Today is Friday, April 20, the 110th day of 2018. There are 255 days left in the year.
1453 Three Genoese galleys fight their way through an Ottoman blockading fleet before the fall of Constantinople. 1534 Jacques Cartier begins his first voyage to what is today the east coast of Canada, Newfoundland and Labrador. 1657 Admiral Robert Blake destroys a Spanish silver fleet under heavy fire at the Battle of Santa Cruz de Tenerife.
1770 The Georgian king, Erekle II, abandoned by his Russian ally Count Totleben, wins a victory over Ottoman forces at Aspindza.
1809 Two Austrian army corps in Bavaria are defeated by a First French Empire army led by Napoleon at the Battle of Abensberg on the second day of a four- day campaign that ended in a French victory. 1809 The case of Ashford v Thornton ends, with Abraham Thornton allowed to go free rather than face a retrial for murde. 1828 René Caillié becomes the second nonMuslim to enter ( and the first to return from) Timbuktu, following Major Gordon Laing. 1861 American Civil War: Robert E. Lee resigns his commission in the United States Army in order to command the forces of the state of Virginia. 1865 Astronomer Angelo Secchi demonstrates the Secchi disk, which measures water clarity, aboard Pope Pius IX’s yacht, the L’Immaculata Concezion.
1876 The April Uprising begins. Its suppression shocks European opinion, and Bulgarian independence becomes a condition for ending the Russo- Turkish War. 1898 U. S. President William McKinley signed a joint resolution to Congress for declaration of War against Spain, beginning the Spanish American War. 1916 The Chicago Cubs play their first game at Weeghman Park ( currently Wrigley Field), defeating the Cincinnati Reds 7– 6 in 11 innings. 1945 Twenty Jewish children used in medical experiments at Neuengamme are killed in the basement of the Bullenhuser Damm school. 1999 Columbine High School massacre: Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold killed 13 people and injured 24 others before committing suicide at Columbine High School in Columbine, Colorado. 2007 Johnson Space Center shooting: William Phillips with a handgun barricades himself in NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas before killing himself. 2013 Danica Patrick wins Indy Japan 300 becoming first female to do so.