EVENTS:
- 1890 – A tornado strikes Louisville, Kentucky, killing 76 and injuring 200.
- 1910 – A fire during a barn-dance in Ököritófülpös, Hungary, kills 312.
- 1964 – The Good Friday earthquake, the most powerful earthquake in U.S. history at a magnitude of 9.2 strikes Southcentral Alaska, killing 125 people and inflicting massive damage to the city of Anchorage.
- 1977 – Tenerife airport disaster: Two Boeing 747 airliners collide on a foggy runway on Tenerife in the Canary Islands, killing 583 (all 248 on KLM and 335 on Pan Am). Sixty-one survived on the Pan Am flight. This is the worst aviation accident in history.
- 2000 – A Phillips Petroleum plant explosion in Pasadena, Texas kills one and injures 71.
- 2009 – A suicide bomber kills at least 48 at a mosque in the Khyber Agency of Pakistan.
- 2013 – A 6.0-magnitude earthquake strikes near Taipei, Taiwan, injuring 97 people.
- 2015 – Al-Shabab militants attack and temporarily occupy a Mogadishu hotel leaving at least 20 people dead.
- 2016 – A suicide blast in Gulshan-e-Iqbal Park, Lahore claims over 70 lives and leaves almost 300 others injured. The target of the bombing are Christians celebrating Easter.
- 2020 – North Macedonia becomes the 30th member of NATO.
- 2023 – Seven people, including the perpetrator, are killed in a mass shooting at the Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee.
BIRTHS:
- 1845 – Wilhelm Röntgen, German physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1923)
- 1847 – Otto Wallach, German chemist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1931)
- 1859 – George Giffen, Australian cricketer and footballer (d. 1927)
- 1891 – Vallance Jupp, English cricketer (d. 1960)
- 1898 – Herb Stein, American football player (d. 1980)
- 1914 – Ces Burke, New Zealand cricketer (d. 1997)
- 1942 – John Sulston, English biologist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate
- 1942 – John Sulston, English biologist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate
- 1963 – Bedabrata Pain, Indian director, producer, and screenwriter
- 1973 – Roger Telemachus, South African cricketer
- 1985 – Dario Baldauf, Austrian footballer
- 1993 – Matt Hobden, English cricketer (d. 2016)
- 2002 – Daria Snigur, Ukrainian tennis player
HOLIDAYS and OBSERVANCES: