1. 410 - The Southern Yan Dynasty ended with the fall of its capital Guanggu to the Jin Dynasty general Liu Yu.

2. 421 - The city of Venice, Italy, was founded with the dedication of the first church, San Giacomo di Rialto on the Islet of Rialto.

3. 708 - Pope Constantine became the 88th pope. He was the last pope to visit Constantinople until 1967.

4. 717 - Theodosius III resigned the throne of the Byzantine Empire to enter the clergy.

5. 919 - Romanos Lekapenos seized the Bouko Leon Palace in Constantinople and became regent of the Byzantine emperor Constantine VII.

6. 1000 - Fatimid Caliph al - Hakim bi - Amr Allah assassinated the eunuch chief minister Bar Jawan and assumed control of the government.

7. 1065 - The Great German Pilgrimage was attacked by Bedouin bandits on Good Friday.

8. 1150 - The Tichborne family of Hampshire, England, started the tradition of giving a gallon of flour to residents to keep a deathbed promise.

9. 1199 - King Richard I (the Lionheart) of England was wounded by a crossbow bolt while fighting France, which led to his death on April 6.

10. 1305 - The Scrovegni Chapel (Arena Chapel) in Padua, Italy, was consecrated, with fresco masterpieces by Florentine painter Giotto.

11. 1306 - Robert the Bruce was crowned Robert I, King of Scots, after killing his rival John Comyn, Lord of Badenoch.

12. 1409 - The Council of Pisa opened and elected Antipope Alexander V.

13. 1436 - The Florence Cathedral, Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore, with the then - largest dome in the world by Filippo Brunelleschi with the support of Cosimo de' Medici, was consecrated by Pope Eugene IV.

14. 1516 - Yan Song, a powerful official in the Ming Dynasty of China, returned to court and resumed his post.

15. 1555 - Astronomer Christiaan Huygens discovered Saturn's largest moon, Titan.

16. 1571 - Catholic Italian businessman Roberto Ridolfi left England.

17. 1581 - The Portuguese Cortes called Philip II King of Portugal.

18. 1584 - English explorer Walter Raleigh renewed Humphrey Gilbert's patent to explore North America.

19. 1593 - Dutch scholar Coine Lius Loos recanted his earlier written protest against witchcraft persecution in Trier, Germany, before officials in Brussels.

20. 1598 - Cornelis de Houtman's fleet departed Amsterdam for the East Indies (Indonesia) on his second voyage in search of exotic spices.

21. 1609 - Henry Hudson embarked on an exploration for the Dutch East India Company to find a passage to Asia.

22. 1616 - William Shakespeare wrote his famous will.

23. 1634 - Under a charter granted to Lord Baltimore and led by his brother Leonard Calvert, the first settlers founded the Catholic colony of Maryland.

24. 1647 - The Cape of Good Hope: The tour ship Haerlem was stranded in Table Bay.

25. 1669 - Mount Etna in Sicily erupted, destroying Nicolosi and killing 20,000 people.

26. 1740 - Construction began on evangelist George Whitefield's Bethesda orphanage in Georgia.

27. 1753 - Voltaire left the court of Frederick II of Prussia.

28. 1776 - The Continental Congress authorized a medal for George Washington.

29. 1791 - France defined the "meter" as the basic unit of length.

30. 1802 - Great Britain and the French Republic signed the Treaty of Amiens.

31. 1807 - The British Parliament abolished the slave trade throughout the British Empire. The first fare - paying, passenger railway service in the world was established on the Oystermouth Railway in Swansea, Wales. George Canning became British Foreign Secretary.

32. 1811 - Percy Bysshe Shelley was expelled from the University of Oxford for publishing the pamphlet The Necessity of Atheism.

33. 1813 - The first US flag was flown in battle on the Pacific by the frigate Essex.

34. 1814 - The Netherlands Bank was established.

35. 1815 - Austria, Britain, Prussia, and Russia established the Seventh Coalition against France.

36. 1821 - The Greek revolution against the Ottoman Turks was officially declared, with hostilities having started two months earlier.

37. 1846 - German explorer Ludwig Leichhardt arrived in Sydney to a hero's welcome after completing his exploration of Australia's northern territory.

38. 1847 - Pope Pius IX issued the encyclical "On Aid for Ireland".

39. 1851 - Yosemite Valley was made public by Major James D. Savage and Captain John Boling after being shown by Indian guides in California.

40. 1852 - Friedrich Hebbel's tragedy "Agnes Bernauer" premiered in Munich.

41. 1856 - A. E. Burnside patented the Burnside carbine.

42. 1857 - Édouard - Léon Scott de Martinville received a patent for his phonautograph, a device that created visual images of sound. Frederick Laggenheim took the first photo of a solar eclipse.

43. 1863 - The first US Army Medal of Honor was awarded to six army soldiers by US Secretary of War Edwin Stanton in Washington.

44. 1879 - Japan invaded the Ryukyu Kingdom.

45. 1882 - The first demonstration of pancake - making was held at a department store in NYC.

46. 1888 - Socialist leader Domela Nieuwenhuis was elected to the Dutch Second Chamber.

47. 1894 - Coxey's Army of the unemployed set out from Massillon, Ohio, for Washington, D.C.

48. 1895 - Italian troops invaded Abyssinia (Ethiopia).