in Action
In the skies over Vauz sur Somme, France, Manfred von Richthofen, the notorious German flying ace known as "The Red Baron," was killed by Allied fire. Richthofen, the son of a Prussian nobleman, began training for the German air force at the outbreak of World War I. By 1916, he began terrorizing the skies over the Western Front in a Albatross biplane, downing fifteen enemy planes by the end of the year, including one piloted by British flying ace Major Lanoe Hawker. In 1917, Richthofen surpassed all flying ace records on both sides of the Western Front, and first began using a Fokker triplane, painted entirely red in tribute to his old cavalry regiment. Although only used during the last eight months of his career, it is this aircraft that Richthofen was most commonly associated with, and led to an enduring English nickname for the German pilot--the Red Baron. On April 21, 1918, with eighty victories under his belt, Richthofen penetrated deep into Allied territory in pursuit of a British aircraft. Flying too near the ground, an Australian gunner shot the Red Baron through his chest, and his plane crashed into a field alongside the road from Corbie to Bray. British troops recovered his body, and he was buried with full military honors. He was twenty-five years old. In a time of wooden and fabric aircraft, when twenty air victories insured a pilot legendary status, Manfred von Richthofen had eighty victories, and is regarded to this day as the ace of aces.
April 22
1997 Fujimori Orders Assault on Japanese Ambassador's Home
In Lima, Peru, Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori ordered a commando assault on the Japanese ambassador's home, hoping to free seventy-two hostages held by armed members of the Tupac Amaru leftist rebel movement for over four months. On December 16, 1997, fourteen Tupac Amaru terrorists, disguised as waiters and caterers, slipped into the home of Japanese Ambassador Morihisa Aoki, where a reception honoring the birthday of the Japanese emperor was being held, and took 490 people hostage. Police promptly surrounded the compound, and the rebels agreed to release approximately 170 women and elderly guests, but declared that they would kill the remaining two hundred if their demands were not met. The Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA) was founded in 1984 as a militant organization calling for Communist revolution in Peru. Within a few days of the beginning of the hostage crisis, the rebels released all but seventy-two hostages in the Japanese ambassador's home, refusing to free these remaining captives until after the approximately four hundred members of the MRTA imprisoned in Peru were released. Among the important government officials remaining in the Japanese ambassador's home were the brother of President Fujimori, Foreign Minister Francisco Tudela, supreme court judges, members of the ruling party, and a number of foreign ambassadors from Japan and elsewhere. President Fujimori, who was known for taking a hard-line against leftist guerillas in Peru, did not give in to the key points of the rebels' demands, and on April 22, 1997, ordered an assault on the complex by a 140-man special forces team. After secretly warning the hostages ten minutes before the attack, the commandos set off a blast in a tunnel underneath the building and surprised the rebels, killing or injuring eight of the fourteen immediately. The rest of the elite soldiers subsequently attacked from several other directions, overwhelming the remaining rebels. All fourteen rebels were killed in the assault, including the rebels' leader Nestor Cerpa, who was shot multiple times. Only one hostage, Supreme Court Justice Carlos Giusti, was killed in the attack, and of the several soldiers wounded, two later died from their injuries.
April 23
1971 Vietnam Veterans Protest War
During an antiwar protest on the steps of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., nearly a hundred Vietnam veterans ceremoniously returned their medals and military decorations. The next day, major demonstrations against the Vietnam War were held across the nation's capital. In 1961, U.S. President John F. Kennedy sent the first U.S. military personnel to bolster the ineffectual autocratic regime of South Vietnam against the Communist North. Three years later, with the South Vietnamese government crumbling, President Lyndon B. Johnson ordered limited bombing raids on North Vietnam and Congress authorized the use of U.S. troops. By 1965, North Vietnamese offensives left President Johnson with two choices: escalate U.S. involvement or withdraw. Johnson ordered the former, and troop levels soon jumped to over 300,000 as U.S. air forces commenced the largest bombing campaign in history. Over the next few years, the extended length of the war, the high number of U.S. casualties, and the exposure of U.S. involvement in war crimes such as the massacre at My Lai helped to turn many in the United States against the Vietnam War, and created a perilous national division. Some Vietnam veterans cooperated with antiwar protestors in their condemnation of the war, while thousands of military draftees burned their draft notices and hundreds of military personnel deserted their ranks. In the early 1970s, President Richard M. Nixon began withdrawing U.S. troops but increased bombing across Indochina. In 1973, a peace agreement was reached and the last U.S. troops left Vietnam. Two years later, the last Americans were evacuated from Saigon as Communist forces launched their final triumphant offensive into South Vietnam. It was the longest and most unpopular war in U.S. history, and cost fifty-eight-thousand American lives.
April 24
1898 Spanish-American War Begins
The Spanish-American War officially began when the Spanish refused U.S. demands to withdrawal from Cuba and declared war against the United States. The same day, U.S. President William McKinley authorized U.S. Admiral George Dewey, in command of the U.S. Pacific fleet, to leave Hong Kong and attack Spanish-held Manila in the Philippines. Spain's brutal response to the Cuban rebellion against Spanish rule, the mysterious explosion of the U.S. battleship Maine in Havana harbor, and the heavy losses to American investment caused by the Cuban conflict, were all factors that intensified U.S. feeling against Spain. In late April, the U.S. Congress prepared for war; adopting joint congressional resolutions demanding a Spanish withdrawal from Cuba and authorizing President McKinley to use force. On April 23, President McKinley asked for 125,000 volunteers to fight against Spain, and the next day Spain issued a declaration of war. One week later, the U.S. Navy under Admiral George Dewey won a decisive victory over the Spanish fleet at Manila Bay in the Philippines, and on June 11, six hundred U.S. marines landed at Guantanamo, Cuba. In Cuba, U.S. forces, featuring the Theodore Roosevelt-led cavalry regiment known as the "Rough Riders," triumphed at the battles of El Caney and San Juan Heights, and on July 3, the remaining Spanish fleet was destroyed near Santiago de Cuba. On July 17, nearly 25,000 Spanish troops surrendered at Santiago de Cuba, and the war effectively came to an end. An armistice was signed on August 12, and representatives were sent to Paris, France, to arrange peace. On December 10, the Treaty of Paris was signed, officially ending the Spanish-American war, virtually dissolving the once-proud Spanish Empire, and granting the United States its first overseas empire. Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines were ceded to the United States, and Cuba became a U.S. protectorate. Hawaii, an independent republic run by American expatriates since 1894, was also formally annexed during the Spanish-American War.
April 25
1945 American and Soviet Troops Meet; Berlin Encircled
During World War II, American and Soviet troops met for the first time at Leckwitz in on the Elbe River, less than a hundred miles south of Berlin. The Allied troops, made up of patrols from the U.S. 273rd Infantry Regiment and advance Soviet troops from the eastern front, joyously shook hands in celebration of the successes of their respective offensives against Nazi Germany. With Germany just a few weeks away from collapse, the Americans were driving into the southern part of Germany, hoping to prevent a last stand by the German army in the heavily fortified "National Redoubt" in the Alps. The Soviets, meanwhile, were besieging the German capital of Berlin while pushing toward the Elbe River, the boundary of the postwar occupation zone agreed to at the Allied conference at Yalta in February. On the day that the first advance U.S. and Red Army troops met on the Elbe, the two main Soviet armies, totaling some two million soldiers, converged around Berlin, and the city was completely encircled. Just six days later, with Soviet troops in Berlin a few blocks from his bunker under the German Chancellery, Nazi leader Adolf Hitler committed suicide. The next day, more Nazi leaders followed him, and on May 2, resistance against the Soviets ended in Berlin. Meanwhile, the Americans liberated Austria and parts of Czechoslovakia, and on May 7, Germany signed its unconditional surrender, ending six years of murder and devastation in Europe. The next day, millions of people across Europe and the world celebrated "V-E Day," or "Victory in Europe."
April 26
1937 Nazis Test Luftwaffe on Basque Town of Guernica
During the Spanish Civil War, the German military tested its powerful new air force--the Luftwaffe--on the Basque town of Guernica in northern Spain. Although the independence-minded Basque region opposed General Francisco Franco's Nationalist forces during the Spanish Civil War, Guernica itself was a rural small city of only 5,000 inhabitants that declared non-belligerence in the conflict. With Franco's approval, his Nazi allies began their unprovoked attack at 4:30 P.M., the busiest hour of the market day in Guernica. For three hours, the German planes poured down a continuous and unopposed rain of bombs and gunfire on the town and surrounding countryside. One-third of Guernica's 5,000 inhabitants were killed or wounded and fires engulfed the city and burned for three days. The indiscriminate killing of Guernica’s women and children by the Luftwaffe aroused world opinion, and became a symbol of fascist brutality. Unfortunately, by 1942, all major participants in World War II had adopted the frightful bombing innovations developed by the Nazis at Guernica, and by the war's end in 1945, millions of innocent civilians had died during Allied and Axis air attacks on enemy cities and towns.
April 27
1952 Ike Steps Down to Run for President
At his own request, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, one of the most highly regarded American generals of World War II, was relieved of his post as supreme commander of the combined land and air forces of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). In 1942, General Eisenhower commanded American forces in Great Britain, in 1943, led the invasions of North Africa and Italy, and in 1944, was appointed supreme commander of the Allied invasion of Western Europe. After the war, he briefly served as president of Columbia University, before returning to military service in 1951 as supreme commander of NATO--a permanent military alliance established in 1949 by the democracies of Western Europe and North America as a safeguard against the threat of Soviet aggression. However, pressure on Eisenhower to run for the U.S. presidency was great, and in April of 1952, he relinquished his NATO command to campaign on the Republican ticket. In November 1952, "Ike" won a resounding victory in the presidential elections, and in 1956, he was reelected by a landslide.
April 28
1970 U.S. and South Vietnamese Forces Invade Cambodia
Supported by U.S. warplanes, artillery, and thousands of American military personnel, South Vietnamese government troops launched an invasion of Cambodia, intending to wipe out North Vietnamese and Vietcong positions there and bolster the pro-U.S. regime of General Lon Nol. In March of 1969, during the Vietnam War, U.S. President Richard M. Nixon authorized secret bombing attacks against Vietnamese Communist bases across the border in Cambodia. One year later, Cambodian General Lon Nol ousted Prince Norodom Sihanouk, the ruler of Cambodia since 1953, and established a pro-U.S. military regime. Norodom went into exile, and in April, he received the support of Chinese and North Vietnamese authorities in his call to arms against Lon Nol’s rule. On April 29, the U.S. and South Vietnam responded by invading Cambodia. The next day, President Nixon announced the "incursion" in a televised address, and also that he had authorized an additional 8,000 U.S. combat troops to enter Cambodia and wipe out its Communist "control center." The announcement led to widespread antiwar protests across the United States, and on May 4, at Ohio’s Kent State University, four students were killed, eight injured, and one permanently paralyzed when National Guard troops opened fire on a group of antiwar demonstrators. In August 1973, according to the terms of the Vietnam peace agreement signed in Paris earlier in the year, the U.S. officially ended its bombing and any other direct military involvement in Cambodia. The U.S. and South Vietnam involvement in Cambodia contributed to the outbreak of a larger civil war in the country, culminating in 1975 with the victory of Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge. Known as "Year Zero," 1975 was the beginning of three years of terror and genocide in Cambodia, resulting in the murder of over two million people on the country’s killing fields.
April 30
1975 Saigon Falls
North Vietnamese and Vietcong forces captured Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam, and Duong Van Minh, president of South Vietnam for only nine days, surrendered unconditionally to the Communists. The same day, U.S. forces completed the largest helicopter evacuation in history, airlifting select South Vietnamese officials and troops and the last few Americans still in Vietnam to the safety of U.S. aircraft carriers offshore. At 7:52 p.m., the last U.S. Marines in the country were lifted off the roof of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon. Hours later, the city was renamed Ho Chi Minh City. The reunification of Vietnam under the North Communist regime came two years after representatives of the United States, North and South Vietnam, and the Vietcong signed a peace agreement in Paris, ending the U.S. military involvement in the Vietnam War. By the end of 1973, the U.S. contingent in Vietnam had shrunk to only fifty military advisors. On April 30, 1975, the last of these and other Americans were airlifted out of Vietnam and the war came to end. North Vietnamese Colonel Bui Tin, accepting the surrender of South Vietnam, remarked, "You have nothing to fear. Between Vietnamese there are no victors and no vanquished. Only the Americans have been defeated." The Vietnam War was the longest and most unpopular foreign war in U.S. history, and cost fifty-eight thousand American lives.