0031 - 1st Easter, according to calendar-maker Dionysius Exiguus
0421 - Friday at 12 PM - city of Venice founded
1067 - William the Conqueror orders 1st Domesday Survey of England
1306 - Robert the Bruce crowned king of Scotland
1584 - Sir Walter Raleigh renews Humphrey Gilbert's patent to explore North America
1609 - Henry Hudson embarks on an exploration for Dutch East India Co
1634 - Lord Baltimore founded Catholic colony of Maryland [H]
1655 - Christiaan Huygens discovers Titan, (Saturn's largest satellite)
1669 - Mount Etna in Sicily erupts, destroying Nicolosi, killing 20,000
1753 - Voltaire leaves the court of Frederik II of Prussia
1774 - English Parliament passes Boston Port Bill
1776 - Continental Congress authorizes a medal for George Washington
1807 - 1st railway passenger service begins in England
1807 - British Parliament abolishes slave trade
1817 - Tsar Alexander I recommends formation of Society of Israeli Christians
1821 - Greece gains independence from Turkey (National Day)
1856 - A E Burnside patents Burnside carbine
1857 - Frederick Laggenheim takes 1st photo of a solar eclipse
1863 - 1st Army Medal of Honor awarded
1863 - Skirmish at Brentwood Tennessee
1864 - Battle of Paducah, KY (Forrest's raid)
1865 - Battle of Bluff Spring, FL
1865 - Battle of Fort Stedman, VA - in front of Petersburg
1865 - Battle of Mobile, AL (Spanish Fort, Fort Morgan, Fort Blakely)
1879 - Cheyenne Chief Little Wolf surrenders [H]
1882 - 1st demonstration of pancake making (Dept store in NYC)
1894 - Coxey's Army of the unemployed sets out from Massillon Ohio for Washington. Due to the economic crisis, "Panic of 1893", leaving many local workers unemployed, Jacob S. Coxey planned a march of jobless men on Washington to petition Congress to take action to resolve America’s epidemic unemployment problems through the creation of public works programs.
1902 - Irving W Colburn patents sheet glass drawing machine
1905 - Many Rebel battle flags captured during war are returned to South
1911 - Triangle Shirtwaist Factory catches fire, 147 die, all but 13 young girls. [H]
1913 - Great Dayton Flood
1913 - Home of vaudeville, Palace Theatre, opens (NYC) starring Ed Wynn
1915 - 1st submarine disaster; a US F-4 sank off Hawaii, killing 21
1931 - Scottsboro Boys (accused of raping a white woman) arrested in Alabama
1939 - Billboard Magazine introduces hillbilly (country) music chart
1941 - Carolina Paprika Mills in Dillon SC, incorporated
1942 - 700 Jews of Polish Lvov-district reach Belzec Concentration camp
1943 - Jimmy Durante and Garry Moore premiere on radio
1944 - RAF Sgt Nickolas Alkemade survives a jump from his Lancaster bomber from 18,000 feet without a parachute
1945 - US 1st army breaks out bridgehead near Remagen
1947 - Coal mine explosion in Centralia, Ill, claims 111
1954 - RCA manufactures 1st color TV set (12«" screen at $1,000)
1955 - E Germany granted full sovereignty by occupying power, USSR
1957 - The Treaty of Rome established the European Economic Community.
1960 - 1st guided missile launched from nuclear powered sub (Halibut)
1961 - "Gypsy" closes at Broadway Theater NYC after 702 performances
1961 - Elvis Presley performs live on the USS Arizona
1961 - Sputnik 10 carries a dog into Earth orbit; later recovered
1962 - French OAS-leader ex-general Jouhaud arrested
1964 - Britain sets memorial for the late President John F Kennedy
1964 - Egypt ends state of siege (1952-64)
1965 - Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. led 25,000 marchers to the state capitol in Montgomery, Ala., to protest the denial of voting rights to blacks.
1965 - West German Bondsdag extends war crimes retribution
1970 - Concorde makes its 1st supersonic flight (700 MPH/1,127 KPH)
1976 - Argentine milt junta bans leftist political parties
1985 - 57th Academy Awards - "Amadeus," F Murray Abraham and Sally Field win
1985 - Edwin Meese III becomes US Attorney General
1986 - Men's Figure Skating Championship in Geneva won by Brian Boitano (USA)
1986 - Supreme Court rules Air Force could ban wearing of yarmulkes
1986 - Kurt Browning (Canada) becomes 1st skater to land a quadruple jump
1987 - Supreme Court rules women/minorities may get jobs if less qualified
1990 - 10th Golden Raspberry Awards: Star Trek V wins
1990 - Fire in illegal NYC social club, kills 87 in the worst mass slaying in U.S. history and the deadliest New York blaze since the Triangle Shirt Waist factory disaster exactly 79 years earlier. Julio Gonzalez, 36, was charged with arson and murder.
1991 - 63rd Academy Awards - "Dance with Wolves," Kathy Bates and J Irons win
1992 - In a further sign of the capitalist revolution, veterans of the former Soviet KGB announced plans to sell cloak-and-dagger tales to Hollywood for movies and TV.
1992 - Libyan leader Colonel Moammar Gadhafi backed away from an offer to turn over two suspects in the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 to the Arab League. 
1992 - Soviet cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev, who'd spent 10 months aboard the orbiting Mir space station, thereby missing the upheaval in his homeland, finally returned to Earth.
1993 - Four of the five suspects arrested in the World Trade Center bombing pleaded innocent in a Manhattan federal court. A fifth suspect did not enter a plea.
1994 - Largely unsuccessful fifteen-month mission, the last US troops depart Somalia, leaving 20,000 U.N. troops behind to keep the peace and facilitate "nation building" in the divided country.
1994 - Tax returns made public by the Clintons showed they'd lost $46,635 dollars on their Whitewater investment, which was less than they'd previously claimed ($68,800).
1996 - The FBI surrounded the Montana compound of a tax evading group called the Freemen, beginning a lengthy standoff.
1996 - 68th Academy Awards - "Braveheart," Nicholas Cage & Susan Sarandon win
1996 - US issues newly-redesigned $100 bill
1997 - Chinese Premiere Li Peng, during a meeting in Beijing with Vice President Al Gore, denied reports that China had funneled campaign cash to the Clinton-Gore campaign.
1997 - The Federal Reserve nudged interest rates higher for the first time in two years, hoping to stifle any threat of rising inflation. 
1997 - Former President George Bush, 73, parachuted from a plane over the Arizona desert.
1998 - The first known physician-assisted suicide to be legal under Oregon state law was reported by the group Compassion In Dying.