Hans Christian Andersen, one of the world’s greatest storytellers, is born in Odense, near Copenhagen.

On April 2, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson asks Congress to send U.S. troops into battle against Germany in World War I. In his address to Congress that day, Wilson lamented it is a fearful thing to lead this great peaceful people into war. Four days later, Congress obliged and declared war on Germany.

The world’s first anthrax outbreak begins in Sverdlovsk, Russia (now Ekaterinburg), on April 2, 1979. By the time it ends six weeks later, according to official records, 66 people had died and some 30 more had survived serious illness. Ekaterinburg, as the town was known in Soviet times, also suffered livestock losses from the epidemic.

On April 2, 1982, Argentina invades the Falklands Islands, a British colony since 1892 and British possession since 1833. Argentine amphibious forces rapidly overcame the small garrison of British marines at the town of Stanley on East Falkland and the next day seized the dependent territories of South Georgia and the South Sandwich group. The 1,800 Falkland Islanders, mostly English-speaking sheep farmers, awaited a British response.