19th April 1587 – Francis Drake sank the Spanish fleet in Cádiz harbour. 1775 – The Battle of Lexington and Concord began, which started the American Revolution against the British. 1839 – The Treaty of London established Belgium as a kingdom. 1961 – The Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba ended. 1984 – Advance Australia […]

18th April 1506 – The cornerstone of the current St. Peter's Basilica was laid. 1909 – Joan of Arc was beatified in Rome. 1783 – Fighting ceased in the American Revolution, eight years since it began. 1924 – Simon & Schuster published the first crossword puzzle book. 1945 – Over 1,000 allied bombers attacked the […]

17th April 1397 – Geoffrey Chaucer recited the Canterbury Tales for the first time at the court of Richard II. (And it's been torturing British schoolchildren ever since.) 1521 – Martin Luther spoke to the assembly at the Diet of Worms, refusing to recant his teachings. 1961 – A group of CIA financed and trained […]

15th April 1452 – Leonardo da Vinci was born. 1755 – Samuel Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language was published in London. 1802 – William Wordsworth and his sister, Dorothy saw a "long belt" of daffodils, inspiring "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud". 1892 – The General Electric Company was formed. 1912 – The […]

14th April 2014 - 276 female students, who were sitting their final exams in the village of Chibook, Nigeria were abducted. Most are still missing.

11th April 1945 – The Buchenwald concentration camp, one of the first and the largest of the concentration camps on German soil, was liberated. 1951 – The Stone of Scone, the stone upon which Scottish monarchs were traditionally crowned, was found on the site of the altar of Arbroath Abbey. It had been taken by […]