On This Day: 19 April

The freedman Milichus betrays Piso's plot to assassinate the Emperor Nero, and all the conspirators are arrested		65
Ælfheah, Archbishop of Canterbury, is killed by Viking raiders in Greenwich after refusing to allow himself to be martyred		1012
Francis Drake 'singes the King of Spain's beard' at Cadiz – destroying thirty ships that were being prepared for war with England		1587
Charles VI, Holy Roman Emperor, issues the Pragmatic Sanction, to ensure that Hapsburg possessions (including the Austrian throne) could be inherited by a daughter. (His daughter, Maria Theresa, was born in 1717; her succession in 1740 led to the War of the Austrian Succession)		1713
Lieutenant James Cook sights the eastern coast of Australia		1770
Marie Antoinette marries Louis XVI of France, in a proxy wedding		1770
Battle of Lexington: US minutemen defeat British troops (beginning the War of Independence)		1775
The Dutch Republic recognises the independent US government; the house that John Adams purchased in The Hague becomes the first US embassy		1782
Venezuela secures home rule		1810
Lord Byron dies of a fever at Missolonghi, while fighting for Greek nationalists against the Turks		1824
Treaty of London makes Belgium an independent kingdom and Luxembourg a Grand Duchy		1839
Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield, dies		1881
Boston marathon – the oldest annual event of its kind in the world – first held		1897
The Kishinev pogrom begins in Bessarabia (now part of Romania), as a consequence of which tens of thousands of Jews would later be forced to seek refuge in Palestine and the Western world		1903
Mae West is jailed for ten days after her Broadway show Sex is raided by police		1927
Britain bans all trade with the USSR		1933
The Warsaw Ghetto uprising begins after German troops arrive in the city to deport Jewish inhabitants to concentration camps		1943
Albert Hofmann deliberately doses himself with LSD for the first time (see April 16)		1943
Richard Dimbleby broadcasts from Belsen on the BBC – the first public acknowledgement of the Nazi holocaust		1945
USA tests a plutonium bomb at Eniwatok Atoll in the Marshall Islands		1948
Prince Rainier III of Monaco marries Grace Kelly		1956
Dalai Lama finds sanctuary in India		1959
Australian troops leave Sydney to fight in the Vietnam war		1966
Soviet Union launches the first space station, Salyut, into Earth orbit		1971
Charles Manson sentenced to death (later commuted to life imprisonment) for conspiracy in the Tate–LaBianca murders		1971
Bangladesh admitted to the Commonwealth		1972
India launches its first satellite, Aryabhata, from Kapustin Yar in Russia		1975
Advance Australia Fair is adopted as Australia's national anthem, and green and gold as the national colours		1984
The Simpsons appears for the first time, as a series of shorts on the Tracey Ullman Show – starting with Good Night		1987
47 sailors lose their lives when a gun turret explodes on USS Iowa		1989
USA claims credit for a plan to create a safe haven for Iraqi Kurds		1991
76 members of the Branch Davidian sect, including 18 children, die when the FBI storms their headquarters in Waco, Texas after a 51–day siege		1993
168 killed by a bomb outside the Alfred P. Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City		1995
Ben Smoldon, 21, wins an action for damages against the referee of a rugby match in which a scrum collapse left him a tetraplegic		1996
The German Bundestag returns to Berlin, meeting for the first time in the Reichstag designed by Sir Norman Foster		1999
All 131 passengers and crew lose their lives when Air Philippines Flight 541 crashes on the island of Mindanao		2000
Shell admits that it has deliberately overstated its oil and gas reserves for several years		2004
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, seen by many as a reactionary, elected as Pope – taking the title Benedict XVI		2005
Fidel Castro resigns as First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba – a post he has held since 1961		2011
Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the chief suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing, is killed in a shootout with police. His brother Dzhokhar is later captured, hiding in a boat inside a back yard in the suburb of Watertown		2013

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On This Day: 19 April