History of the Day for:
April 4
- 1581: Frances Drake completed his circumnavigation of the world.
- 1818: Congress decided the U.S. flag would consist of 13 red and white stripes representing the original 13 colonies and 20 stars, with a new star added for every new state.
- 1828: Casparus van Wooden patented chocolate milk powder.
- 1841: President William Henry Harrison succumbed to pneumonia one month after he was inaugurated, becoming the first president to die while in office.
- 1850: Los Angeles was incorporated as a city.
- 1887: Susanna Medora Salter of Argonia, Kan., became the first woman elected as mayor of a U.S. city.
- 1902: British financier Cecil Rhodes left $10 million in his will to provide scholarships for Americans at Oxford University.
- 1932: C. C. King isolated Vitamin C at the University of Pittsburgh.
- 1933: The U.S. dirigible Akron crashed off the New Jersey coast, killing 73.
- 1939: Faisal II becomes King of Iraq.
- 1944: World War II: First bombardment of Bucharest by Anglo-American forces kills 3000 civilians.
- 1945: World War II: Soviet Army takes control of Hungary.
- 1945: U.S. forces liberated the Nazi death camp Ohrdruf in Germany.
- 1949: Twelve nations signed the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) treaty.
- 1968: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tenn. James Earl Ray confessed to the murder, but later recanted.
- 1969: Dr. Denton Cooley implanted the first temporary artificial heart.
- 1972: The first electric power plant fueled by garbage began operating.
- 1975: More than 130 people, most of them children, were killed when a U.S. Air Force plane evacuating Vietnamese orphans crashed shortly after take-off from Saigon.
- 1981: Henry Cisneros of San Antonio, Texas, became the first Mexican-American elected mayor of a major U.S. city.
- 1982: The United Kingdom sends a naval task force to the south Atlantic to reclaim the disputed Falkland Islands from Argentina.
- 1983: The space shuttle "Challenger" was launched into orbit on its maiden voyage.
- 1994: Netscape Communications was founded as Mosaic Communications.
- 1996: Comet Hyakutake is imaged by the USA Asteroid Orbiter Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous.
- 2002: The Angolan government and UNITA rebels sign a peace treaty ending the Angolan Civil War.
- 2007: 15 British Royal Navy personnel held in Iran are released by the Iranian President.
- 2008: The raid on the FLDS owned ranch called the YFZ Ranch in Texas, 401 children are taken into custody. 133 woman are taken into state custody also, the total number of woman and children is 534.