This day in history
Today is Wednesday, April 19, the 109th day of 2023. There are 256 days left in the year.
► Birthdays: Actor Elinor Donahue is 86. Rock musician Alan Price (the Animals) is 81. Actor Tim Curry is 77. Motorsports Hall of Famer Al Unser Jr. is 61. Former recording executive Suge Knight is 58. Singer-songwriter Dar Williams is 56. Actor Ashley Judd is 55. Actor James Franco is 45. Actor Kate Hudson is 44.
► In 1775, the American Revolutionary War began with the battles of Lexington and Concord.
► In 1865, a funeral was held at the White House for President Lincoln, assassinated five days earlier; his coffin was then taken to the US Capitol for a private memorial service in the Rotunda.
► In 1897, the first Boston Marathon was held; winner John J. McDermott ran the course in two hours, 55 minutes, and 10 seconds.
► In 1912, a special subcommittee of the Senate Commerce Committee opened hearings in New York into the Titanic disaster.
► In 1943, during World War II, tens of thousands of Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto began a valiant but ultimately futile battle against Nazi forces.
► In 1977, the Supreme Court, in Ingraham v. Wright, ruled 5-4 that even severe spanking of schoolchildren by faculty members did not violate the Eighth Amendment ban against cruel and unusual punishment.
► In 1989, 47 sailors were killed when a gun turret exploded aboard the USS Iowa in the Caribbean. (The Navy initially suspected that a dead crew member had deliberately sparked the blast, but later said there was no proof of that.)
► In 1993, the 51-day siege at the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas, ended as fire destroyed the structure after federal agents began smashing their way in; about 80 people, including two dozen children and sect leader David Koresh, were killed.
► In 1995, a truck bomb destroyed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people. (Bomber Timothy McVeigh, who prosecutors said had planned the attack as revenge for the Waco siege of two years earlier, was convicted of federal murder charges and executed in 2001.)
► In 2005, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger of Germany was elected pope in the first conclave of the new millennium; he took the name Benedict XVI.
► In 2013, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, a 19-year-old college student wanted in the Boston Marathon bombings, was taken into custody after a manhunt that had left the city virtually paralyzed; his older brother and alleged accomplice, 26-year-old Tamerlan, was killed earlier in a furious attempt to escape police.