In what came to be known as “Black Sunday” and “The Dust Bowl”, on April 14, 1935, high winds kicked up clouds of millions of tons of dirt, dark and dense, sweeping it across the High Plains; quickly turning a warm, sunny afternoon into a blackness, darker than the darkest night. More
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What Happened in April?
Sieges, raids, and monumental deaths. Discover key historical events from April that influenced the world. Dates for earlier events may be approximate.
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African American contralto Marian Anderson, sang on Easter Sunday, April 9, 1939, at the Lincoln Memorial steps to a crowd of 75,000 after the Daughters of the American Revolution refused to allow her to sing at Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C. because she was black. Washington DC was still a segregated city, at that time .
Nazi Germany invades Denmark and Norway on April 9, 1940, during World War II. Known as Operation Weseruebung, it opened a new stage in warfare in which cooperation of air, land, and sea forces was essential for successful offensive operations.
The invasion, in the early stages of WWII shifted the focus of the war to the North Atlantic and allowed Germany to secure secured valuable resources and naval bases for the Atlantic, but the occupation of Norway forced Germany to allocate a large army of 300,000 troops.
Yugoslavia surrenders to Nazi Germany on April 17, 1941, after a surprise invasion on April 6.
The largest surrender of American troops since the American Civil War's Battle of Harpers Ferry takes place on April 9, 1942, as 12,000 Americans soldiers and 66,000 Filipinos surrender, to the Japanese at Bataan, the Philippines during World War II. Soon afterwards, U.S. and Filipino prisoners of war were forced into the Bataan Death March. More
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The Doolittle Raid, also known as the Tokyo Raid, took place on April 18, 1942. As, 16 B-25B Mitchell medium bombers, each with a crew of five, were launched from the US Navy aircraft carrier USS Hornet, in the Pacific Ocean.
They flew without fighter escorts planning to continue westward to land in China after bombing the military and industrial targets. The damage to Japanese military caused was minimal. Killing around 50 people and injuring 400. However the raid had major psychological effects. In the United States, it raised morale. In Japan, it raised fear and doubt about the ability of military leaders to defend the home islands. Doolittle received the Medal of Honor and was promoted two ranks to Brigadier general. More
The U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS Hornet (CV-8) launches a U.S. Army Air Forces North American B-25B Mitchell during the Doolittle Raid, 18 April 1942.
Albert Hofmann, a Swiss chemist at Sandoz Laboratories in Basel, accidentally discovers the hallucinatory effects of the LSD compound on April 16, 1943, as he accidentally absorbed a small amount while re-synthesizing LSD-25 for further testing.
The compound absorption, induced dizziness and, later, a " kind of dream world appeared' with vivid, colored hallucinations. He had originally synthesized the compound 5 years earlier on November 16, 1938. Today, LSD is illegal in almost every country in the world, and it is tightly controlled where its use is allowed in medical research.
The Battle of Okinawa starts on April 1, 1945, as more than 60,000 soldiers and US Marines of the US Tenth Army stormed ashore at Okinawa. Savage fighting erupted at the island’s southern end as the US forces encountered a network of Japanese inland defenses.
The land, sea, and air battle raged for nearly three months. About 12,000 American and 90,000 Japanese combatants died in the fighting, but deaths among Okinawan civilians may have reached 150,000. More
Dietrich Bonhoeffer,German theologian, Lutheran Pastor and anti-Nazi dissident, was hanged on April 9, 1945, at the Flossenbürg concentration camp, only days before the U.S. Forces arrived on April 23, 1945 and liberated the camp.
Bonhoeffer, was executed on the orders of Reichsfuhrer SS Heinrich Himmler, alongside others prisoners who were directly implicated in the unsuccessful plot to kill Hitler on July 20, 1944, such as Lutheran Admiral Wilhelm Canaris (former head of the German Abwehr or military intelligence), and Major General Hans Oster, and others.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt died on April 12, 1945, at age 63 from a massive cerebral hemorrhage (stroke) in Warm Springs, Georgia while serving his fourth term during WWII. Vice President Harry S. Truman becomes president. More
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U.S. President Harry S. learns of the Manhattan Project on April 25, 1945, after the death of President Roosevelt in April and he took the oath of office as the next president of the United States.
He was briefed by Henry Stimson, Secretary of War. While a Senator, Truman had noticed large, secret government expenditures in Washington state in 1943, but Secretary Stimson had personally asked him to stop investigating for national security reasons.
Truman went on to became in charge of the most difficult moral and tactical decision of World War II: whether or not to drop the atomic bomb. His ultimate decision led to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. More
American and Soviet troops meet on the Elbe in the vicinity of Torgau, Germany, on April 25, 1945, signaling that the end of the Second World War in Europe was within reach. More
Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, Italy’s fascist dictator, “Il Duce,” is executed by communist partisans after being captured while attempting to flee to Switzerland on April 28, 1945, in Giulino di Mezzegra, northern Italy.
He was shot alongside his mistress, Clara Petacci, his body was later displayed at Milan's Piazzale Loreto, where it was hung upside down and mutilated by a hostile crowd. More
Adolf Hitler, chancellor and dictator of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945, commits suicide in the Führerbunker via a self inflicted gunshot to the head after it became clear that Germany would lose the Battle of Berlin.
Eva Braun, his longtime mistress, who he had married the prior day, also committed suicide by cyanide poisoning. In accordance with Hitler's prior written and verbal instructions, their remains were carried up the stairs and through the bunker's emergency exit to the Reich Chancellery garden, where they were doused in petrol and burned. The news of Hitler's death was announced on German radio the next day, May 1. More
A massive 8.6 magnitude earthquake occurs in the Aleutian Islands of Alaska on April 1, 1946. Huge tsunami waves reached more than 100 feet above sea level, near the source of the earthquake, at Unimak Island and completely destroyed the brand new, U.S. Coast Guard's Scotch Cap lighthouse built with steel-reinforced concrete, killing all 5 crew members.
The tsunami arrived 4.9 hours later in Hilo, causing $26 million (1946 dollars) in damages and killing 96 people. More
Jackie Robinson becomes the first African-American to play Major League baseball, making his debut for the Brooklyn Dodgers on April 15 1947, playing first base for the Brooklyn Dodgers against the Boston Braves at Ebbets Field. Fifty years later, the league retired Jackie Robinson’s number 42, fifty years later, on April 15, 1997. More
A mid-morning fire on April 16, 1947 on board the French-registered vessel SS Grandcamp, docked in the port at Texas city, Galveston Bay, triggered an explosion as it detonated her cargo of about 2,300 tons of ammonium nitrate.
The explosion is started a chain reaction of fires and explosions aboard other ships and in nearby oil-storage facilities, ultimately killing almost 600 people, including all but one member of Texas City's 100 fire department volunteers. It was the deadliest industrial accident in U.S. history and one of history's largest non-nuclear explosions. More
President Truman signs the Economic Recovery Act on April 3, 1948, which became known as the "Marshall Plan", named for Secretary of State George Marshall, who had proposed that the United States provide economic assistance to restore the economic infrastructure of a devastated postwar Europe to make the Western European countries less vulnerable to Soviet expansionism. More
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg (née Greenglass) are sentenced to death on April 5, 1951 after being convicted of spying and passing secret information about the atomic bomb and other military information to the Soviet Union. They were executed in June, 1953.
President Eisenhower declined to grant executive clemency to the Rosenbergs, stating: "The nature of the crime for which they have been found guilty and sentenced far exceeds that of the taking of the life of another citizen; it involves the deliberate betrayal of the entire nation and could very well result in the death of many, many thousands of innocent citizens…" More
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President Truman fires General Douglas MacArthur on April 11, 1951, officially removing MacArthur of his command. This decision came after a series of public disagreements between the two men regarding the Korean War and MacArthur's insubordination in challenging Truman's authority. More