On April 19, 1809, former President Thomas Jefferson writes up a contract for the sale of an indentured servant named John Freeman to newly sworn-in President James Madison. Slavery and indentured servitude were major components of the early American economy. Enslaved workers performed most of the manual and domestic labor on the large plantations owned […]

On April 19, 1861, the first blood of the American Civil War is shed when a secessionist mob in Baltimore attacks Massachusetts troops bound for Washington, D.C. Four soldiers and 12 rioters were killed. One week earlier, on April 12, the Civil War began when Confederate shore batteries opened fire on Union-held Fort Sumter in […]

On April 19, 1897, John J. McDermott of New York won the first Boston Marathon with a time of 2:55:10. The Boston Marathon was the brainchild of Boston Athletic Association member and inaugural U.S. Olympic team manager John Graham, who was inspired by the marathon at the first modern Olympic Games in Athens in 1896. […]

On April 19, 1919, the Saturday before Easter, tense and complicated negotiations begin at the Paris peace conference over Italy’s claims to territory in the former Austro-Hungarian Empire. The Italians must somehow be mollified, wrote Britain’s foreign secretary, Arthur Balfour, and the only question is how to mollify them at the smallest cost to mankind. […]

President Harry S. Truman officially opens the first White House bowling alley on April 19, 1947. The two-lane bowling alley, situated in the West Wing, had been constructed earlier that year. According to Smithsonian magazine, a group of Truman’s fellow Missourians funded the construction of the bowling alley in honor of the president. They had […]

As a prelude to a massive antiwar protest, Vietnam Veterans Against the War begin a five-day demonstration in Washington, D.C. The generally peaceful protest, called Dewey Canyon III in honor of the operation of the same name conducted in Laos, ended on April 23 with about 1,000 veterans throwing their combat ribbons, helmets, and uniforms […]

On April 19, 1989, a 28-year-old female investment banker is beaten and sexually assaulted while jogging in New York City’s Central Park. Five teenagers from Harlem were wrongly convicted of the crime, which shocked New Yorkers for its randomness and viciousness and became emblematic of the perceived lawlessness of the city at the time. The […]

Just after 9 a.m. on April 19, 1995, a massive truck bomb explodes outside the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. The blast collapsed the north face of the nine-story building, instantly killing more than 100 people and trapping dozens more in the rubble. Emergency crews raced to Oklahoma City from across […]