On This Day (April 28)

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• 1192 – Third Crusade: Conrad of Montferrat, the elected King of Jerusalem, was fatally stabbed by members of the Hashshashin.
• 1611 – The University of Santo Tomas in Manila, one of the oldest existing universities in Asia and one of the world's largest Catholic universities in terms of population, was founded.
• 1789 – Fletcher Christian led a mutiny aboard the Royal Navy ship HMAV Bounty against its commander William Bligh.
• 1908 - Oskar Schindler, Austrian businessman born. (d. 1974) (Schindler was a Sudeten German industrialist credited with saving almost 1,200 Jews during the Holocaust, by having them work in his enamelware and ammunitions factories located in what is now Poland and the Czech Republic respectively.)
• 1916 - Ferruccio Lamborghini, Italian automobile manufacturer born. (d. 1993) (Lamborghini was an Italian car maker and the founder of the Lamborghini brand.)
• 1923 – London's Wembley Stadium, then known as Empire Stadium, was opened to the public for the first time and held the 1923 FA Cup Final between Bolton Wanderers and West Ham United football clubs.
• 1926 - Harper Lee, American author born. (Lee is an American novelist known for her Pulitzer Prize–winning 1960 novel To Kill a Mockingbird, her only major work. She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom of United States for her contributions to literature in 2007.)
• 1952 – The Treaty of San Francisco entered into force, ending the occupation of Japan by the former Allied Powers of World War II.
• 1986 - United States Navy aircraft carrier USS Enterprise becomes the first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier to transit the Suez Canal, navigating from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean Sea to relieve USS Coral Sea, on station across the "Line of Death" in the Gulf of Sidra off the coast of Libya. The transit began at 0300 and lasted 12 hours.
  
  
  USS Enterprise, USS Long Beach and USS Bainbridge in formation in the Mediterranean, June 18, 1964.
  
  
• 1996 - In Tasmania, Australia, Martin Bryant goes on a shooting spree, killing 35 people and seriously injuring 37 more.

On This Day (April 27)

• 1296 – In the first battle of the First War of Scottish Independence, the English defeated the Scots near Dunbar, Scotland.
• 1565 – Conquistador Miguel López de Legazpi and 500 armed soldiers arrived at Cebu and established the first Spanish settlement in the Philippines.
• 1667 - The blind and impoverished, John Milton sells the copyright of Paradise Lost for £10.
• 1791 - Samuel F. B. Morse, American inventor born. (d. 1872) (Morse was an American painter of portraits and historic scenes, the creator of a single wire telegraph system, and co-inventor, with Alfred Vail, of the Morse Code.)
  
  
  Samuel F. B. Morse
  
  
• 1810 - Beethoven composes his famous piano piece, Für Elise.
• 1822 - Ulysses S. Grant, Civil War general and 18th President of the United States born. (d. 1885) (Grant was an American general and the eighteenth President of the United States (1869–1877). He achieved international fame as the leading Union general in the American Civil War.)
• 1865 – An explosion destroyed the steamboat Sultana on the Mississippi River, killing 1,700 passengers.
• 1891 - Sergei Prokofiev, Soviet composer born. (d. 1953)
  
  
  
• 1900 - Walter Lantz, American cartoonist born. (d. 1994) (Lantz was an American cartoonist and animator, best known for founding the Walter Lantz Studio and creating Woody Woodpecker.)
  
  
  Woody Woodpecker
  
  
• 1909 – Abdul Hamid II, the last Sultan of the Ottoman Empire to rule with absolute power, was overthrown by Mehmed V.
• 1967 – The Expo 67 World's Fair opened in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, with over 50 million visitors and 62 nations participating.
• 1974 - 10,000 march in Washington, D.C., calling for impeachment of US President Richard Nixon.
• 1992 – Betty Boothroyd became the first female Speaker of the British House of Commons.
• 1993 – Members of the Zambia national football team were killed in a plane crash off Libreville, Gabon en route to Dakar, Senegal to play a 1994 FIFA World Cup qualifying match against the Senegal national team.

On This Day (April 26)

• 121 - Marcus Aurelius, Roman Emperor born. (d. 180) (Aurelius was Roman Emperor from 161 to his death in 180. He was the last of the "Five Good Emperors", and is also considered one of the most important Stoic philosophers.)
• 570 - Muhammed, founder of Islam, according to the Shi'a sect. Other sources suggest April 20. born. (d. 632) (Muhammed is the central human figure of the world religion of Islam and is regarded by Muslims as the messenger and prophet of God (Arabic: الله‎ Allāh), the last and the greatest in a series of prophets of Islam. Muslims consider him the restorer of the original, uncorrupted monotheistic faith (islām) of Adam, Abraham and others.)
• 1476 - Simonetta Vespucci, inspiration of Botticelli died. (b.1453) (Vespucci was the wife of Marco Vespucci of Florence. She also is alleged to have been the mistress of Giuliano de' Medici, Lorenzo the Magnificent's younger brother. She was renowned for being the greatest beauty of her age - certainly of the city of Florence - and she is believed to have been the model for Venus in Botticelli's The Birth of Venus as well as the model for several other women in his paintings.)
  
  
  A posthumous portrait (c. 1476-80) of Simonetta Vespucci by Sandro Botticelli
  
  
  The Birth of Venus, Sandro Botticelli, c. 1482-1486, tempura on canvas
  
  
• 1478 – In a conspiracy to replace the Medici family as rulers of the Florentine Republic, the Pazzi family attacked Lorenzo de' Medici and killed his brother Giuliano during High Mass at the Florence Duomo.
• 1564 - William Shakespeare, English poet and playwright born. (d. 1616)
  
  (“Two households both alike in dignity
  (In fair Verona where we lay our scene)
  From ancient grudge break to new mutuny,
  Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
  From forth the fatal loins of these two foes
  A pair of star-cross’d lovers take their life,
  Whose misadventure’d piteous overthrows
  Doth with their death bury their parent’s strife.”)
  
  
• 1607 - English colonists of the Jamestown settlement make landfall at Cape Henry, Virginia.
• 1798 - Eugène Delacroix, French painter born. (d. 1863)
  
  
  Liberty Leading the People (1830)
  
  
• 1865 – American Army soldier Boston Corbett cornered and fatally shot John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln.
• 1937 – Spanish Civil War: The Bombing of Guernica by the Condor Legion of the German Luftwaffe resulted in a devastating firestorm.
• 1962 - NASA's Ranger 4 spacecraft crashes into the Moon. This marks the last time NASA allows a woman to pilot a spacecraft.
• 1964 – Tanganyika and Zanzibar merged to form Tanzania.
• 1986 – The Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant near Chernobyl, Ukrainian SSR suffered a steam explosion, resulting in a fire and a nuclear meltdown.
• 1994 - Physicists announce first evidence of the top quark subatomic particle.
• 2002 – Expelled student Robert Steinhäuser murdered 16 people and wounded 7 others before committing suicide in the Erfurt school shooting in Erfurt, Germany.