2001: First full day of Passover
2001: Orthodox Easter
2001: Patriots Day
1775: The American Revolution began with the first shot fired at Lexington (no one knows from which side). The "shot heard round the world" (a reference from Ralph Waldo Emerson's poem "The Concord Hymn") occurred at the North Bridge in Concord later that same day. It was the first exchange where colonial militiamen were ordered to fire upon British soldiers.
Died 1882: Charles Darwin (naturalist)
1904: Great fire in Toronto started
1916: Women granted the right to vote in Alberta, Canada
1919: Leslie Irvin made the first free-fall parachute jump, Dayton, Ohio
1926: John C. Miles won Boston Marathon
1928: Oxford English Dictionary completed
Born 1930: Dick Sargent (actor)
Born 1933: Jayne Mansfield (actress)
1934: Surgeon's Loch Ness monster hoax photo taken
1934: Movie Stand Up and Cheer released in U.S., first to seriously launch Shirley Temple's film career
1941: Spring peepers heard in Dublin, NH
Born 1946: Tim Curry (actor)
Born 1968: Ashley Judd (actress)
Born 1978: James Franco (actor)
Born 1979: Kate Hudson (actress)
Born 1981: Hayden Christensen (actor)
1988: WIYY DJ Bob Rivers began an on-air vigil until baseball's Baltimore Orioles won (which was in 258 hours)
Died 1989: Daphne du Maurier (author)
1995: Oklahoma City bombing
Died 2004: Norris McWhirter (co-founder of the Guinness Book of Records, final arbiter on everything from the fastest climb of Mount Everest to the world's longest hot dog)
2005: Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger of Germany was elected pope. He chose the name Pope Benedict XVI. He was the oldest pope elected since 1730



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