TODAY IN HISTORY

TUESDAY APR 19, 2022

1775

The American Revolutionary War began with the battles of Lexington and Concord.

1865

A funeral was held at the White House for President Abraham Lincoln, assassinated five days earlier; his coffin was then taken to the U.S. Capitol for a private memorial service in the Rotunda.

1897

The first Boston Marathon was held; winner John J. Mcdermott ran the course in two hours, 55minutes and 10 seconds.

1912

A special subcommittee of the Senate Commerce Committee opened hearings in New York into the Titanic disaster.

1943

During World War II, tens of thousands of Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto began a valiant but ultimately futile battle against Nazi forces.

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.

1989

47 sailors were killed when a gun turret exploded aboard the USS Iowa in the Caribbean.

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 80people, including two dozen children and sect leader David Koresh, were killed.

1995

A truck bomb destroyed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people.

2005

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger of Germany was elected pope in the first conclave of the new millennium; he took the name Benedict XVI.

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.

2015

Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old Black man, died a week after suffering a spinal cord injury in the back of a Baltimore police van while he was handcuffed and shackled.