May 1st. 1915 RMS Lusitania departs New York.

• 1915 – The RMS Lusitania departs from New York City on her two hundred and second, and final, crossing of the North Atlantic. Six days later, the ship is torpedoed off the coast of Ireland with the loss of 1,198 lives, including 128 Americans, rousing American sentiment against Germany.
• RMS Lusitania was a British ocean liner, holder of the Blue Riband and briefly the world's biggest ship. She was launched by the Cunard Line in 1907, at a time of fierce competition for the North Atlantic trade. In 1915 she was torpedoed and sunk by a German U-boat, causing the deaths of 1,198 passengers and crew.
  As German shipping lines tended to monopolise the lucrative passage of continental emigrants, Cunard responded by trying to outdo them for speed, capacity and luxury. Lusitania and her running mate Mauretaniawere fitted with revolutionary new turbine engines, able to maintain a speed of 25 knots. Equipped with lifts, wireless telegraph and electric light, they provided 50% more passenger space than any other ship, and the first class decks were noted for their sumptuous furnishings.
  When she left New York for Liverpool on what would be her final voyage on 1 May 1915, submarine warfare was intensifying in the Atlantic. Germany had declared the seas around the United Kingdom to be a war-zone, and the German embassy in the United States had placed a newspaper advertisement warning people not to sail on Lusitania. On the afternoon of 7 May, Lusitania was torpedoed by a German U-Boat, 11 mi (18 km) off the southern coast of Ireland and inside the declared "zone of war". A second internal explosion sent her to the bottom in 18 minutes.
  In firing on a non-military ship without warning, the Germans had breached the international laws known as the Cruiser Rules. Although the Germans had reasons for treating Lusitania as a naval vessel, including that the ship was carrying war munitions and that the British had also been breaching the Cruiser Rules, the sinking caused a storm of protest in the United States. It also influenced the decision by the US to declare war in 1917.
  

  

April 29th 1910 The Peoples Budget.

• 1910 – The Parliament of the United Kingdom passes the People's Budget, the first budget in British history with the expressed intent of redistributing wealth among the British public.
• The 1909/1910 People's Budget was a product of then British Prime Minister H. H. Asquith's Liberal government, introducing unprecedented taxes on the wealthy in Britain and radical social welfare programmes to the country's policies. It was championed by Chancellor of the Exchequer David Lloyd George and his strong ally Winston Churchill, who was then President of the Board of Trade and a fellow Liberal; called the "Terrible Twins" by certain right-wing contemporaries.
  Churchill's biographer, William Manchester, called the People's Budget "a revolutionary concept" because it was the first budget in British history with the expressed intent of redistributing wealth among the British public. It was a key issue of contention between the Liberal government and the Conservative-dominated House of Lords, leading to two general elections in 1910 and the enactment of the Parliament Act 1911.
  The Budget was introduced in the British Parliament by David Lloyd George on 29 April 1909. Lloyd George argued that the People's Budget would eliminate poverty, and commended it thus:

  This is a war Budget. It is for raising money to wage implacable warfare against poverty and squalidness. I cannot help hoping and believing that before this generation has passed away, we shall have advanced a great step towards that good time, when poverty, and the wretchedness and human degradation which always follows in its camp, will be as remote to the people of this country as the wolves which once infested its forests".

  The budget included several proposed tax increases to fund the Liberal government's welfare reforms. Income tax was held at nine old pence in the pound (9d, or 3.75%) for incomes less than £2,000, which was equivalent to £176,520 in today's money—but a higher rate of one shilling (12d, or 5%) was proposed for incomes greater than £2,000, and an additional surcharge or "super tax" of 6d (a further 2.5%) was proposed on the amount by which incomes of £5,000 (£441,301 today) or more exceeded £3,000 (£264,780 today. An increase was also proposed in inheritance tax and naval rearmament.
  More controversially, the Budget also included a proposal for the introduction of complete land valuation and a 20% tax on increases in value when land changed hands. Land taxes were based on the ideas of the American tax reformer Henry George. This would have had a major effect on large landowners, and the Conservative-Unionist opposition, many of whom were large landowners, had had an overwhelming majority in the Lords since the Liberal split in 1886. Furthermore, the Conservatives believed that money should be raised through the introduction of tariffs on imports, which was to benefit British industry and trade within the Empire, and to raise revenue for social reforms at the same time (protectionism), although it was also unpopular as it would have meant higher prices on imported food. Interestingly, according to economic theory, such tariffs would have been very beneficial for land owners, especially in agricultural produce (see Corn Laws).

April 28 1789. Mutiny on the Bounty.

• 1789 – Mutiny on the Bounty: Lieutenant William Bligh and 18 sailors are set adrift and the rebel crew returns to Tahiti briefly and then sets sail for Pitcairn Island.
The Mutiny on the Bounty was a mutiny aboard the British Royal Navy ship HMS Bounty on 28 April 1789. The mutiny was led by Fletcher Christian against their captain, Lieutenant William Bligh. According to accounts, the sailors were attracted to the "idyllic" life and sexual opportunities afforded on the Pacific island of Tahiti. It has also been argued that they were motivated by Bligh's allegedly harsh treatment of them.
Eighteen mutineers set Bligh afloat in a small boat with eighteen of the twenty-two crew loyal to him. To avoid detection and prevent desertion, the mutineers then variously settled on Pitcairn Island or onTahiti and burned Bounty off Pitcairn.
In an extraordinary feat of seamanship, Bligh navigated the 23-foot (7 m) open launch on a 47-day voyage to Timor in the Dutch East Indies, equipped with a quadrant and pocket watch and without charts or compass. He recorded the distance as 3,618 nautical miles (6,701 km; 4,164 mi). He then returned to Britain and reported the mutiny to the Admiralty on 15 March 1790, 2 years and 11 weeks after his original departure.
The British government dispatched HMS Pandora to capture the mutineers, and Pandora reached Tahiti on 23 March 1791. Four of the men from Bounty came on board soon after her arrival, and ten more were arrested within a few weeks. These fourteen were imprisoned in a makeshift cell on Pandora's deck. Pandora ran aground on part of the Great Barrier Reef on 29 August 1791, with the loss of 31 of the crew and four of the prisoners. The surviving ten prisoners were eventually repatriated to England, tried in a naval court, with three hanged, four acquitted, and three pardoned.
Descendants of some of the mutineers and Tahitians still live on Pitcairn. The mutiny has been commemorated in books, films, and songs.

1865 27 April John Wilkes Booth was shot.

• 1865 – Union cavalry troopers corner and shoot dead John Wilkes Booth, assassin of President Lincoln, in Virginia
• United States President Abraham Lincoln was shot on Good Friday, April 14, 1865, while attending the play Our American Cousin at Ford's Theatre as theAmerican Civil War was drawing to a close. The assassination occurred five days after the commander of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia, GeneralRobert E. Lee, surrendered to Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant and theUnion Army of the Potomac, ending the American Civil War. Lincoln was the first American president to be assassinated,  though an unsuccessful attempt had been made on Andrew Jackson 30 years before in 1835. The assassination of Lincoln was planned and carried out by the well-known stage actor John Wilkes Booth, as part of a larger conspiracy in a bid to revive the Confederate cause.
  Booth's co-conspirators were Lewis Powell and David Herold, who were assigned to kill Secretary of State William H. Seward, and George Atzerodt who was to kill Vice President Andrew Johnson. By simultaneously eliminating the top three people in the administration, Booth and his co-conspirators hoped to sever the continuity of the United States government. Lincoln was shot while watching the play Our American Cousin with his wife Mary Todd Lincoln at Ford's Theatrein Washington, D.C.. He died early the next morning. The rest of the conspirators' plot failed; Powell only managed to wound Seward, while Atzerodt, Johnson's would-be assassin, lost his nerve and fled.
  

  

1916 April 24th Ernest Shakleton journey from Elephant island.

1916 – Ernest Shackleton and five men of the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition launch a lifeboat from uninhabitedElephant Island in the Southern Ocean to organise a rescue for the

The Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition (1914–17), also known as the EnduranceExpedition, is considered the last major expedition of the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration. Conceived by Sir Ernest Shackleton, the expedition was an attempt to make the first land crossing of the Antarctic continent. After the conquest of the South Pole by Roald Amundsen in 1911, this crossing from sea to sea remained, in Shackleton's words, the "one great main object of Antarctic journeyings". The expedition failed to accomplish this objective, but became recognised instead as an epic feat of endurance.

Shackleton had served in the Antarctic on Captain Scott's Discovery Expedition, 1901–04, and had led the British Antarctic Expedition, 1907–09. In this new expedition he proposed to sail to the Weddell Sea and to land a shore party near Vahsel Bay, in preparation for a transcontinental march through the South Pole to the Ross Sea. A supporting group, the Ross Sea party, would meanwhile travel to the opposite side of the continent, establish camp in McMurdo Sound, and from there lay a series of supply depots across the Ross Ice Shelf to the foot of the Beardmore Glacier. These depots would be essential for the transcontinental party's survival, as the party would not be able to carry enough provisions for the entire crossing. The expedition required two ships: Endurance under Shackleton for the Weddell Sea party, and Aurora, under Captain Aeneas Mackintosh, for the Ross Sea party.

Endurance became beset in the ice of the Weddell Sea before reaching Vahsel Bay, and despite efforts to free it, drifted northward, held in the pack ice, throughout the Antarctic winter of 1915. Eventually the ship was crushed and sunk, stranding its 28-man complement on the ice. After months spent in makeshift camps as the ice continued its northwards drift, the party took to the lifeboats to reach the inhospitable, uninhabited Elephant Island. Shackleton and five others then made an 800-mile (1,300 km) open-boat journey in the James Caird to reach South Georgia. From there, Shackleton was eventually able to mount a rescue of the men waiting on Elephant Island and bring them home without loss of life. On the other side of the continent, the Ross Sea party overcame great hardships to fulfil its mission. Aurora was blown from her moorings during a gale and was unable to return, leaving the shore party marooned without proper supplies or equipment. Nevertheless the depots were laid, but three lives were lost in the process.

The ultimate pub fight.

The St Scholastica Day riot of 10 February 1355, is one of the more notorious events in the history of Oxford, England 

The seed of the riot was an altercation in the Swindlestock Tavern (now the site of the Santander Bank on Carfax, on the corner of St Aldate's and Queen Street) between two students of the University of Oxford, Walter Spryngeheuse and Roger de Chesterfield, and the taverner, John Croidon. They complained about the quality of drinks, which led to an exchange of rude words that ended with the students throwing their drinks in the taverner's face and assaulting him.  Retaliation for this incident led to armed clashes between locals and students.

The mayor of Oxford, John de Bereford, asked the Chancellor of Oxford University, Humphrey de Cherlton, to arrest the two students, to no avail. Instead, 200 students supported Spryngeheuse and Chesterfield, allegedly assaulted the mayor and others. As the situation escalated, locals from the surrounding countryside poured in, crying: "Havac! Havoc! Smyt fast, give gode knocks!"

A riot broke out and lasted two days, which left 63 scholars and perhaps 30 locals dead. The scholars were eventually routed.

Resolution

The dispute was eventually settled in favour of the University, when a special charter was created. Annually thereafter, on 10 February the saint's day of St Scholastica, the mayor and councillors had to march bareheaded through the streets and pay to the university a fine of one penny for every scholar killed, a total of 5s, 3d. The penance ended 470 years later, in 1825 when the mayor refused to take part.

Present-day

In an act of conciliation on 10 February 1955, the Mayor was given an honorary degree and the Vice-Chancellor was made an Honorary Freeman, at a commemoration of the events of 1355.

The riot was a culmination of other riots in Oxford that resulted in over 90 deaths. In the 1850s novel The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green by Cuthbert Bede, students still saw St Scholastica’s Day as an opportunity for a confrontation.

1838 April 23rd. Great Western docks in NYC.

1838 -April 23rd. English steamship "Great Western" crossing Atlantic docks in NYC

In 1836, Isambard Brunel, his friend Thomas Guppy and a group of Bristol investors formed the Great Western Steamship Company to build a line of steamships for the Bristol-New York route.The idea of regular scheduled transatlantic service was under discussion by several groups and the rival British and American Steam Navigation Company was established at the same time. Great Western's design sparked controversy from critics that contended that she was too big. The principle that Brunel understood was that the carrying capacity of a ship increases as the cube of its dimensions, whilst the water resistance only increases as the square of its dimensions. This meant that large ships were more fuel efficient, something very important for long voyages across the Atlantic.

Great Western was an iron-strapped, wooden, side-wheel paddle steamer, with four masts to hoist the auxiliary sails. The sails were not just to provide auxiliary propulsion, but also were used in rough seas to keep the ship on an even keel and ensure that both paddle wheels remained in the water, driving the ship in a straight line. The hull was built of oak by traditional methods. She was the largest steamship for one year, until the British and American's British Queen went into service. Built at the shipyard of Patterson & Mercer in Bristol, Great Western was launched on 19 July 1837 and then sailed to London, where she was fitted with twoside-lever steam engines from the firm of Maudslay, Sons & Field, producing 750 indicated horsepower between them.

1915 April 22nd. First use of poison gas.

• 1915 – The use of poison gas in World War I escalates when chlorine gas is released as a chemical weapon in the Second Battle of Ypres.
• Chemical weapons in World War I were primarily used to demoralize, injure, and kill entrenched defenders, against whom the indiscriminate and generally slow-moving or static nature of gas clouds would be most effective. The types of weapons employed ranged from disabling chemicals, such as tear gas and the severemustard gas, to lethal agents like phosgene and chlorine. This chemical warfare was a major component of the first global war and first total war of the 20th century. The killing capacity of gas, however, was limited – only four percent of combat deaths were caused by gas. Gas was unlike most other weapons of the period because it was possible to develop effective countermeasures, such asgas masks. In the later stages of the war, as the use of gas increased, its overall effectiveness diminished. The widespread use of these agents of chemical warfare, and wartime advances in the composition of high explosives, gave rise to an occasionally expressed view of World War I as "the chemists' war".
  The use of poison gas performed by all major belligerents throughout World War I constituted war crimes as its use violated the 1899 Hague Declaration Concerning Asphyxiating Gases and the 1907 Hague Convention on Land Warfare, which prohibited the use of "poison or poisoned weapons" in warfare.
  

  
  

1918 April 21st. Red Baron shot down.

• 1918 – World War I: German fighter ace Manfred von Richthofen, better known as "The Red Baron", is shot down and killed over Vaux-sur-Somme in France.Manfred Albrecht Freiherr von Richthofen (2 May 1892 – 21 April 1918), also widely known as the Red Baron, was a German fighter pilotwith the Imperial German Army Air Service (Luftstreitkräfte) during World War I. He is considered the top ace of that war, being officially credited with 80 air combat victories.
  Originally a cavalryman, Richthofen transferred to the Air Service in 1915, becoming one of the first members of Jasta 2 in 1916. He quickly distinguished himself as a fighter pilot, and during 1917 became leader ofJasta 11 and then the larger unit Jagdgeschwader 1 (better known as the "Flying Circus"). By 1918, he was regarded as a national hero in Germany, and was very well known by the other side.
  Richthofen was shot down and killed near Amiens on 21 April 1918. There has been considerable discussion and debate regarding aspects of his career, especially the circumstances of his death. He remains perhaps the most widely known fighter pilot of all time, and has been the subject of many books, films and other media.
  

  

1657 April 19th Battle of Santa Cruz

1657 April 19th.General-of-the-seas Robert Blake's fleet arrived off Santa Cruz; Santa Cruz lies in a deeply-indented bay and the harbour was defended by a castle armed with forty guns and a number of smaller forts connected by a triple line of breastworks to shelter musketeers; seventeen Spanish ships were moored in a semi-circle in the harbour under cover of the shore batteries, including seven great galleons of the plate fleet, in an operation similar to the raid on the Barbary pirates of Porto Farina in Tunisia in 1655, General-of-the-seas Robert Blake planned to send twelve frigates under the command of (now) Rear-Admiral Richard Stayner in the Speaker into the harbour to attack the galleons while he followed in the George with the fleet to bombard the shore batteries.
1657 Battle. April 20th.The attack began at 9:00a,m. in the morning, Rear-admiral Richard Stayner's division maneuvered alongside the Spanish ships,which protected the English ships to some extent from the guns of the castle and forts, no shot was fired from the English ships until they had moved into position and dropped anchor. General-of-the-seas Robert Blake saw what the Spanish had not; that the six galleons masked the fire of the other ten ships, while the frigates attacked the galleons, General-of-the-seas Robert Blake's heavier warships sailed into the harbour to bombard the shore defences. General-of-the-seas Robert Blake ordered that no prizes were to be taken; the Spanish fleet was to be utterly destroyed, most of the Spanish fleet, made up of smaller armed merchantmen, were quickly silenced by the superior gunnery of Admiral Richard Stayner's warships, only the two great galleons, strongly built and with powerful guns, presented a real challenge and continued to fight after the rest of the fleet had surrendered. General-of-the-seas Robert Blake's division cleared the breastworks and smaller forts; smoke from the gunfire and burning ships worked to the advantage of the English by obscuring their ships from the Spanish batteries, around noon, the flagship of the Spanish Admiral Don Diego de Egues caught fire; shortly afterwards it was destroyed when the powder magazine exploded. English sailors took to boats to board Spanish ships and set them on fire, by 3:00.p.m afternoon, all sixteen Spanish ships in the harbour were sunk, surrendered or ablaze; Contrary to orders, the Swiftsure and four other frigates each took a surrendered ship as a prize and attempted to tow it out of the harbour. General- of-the-seas Robert Blake sent peremptory orders that the prizes were to be burnt, he had to repeat his order three times before the reluctant captains obeyed. Having achieved its objective of destroying the Spanish ships, the English fleet was faced with the hazardous task of withdrawing from Santa Cruz harbour under constant fire from the forts, according to accounts the wind miraculously shifted from the north-east to the south-west at exactly the right moment to carry General-of-the-seas Robert Blake ships out of the harbour; however, this story is probably based upon a misunderstanding of a report pertaining to general weather conditions on the voyage as a whole.The English fleet worked its way back out to the open sea by warping out, or hauling on anchor ropes, a tactic General-of-the-seas Robert Blake had introduced during the raid on Porto Farina.The Speaker,which was the first ship to enter the harbour and last to leave, had been badly damaged, but no English ships were lost in the battle.

1770 April 19th Captain James Cook sights Australia.

• 1770 – Captain James Cook sights the eastern coast of what is now Australia. 
• Captain James Cook, FRS, RN (7 November 1728 – 14 February 1779) was a British explorer, navigator, cartographer, and captain in the Royal Navy. Cook made detailed maps of Newfoundland prior to making three voyages to the Pacific Ocean, during which he achieved the first recorded European contact with the eastern coastline of Australia and the Hawaiian Islands, and the first recorded circumnavigation of New Zealand. Cook joined the British merchant navy as a teenager and joined the Royal Navy in 1755. He saw action in the Seven Years' War, and subsequently surveyed and mapped much of the entrance to the Saint Lawrence River during the siege ofQuebec. This helped bring Cook to the attention of the Admiralty and Royal Society. This notice came at a crucial moment in both Cook's career and the direction of British overseas exploration, and led to his commission in 1766 as commander of HM Bark Endeavour for the first of three Pacific voyages.
• In three voyages Cook sailed thousands of miles across largely uncharted areas of the globe. He mapped lands from New Zealand to Hawaii in the Pacific Ocean in greater detail and on a scale not previously achieved. As he progressed on his voyages of discovery he surveyed and named features, and recorded islands and coastlines on European maps for the first time. He displayed a combination of seamanship, superior surveying and cartographic skills, physical courage and an ability to lead men in adverse conditions.
  Cook was killed in Hawaii in a fight with Hawaiians during his third exploratory voyage in the Pacific in 1779. He left a legacy of scientific and geographical knowledge which was to influence his successors well into the 20th century and numerous memoria worldwide have been dedicated to him. However, not all summaries of his progress are as positive as this. Dr. Haunani-Kay Trask, a Hawaiian activist and Hawaii scholar says this

  If we go back in time to contact with the syphilitic Captain Cook, what we realize is that the first thing that was a gift of Western civilization was disease. The second thing that was a gift of Western civilization was violence -- they tried to take our chief hostage, and as a result of that we killed him.
  

  

18th. April 1912 RMS Carpathia rescues Titanic survivors.

Carpathia was sailing from New York City to Fiume, Austria-Hungary (now Rijeka, Croatia) on the night of Sunday, 14 April 1912. Among her passengers were the American painters Colin Campbell Cooper and his wife Emma, journalist Lewis P. Skidmore, photographer Dr. Francis H. Blackmarr, and Charles H. Marshall, whose three nieces were travelling aboard Titanic.

Carpathia's wireless operator, Harold Cottam, had missed previous messages fromTitanic, as he was on the bridge at the time. He then received messages from Cape Race, Newfoundland, stating they had private traffic for Titanic. He thought he would be helpful and at 12:11 am on 15 April sent a message to Titanic stating that Cape Race had traffic for them. In reply he received Titanic's distress signal. Cottam awakened Captain Arthur Henry Rostron who immediately set a course at maximum speed (17 kn (20 mph; 31 km/h)) to Titanic's last known position, approximately 58 mi (93 km) away. Rostron ordered the ship's heating and hot water cut off in order to make as much steam as possible available for the engines.  At full speed it took the Carpathia four hours to reach Titanic, while Titanic only stayed afloat for two hours and sank before Carpathia arrived. At 4:00 am, Carpathia arrived at the scene, after working her way through dangerous ice fields, and took on 705 survivors of the disaster from Titanic's lifeboats.

A medal awarded to aCarpathia crew member for their part in the rescue of Titanic survivors

For their rescue work, the crew of Carpathia were awarded medals by the survivors. Crew members were awarded bronze medals, officers silver, and Captain Rostron a silver cup and a gold medal, presented by Margaret Brown. Rostron was knighted by King George V, was later a guest of President Taft at the White House, where he was presented with a Congressional Gold Medal, the highest honour the United States Congress could confer upon him.

17th April 1964 The Ford Mustang announced.

The Ford Mustang is an automobile manufactured by the Ford Motor Company. It was initially based on the platform of the second generation North American Ford Falcon, a compact car. Introduced early on April 17, 1964,  and thus dubbed as a "1964½" model by Mustang fans, the 1965 Mustang was the automaker's most successful launch since the Model A. The Mustang has undergone several transformations to its current fifth generation.

The Mustang created the "pony car" class of American automobiles—sports car-like coupes with long hoods and short rear decks -and gave rise to competitors such as the Chevrolet Camaro, and Pontiac Firebird, AMC Javelin, as well as Chrysler's revamped Plymouth Barracuda and the first generation Dodge Challenger. The Mustang is also credited for inspiring the designs of coupés such as the Toyota Celica and Ford Capri, which were imported to the United States.

1945 April 16th. German refugee ship Goya sunk.

• 1945 – More than 7,000 die when the German refugee ship Goya is sunk by a Soviet submarine.
• The Goya was a German transport ship sunk by a Soviet submarine in the Baltic Sea, near the end of the Second World War, while carrying wounded Wehrmacht troops and civilians who were fleeing the advance of Soviet forces. Most of the crew and passengers died. The sinking of the Goya was one of the biggest single-incident maritime losses of life of the war, and as such one of the largest maritime losses of life in history, with just 183 survivors among 7,000 passengers and crew.
  As the convoy passed the Hel Peninsula at the exit of the Danzig Bay, it was sighted by the Soviet minelayer submarine L-3which also carried torpedoes. Even though the Goya was faster than submarines, the convoy was slowed by the engine problems of the Kronenfels, which also required a 20-minute stop for repairs. At around 23:52, the commander of L-3, Captain Vladimir Konovalov, gave the order to fire.
  Within seven minutes of being torpedoed, the Goya, a freighter without the safety precautions of a passenger ship, sank to a depth of approximately 76m, with the loss of possibly more than 6,000 people killed, either within the ship, or outside by drowning and hypothermia in the icy waters. The exact number can probably never be determined. The captain of another ship mentioned a figure of 7-8,000 passengers and crew in his report. In total, only 183 people were saved from the water by M 256 and M 328. It may be the second-worst maritime disaster by number of casualties during World War II, following the Wilhelm Gustloff.
  The MV Wilhelm Gustloff was a German ship which was sunk on 30 January 1945 by a Soviet submarine in the Baltic Sea while evacuating German civilians, officials and military personnel from Gdynia(Gotenhafen), occupied Poland, as the Red Army advanced. By one estimate 9,400 people died, which would make it the largest loss of life in a single ship sinking in history.