History of the Day for:
April 8
- 1513: Explorer Juan Ponce de Leon claimed Florida for Spain.
- 1834: Cornelius Lawrence of New York City became the first mayor to be elected by popular vote in a city election.
- 1873: Alfred Paraf of New York City patented the first successful oleomargarine.
- 1893: Actress Mary Pickford was born in Canada as Gladys Smith. Pickford formed the United Artists company in 1919 with Charlie Chaplin, D.W. Griffith and Douglas Fairbanks.
- 1913: The opening of China's first parliament took place in Peking (now Beijing).
- 1935: The Works Progress Administration is formed when the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act of 1935 becomes law.
- 1940: World War II: The United Kingdom and France announce that they have mined Norwegian territorial waters to prevent their use by German supply ships.
- 1942: World War II: Siege of Leningrad – Soviet forces open a much-needed railway link to Leningrad.
- 1942: World War II: The Japanese take Bataan in the Philippines.
- 1943: U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, in an attempt to check inflation, freezes wages and prices, prohibits workers from changing jobs unless the war effort would be aided thereby, and bars rate increases by common carriers and public utilities.
- 1946: The League of Nations began its final session in Geneva after being replaced by the United Nations.
- 1950: India and Pakistan sign the Liaquat-Nehru Pact.
- 1952: President Harry S. Truman seized the steel industry to avert a nationwide strike.
- 1971: Chicago became the first rock group to play Carnegie Hall in New York City.
- 1973: Artist Pablo Picasso died at his home near Mougins, France, at age 91.
- 1974: Hank Aaron broke Babe Ruth's home run record by collecting his 715th home run.
- 1981: General Omar N. Bradley died in New York at age 88.
- 1986: Actor Clint Eastwood was elected mayor of Carmel, Calif.
- 1988: The Reverend Jimmy Swaggart was defrocked as a minister of the Assemblies of God after he rejected an order from the church's national leaders to stop preaching for a year.
- 1990: Ryan White, the teen-age AIDS patient whose battle for acceptance gained national attention, died in Indianapolis at 18.
- 1992: Tennis great Arthur Ashe announced at a news conference that he had AIDS; after DNA tests, German and Israeli authorities said they were certain that Josef Mengele died in Brazil in 1979.
- 1994: Kurt Cobain, singer-musician for the band Nirvana, was found dead in Seattle of a self-inflicted gunshot wound; he was 27.
- 1997: Singer-songwriter Laura Nyro died in Danbury, Conn., at 49.
- 1999: Haryana Gana Parishad, a political party in the Indian state of Haryana, merges with the Indian National Congress.
- 2000: Nineteen Marines are killed when a V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft crashes near Marana, Arizona.
- 2004: Darfur conflict: The Humanitarian Ceasefire Agreement is signed by the Sudanese government and two rebel groups.
- 2004: U.S. National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice testifies before the 9/11 Commission.
- 2006: Shedden massacre: The bodies of eight men, all shot to death, are found in a field in Ontario, Canada. The murders are soon linked to the Bandidos motorcycle gang.
- 2008: The construction of the world's first building to integrate wind turbines is completed in Bahrain.