EVENTS:
- 1920 – Palm Sunday tornado outbreak of 1920 affects the Great Lakes region and Deep South states.
- 1970 – Gediz earthquake: A 7.2 magnitude earthquake strikes western Turkey at about 23:05 local time, killed 1,086 and injured 1,260.
- 1979 – A coolant leak at the Three Mile Island‘s Unit 2 nuclear reactor outside Harrisburg, Pennsylvania leads to the core overheating and a partial meltdown.
- 1994 – BBC Radio 5 is closed and replaced with a new news and sport station BBC Radio 5 Live.
- 2005 – The 2005 Sumatra earthquake rocks Indonesia, and at magnitude 8.7 is the fourth strongest earthquake since 1965.
- 2006 – At least one million union members, students, and unemployed take to the streets in France in protest at the government’s proposed First Employment Contract law.
BIRTHS:
- 1842 – William Harvey Carney, American sergeant, Medal of Honor recipient (d. 1908)
- 1862 – Aristide Briand, French politician, Prime Minister of France, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1932)
- 1892 – Corneille Heymans, Belgian physiologist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1968)
- 1919 – Tom Brooks, Australian cricket umpire (d. 2007)
- 1924 – Fred Flanagan, Australian footballer (d. 2013)
- 1926 – Polly Umrigar, Indian cricketer (d. 2006)
- 1927 – Vina Mazumdar, Indian academic and activist (d. 2013)
- 1930 – Jerome Isaac Friedman, American physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate
- 1941 – Jack Simmons, English cricketer
- 1980 – David Lee, English footballer
- 1990 – Joe Bennett, English footballer
HOLIDAYS and OBSERVANCES:
- Commemoration of Sen no Rikyū (Schools of Japanese tea ceremony)
- Serfs Emancipation Day (Tibet)
- Teachers’ Day (Czech Republic and Slovakia)
