EVENTS:
- 1682 – Robert Cavelier de La Salle discovers the mouth of the Mississippi River, claims it for France and names it Louisiana.
- 1860 – On his phonautograph machine, Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville makes the oldest known recording of an audible human voice.
- 1937 – The Kamikaze arrives at Croydon Airport in London. It is the first Japanese-built aircraft to fly to Europe.
- 1945 – The United States Atomic Energy Commission is formed.
- 1957 – The Suez Canal in Egypt is cleared and opens to shipping.
- 1959 – Project Mercury: NASA announces the selection of the United States’ first seven astronauts, whom the news media quickly dub the “Mercury Seven“.
- 1961 – The Pacific Electric Railway in Los Angeles, once the largest electric railway in the world, ends operations.
- 1965 – Astrodome opens. First indoor baseball game is played.
- 1975 – The first game of the Philippine Basketball Association, the second oldest professional basketball league in the world.
- 2003 – Iraq War: Baghdad falls to American forces; Iraqis turn on symbols of their former leader Saddam Hussein, pulling down a grand statue of him and tearing it to pieces.
- 2013 – A 6.1–magnitude earthquake strikes Iran killing 32 people and injuring over 850 people.
- 2013 – At least 13 people are killed and another three injured after a man goes on a spree shooting in the Serbian village of Velika Ivanča.
- 2014 – A student stabs 20 people at Franklin Regional High School in Murrysville, Pennsylvania.
- 2017 – Palm Sunday church bombings at Coptic Churches in Tanta and Alexandria take place.
- 2017 – After refusing to give up his seat on an overbooked United Express flight, Dr. David Dao Duy Anh is forcibly dragged off the flight by aviation security officers, leading to major criticism of United Airlines.
- 2021 – Burmese military and security forces commit the Bago massacre, during which at least 82 civilians are killed.
BIRTHS:
- 1893 – Rahul Sankrityayan, Indian linguist, author, and scholar (d. 1963)
- 1919 – J. Presper Eckert, American engineer, invented the ENIAC (d. 1995)
- 1929 – Sharan Rani Backliwal, Indian sarod player and scholar (d. 2008)
- 1930 – Wallace McCain, Canadian businessman, founded McCain Foods (d. 2011)
- 1946 – Alan Knott, English cricketer
- 1948 – Jaya Bachchan, Indian actress and politician
- 1971 – Leo Fortune-West, English footballer and manager
- 1988 – Michel Alves Baroni, Brazilian footballer
HOLIDAYS and OBSERVANCES:
