20 April 2026 (MIA)

1653 – Oliver Cromwell dissolves the Rump Parliament.

1657 – Freedom of religion is granted to the Jews of New Amsterdam (later New York City).

1770 – The Georgian king Erekle II, abandoned by his Russian ally Count Totleben, wins a victory over Ottoman forces at Aspindza.

1775 – American Revolutionary War: the Siege of Boston begins, following the battles at Lexington and Concord.

1792 – France declares war against the “King of Hungary and Bohemia”, the beginning of French Revolutionary Wars.

1809 – Two Austrian army corps in Bavaria are defeated by a First French Empire army led by Napoleon I of France at the Battle of Abensberg on the second day of a four day campaign that ended in a French victory.

1810 – The Governor of Caracas declares independence from Spain.

1836 – U.S. Congress passes an act creating the Wisconsin Territory.

1862 – Louis Pasteur and Claude Bernard complete the first pasteurization tests.

1876 – The April Uprising, a key point in modern Bulgarian history, leading to the Russo-Turkish War and the liberation of Bulgaria from domination as an independent part of the Ottoman Empire.

1902 – Pierre and Marie Curie refine radium chloride.

1914 – 19 men, women, and children die in the Ludlow Massacre during a Colorado coal-miner’s strike.

1922 – The Soviet government creates South Ossetian Autonomous Oblast within Georgian SSR.

1926 – Western Electric and Warner Bros. announce Vitaphone, a process to add sound to film.

1939 – Adolf Hitler’s 50th birthday is celebrated as a national holiday in Nazi Germany.

1939 – Billie Holiday records the first Civil Rights song “Strange Fruit”.

1945 – World War II: US troops capture Leipzig, Germany, only to later cede the city to the Soviet Union.

1951– Dan Gavriliu performs the first surgical replacement of a human organ.

1961 – Failure of the Bay of Pigs Invasion of US-backed Cuban exiles against Cuba.

1972 – Apollo 16, commanded by John Young, lands on the moon.

1978 – Korean Air Flight 902 is shot down by the Soviet Union.

1980 – Climax of Berber Spring in Algeria as hundreds of Berber political activists are arrested.

1982 – Macedonian writer and academic Aco Sopov dies in Skopje. His famous works include “On Gramos”, “Verses for Pain and Joy” etc.

1982 – Macedonian author and academician Aco Sopov passed away in Skopje. He published his first book of poetry in 1944, followed by a number of other works. Sopov was born in Stip on 20 December 1923.

1986 – Pianist Vladimir Horowitz performs in his native Russia for the first time in 61 years.

1998 – German terrorist group the Red Army Faction announces their dissolution after 28 years.

1999 – Columbine High School massacre: Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold kill 13 people and injure 24 others before committing suicide at Columbine High School in Columbine, Colorado.

2007 – Johnson Space Center Shooting: A man with a handgun barricades himself in NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas before killing a male hostage and himself.

2008 – Danica Patrick wins the Indy Japan 300 becoming the first female driver in history to win an Indy car race.

2010 – The Deepwater Horizon drilling rig explodes in the Gulf of Mexico, killing eleven workers and beginning an oil spill that would last six months.

2012 – One hundred twenty-seven people are killed when a plane crashes in a residential area near the Benazir Bhutto International Airport near Islamabad, Pakistan.

2013 – A 6.6-magnitude earthquake strikes Lushan County, Ya’an, in China’s Sichuan province, killing more than 150 people and injuring thousands.

2015 – 10 people are killed in a bomb attack on a convoy carrying food supplies to a United Nations compound in Garowe in the Somali region of Puntland.

2018 – Commonwealth countries decide Prince Charles will succeed Queen Elizabeth as the next head of the Commonwealth.

2020 – Price of US oil turns negative for the first time in history; West Texas Intermediate, the benchmark for US oil, falls as low as minus $37.63 a barrel as worldwide demand decreases.

2020 – Three US states, Georgia, Tennessee and South Carolina, are the first to announce the end of some COVID-19 protective measures.

2021 – Former police officer Derek Chauvin convicted of the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, in a case that prompted huge nationwide racial justice protests.

2021 – Record number of new COVID-19 cases reported (5.24 million) in one week around the world according to WHO, with a third in India.

2023 – SpaceX's Starship rocket, the most powerful ever built with 33 booster engines, launches on its first test flight from Boca Chica, Texas, and explodes four minutes into the flight amid criticism that Elon Musk rushed the launch.

2024 – NASA engineers successfully repair and recode Voyager 1 from 15 billion miles away after five month gap in not receiving data.