What Happened On This Day – April 19
1995 168 die in the Oklahoma City bombing
Timothy McVeigh, the mastermind behind the attack, was executed on June 11, 2001. The motives for the bombing, which also killed 19 babies and children, remain somewhat unclear.
1987 The first installment of The Simpsons is aired
The hugely popular animated sitcom debuted on the Tracey Ullman Show in the form of one-minute shorts.
1971 The Soviet Union launches the world's first manned space station
Salyut 1 was 23 meters long and offered 100 cubic meters of pressurized space.
1919 Leslie Irvin makes the world's first free-fall parachute jump
The jump was executed to test a new kind of parachute, which was also the first featuring a ripcord. The Hollywood stuntman broke a leg on landing.
1775 The American Revolutionary War begins
The Battles of Lexington and Concord marked the beginning of the armed conflict between the Kingdom of Great Britain and 13 colonies of British North America. The war resulted in U.S. independence.
Births On This Day – April 19
1987 Maria Sharapova
Russian tennis player
1978 James Franco
American actor, director, producer, screenwriter
1952 Alexis Argüello
Nicaraguan boxer, politician
1937 Joseph Estrada
Filipino actor, producer, politician, 13th President of the Philippines
1933 Jayne Mansfield
American model, actress, singer
Deaths On This Day – April 19
2004 John Maynard Smith
English biologist
1967 Konrad Adenauer
German politician, Chancellor of West Germany
1914 Charles Sanders Peirce
American philosopher, mathematician, scientist
1882 Charles Darwin
English scientist, theorist
1824 Lord Byron
English poet