April 23 is the 113th day of the year (114th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 252 days remaining until the end of the year.
Holidays
- Christian feast day:
- Earliest day on which the first day of Children’s Day can fall, while April 29 is the latest; celebrated on the last Saturday of April. (Colombia)
- Castile and León Day (Castile and León (Spain)
- Independence Day (Conch Republic, Key West, Florida)
- International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day
- Khongjom Day (Manipur, India)
- National Sovereignty and Children’s Day (Turkey and Northern Cyprus)
- Navy Day (China)
- St George’s Day (England) and its related observances:
- Canada Book Day (Canada)
- La Diada de Sant Jordi (Catalonia, Spain)
- World Book Day
- UN English Language Day (United Nations)
History
In 215 BC, A temple is built on the Capitoline Hill dedicated to Venus Erycina to commemorate the Roman defeat at Lake Trasimene.
In 599, Maya king Uneh Chan of Calakmul attacks rival city-state Palenque in southern Mexico, defeating queen Yohl Ik’nal and sacking the city.
In 711, Dagobert III is crowned King of the Franks
In 1014, Battle of Clontarf: Brian Boru defeats Viking invaders, but is killed in battle.
In 1016, Edmund Ironside succeeds his father Æthelred the Unready as king of England,
In 1343, St. George’s Night Uprising commences in the Duchy of Estonia.
In 1348, The founding of the Order of the Garter by King Edward III is announced on St. George’s Day.
In 1516, The Bayerische Reinheitsgebot is signed in Ingolstadt.
In 1521, Battle of Villalar: King Charles I of Spain defeats the Comuneros.
In 1616, English poet and dramatist William Shakespeare dies. He was an English poet, playwright and actor, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world’s pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England’s national poet and the “Bard of Avon”. His extant works, including some collaborations, consist of about 38 plays, 154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, and a few other verses, the authorship of some of which is uncertain. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright. Shakespeare was born and brought up in Stratford-upon-Avon. At the age of 18, he married Anne Hathaway, with whom he had three children: Susanna, and twins Hamnet and Judith. Between 1585 and 1592, he began a successful career in London as an actor, writer, and part-owner of a playing company called the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, later known as the King’s Men. He appears to have retired to Stratford around 1613 at age 49, where he died three years later. Few records of Shakespeare’s private life survive, and there has been considerable speculation about such matters as his physical appearance, sexuality, religious beliefs, and whether the works attributed to him were written by others.
In 1635, The first public school in the United States, Boston Latin School, is founded in Boston, Massachusetts.
In 1655, The Siege of Santo Domingo begins during the Anglo-Spanish War, and fails seven days later.
In 1660, Treaty of Oliwa is established between Sweden and Poland.
In 1661, King Charles II of England, Scotland and Ireland is crowned in Westminster Abbey.
In 1662, Connecticut was chartered as an English colony.
In 1789, President-elect George Washington and his wife moved into the first executive mansion, the Franklin House, in New York. The White House wouldn’t be built for another decade.
In 1815, The Second Serbian Uprising: a second phase of the national revolution of the Serbs against the Ottoman Empire, erupts shortly after the annexation of the country to the Ottoman Empire.
In 1850, William Wordsworth, English poet (b. 1770) died by aggravating a case of pleurisy and was buried at St. Oswald’s church in Grasmere. His widow Mary published his lengthy autobiographical “poem to Coleridge” as The Prelude several months after his death. Though this failed to arouse great interest in 1850, it has since come to be recognised as his masterpiece. Wordsworth was a major English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with the 1798 joint publication Lyrical Ballads. Wordsworth’s magnum opus is generally considered to be The Prelude, a semiautobiographical poem of his early years which he revised and expanded a number of times. It was posthumously titled and published, prior to which it was generally known as “the poem to Coleridge”. Wordsworth was Britain’s Poet Laureate from 1843 until his death in 1850.
In 1851, the first postage stamps were issued in Canada.
In 1879, Fire burns down the second main building and dome of the University of Notre Dame, which prompts the construction of the third, and current, Main Building with its golden dome.
In 1898, The U.S. government asked for 125,000 volunteers to fight against Spain in Cuba.
In 1910, American President Theodore Roosevelt makes his “The Man in the Arena” speech.
In 1914, First baseball game at Wrigley Field, then known as Weeghman Park in Chicago.
In 1918, World War I: The British Royal Navy makes a raid in an attempt to neutralise the Belgian port of Bruges-Zeebrugge.
In 1920, The Grand National Assembly of Turkey (TBMM) is founded in Ankara, Turkey. It denounces the government of Sultan Mehmed VI and announces the preparation of a temporary constitution.
In 1927, Cardiff City defeat Arsenal in the FA Cup Final, the only time it has been won by a team not based in England.
In 1929, Turkey becomes the first country to celebrate Children’s Day as a national holiday.
In 1932, The 153-year-old De Adriaan Windmill in Haarlem, Netherlands burns down. It is rebuilt and reopens exactly 70 years later.
In 1935, The Polish Constitution of 1935 is adopted.
In 1940, The Rhythm Night Club fire at a dance hall in Natchez, Mississippi, kills 198 people.
In 1941, World War II: The Greek government and King George II evacuate Athens before the invading Wehrmacht.
In 1941, At an “America First” rally in New York City, aviator Charles Lindbergh said, “It is obvious that England is losing the war.” Lindbergh opposed U.S. entry into World War II.
In 1941, World War II: The Greek government and King George II evacuate Athens before the invading Wehrmacht.
In 1942, World War II: Baedeker Blitz – German bombers hit Exeter, Bath and York in retaliation for the British raid on Lübeck.
In 1943, British & US offensive directed at Tunis/Bizerta. By the 7th of May 1943, at 15:30 in the afternoon, Tunis fell to troops and tanks of British 1st army who had defeated most of the German Fifth Panzer Army left guarding the city. At midday on 20 May 1943, the Allies held a victory parade on Avenue Maréchal Galliéni and Avenue Jules Ferry to signal the end of fighting in North Africa. Having succeeded in driving the Axis powers out of Tunisia, the Allies used Tunis as a base of operations to stage assaults against the island of Pantelleria, then Sicily, and finally Italy.
In 1945, World War II Adolf Hitler‘s designated successor Hermann Göring sends him a telegram asking permission to take leadership of the Third Reich, which causes Hitler to replace him with Joseph Goebbels and Karl Dönitz.
In 1946, Manuel Roxas is elected the last President of the Commonwealth of the Philippines.
In 1949, Chinese Civil War: Establishment of the People’s Liberation Army Navy.
In 1951, American journalist William N. Oatis is arrested for espionage by the Communist government of Czechoslovakia.
In 1951, Associated Press began use of a new service — “teletypesetting.” The AP provided a perforated, paper-tape message to a news bureau in Charlotte, North Carolina. The message was then fed into a monitor.
In 1955, The Canadian Labour Congress is formed by the merger of the Trades and Labour Congress of Canada and the Canadian Congress of Labour.
In 1956, The U.S. Supreme Court ended race segregation on buses.
In 1961, Algiers putsch by French generals.
In 1965, more than 200 U.S. planes struck North Vietnam in one of the heaviest raids of the Vietnam War.
In 1967, Soviet space program: Soyuz 1 (Russian: Союз 1, Union 1) a manned spaceflight carrying cosmonaut Colonel Vladimir Komarov is launched into orbit.
In 1968, Vietnam War: Student protesters at Columbia University in New York City take over administration buildings and shut down the university.
In 1968, The Methodist Church and the Evangelical United Brethren Church merged to form the United Methodist Church.
In 1969, Sirhan Sirhan was sentenced to death for the assassination of New York Sen. Robert F. Kennedy. The sentence was commuted to life in prison after the US Supreme Court moved to ban the death penalty as unconstitutional.
In 1971, Bangladesh Liberation War: The Pakistan Army and Razakars massacre approximately 3,000 Hindu emigrants in the Jathibhanga area of East Pakistan (now Bangladesh).
In 1983, President and Mrs. Reagan solemnly welcomed home the bodies of 16 of the Americans killed in the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut during ceremonies at Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington.
In 1985, Coca-Cola changes its formula and releases New Coke. The response is overwhelmingly negative, and the original formula is back on the market in less than 3 months.
In 1985, Former Senator Sam Ervin died at age 88. The North Carolina Democrat directed the Senate Watergate investigation that led to President Nixon’s resignation. He was an American politician. A Democrat, he served as a U.S. Senator from North Carolina from 1954 to 1974. A native of Morganton, he liked to call himself a “country lawyer“, and often told humorous stories in his Southern drawl. During his Senate career, Ervin was a legal defender of the Jim Crow laws and racial segregation, as the South’s constitutional expert during the congressional debates on civil rights. Unexpectedly, he became a liberal hero for his support of civil liberties. He is remembered for his work in the investigation committees that brought down Senator Joseph McCarthy in 1954 and especially his investigation in 1972 and 1973 of the Watergate scandal that led to the resignation in 1974 of President Richard Nixon.
In 1987, “Business Week” magazine announced its list of the nation’s highest paid executives this day. Lee Iacocca of Chrysler Corporation topped the list, followed by Paul Fireman of Reebok International. Iacocca received pay checks totaling an estimated $20.5 MILLION in 1987. That’s a lot of grocery money…
In 1990, Namibia becomes the 160th member of the United Nations and the 50th member of the Commonwealth of Nations.
In 1992, McDonald’s opened its first fast-food restaurant in the Chinese capital of Beijing.
In 1993, Eritreans vote overwhelmingly for independence from Ethiopia in a United Nations-monitored referendum.
In 1993, Sri Lankan politician Lalith Athulathmudali is assassinated while addressing a gathering, approximately four weeks ahead of the Provincial Council elections for the Western Province.
In 1993, United Farm Workers founder Cesar Chavez died at age 66 of apparent natural causes.
In 1994, the Libertarian party nominated Howard Stern for Governor of New York.
In 1996, Sotherby begins 4 day auction of Jackie O stuff-take in $34.5 million.
In 1997, Omaria massacre in Algeria: Forty-two villagers are killed.
In 1998, James Earl Ray, the ex-convict who confessed to assassinating the Reverend Martin Luther King Junior in 1968 and then insisted he was framed, died at a Nashville hospital at age 70.
In 2000, Elian Gonzalez spent a secluded Easter with his father at Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington, a day after the six-year-old boy was removed from his Miami relatives’ home in a pre-dawn raid by immigration agents.
In 2005, First YouTube video uploaded, titled “Me at the zoo“.
In 2013, At least 28 are dead and more than 70 are injured as violence breaks out in Hawija, Iraq.
In 2018, A vehicle-ramming attack kills 10 people and injures 16 in Toronto. A 25-year-old suspect, Alek Minassian, is arrested.
In 2019, The 2019 Hpakant jade mine collapse in Myanmar kills four miners and two rescuers.