Grunge rock icon Kurt Cobain dies by suicide

Pocahontas, daughter of the chief of the Powhatan confederacy, marries English tobacco planter John Rolfe in Jamestown, Virginia. The marriage ensured peace between the Jamestown settlers and the Powhatan tribe for several years. In May 1607, about 100 English colonists settled along the James River in Virginia to found Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement […]

George Washington exercises the first presidential veto of a Congressional bill on April 5, 1792. The bill introduced a new plan for dividing seats in the House of Representatives that would have increased the amount of seats for northern states. After consulting with his politically divided and contentious cabinet, Washington, who came from the southern […]

Union forces under General George McClellan arrive at Yorktown, Virginia, and establish siege lines instead of directly attacking the Confederate defenders. This was the opening of McClellan’s Peninsular campaign. He sailed his massive Army of the Potomac down Chesapeake Bay and landed on the James Peninsula southeast of the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia. He […]

On April 5, 1918, General Erich Ludendorff formally ends “Operation Michael,” the first stage of the final major German offensive of World War I. Operation Michael, which marked the first sizable German offensive against Allied positions on the Western Front in more than a year, began on March 21, 1918, with a five-hour-long bombardment of […]

On April 5, 1945, in preparation for planned assaults in the Pacific theater of World War II, Gen. Douglas MacArthur is placed in command of all U.S. ground forces and Adm. Chester Nimitz is placed in command of all U.S. naval forces. This effectively ended the concept of unified commands, in which one man oversaw […]

Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill, the British leader who guided Great Britain and the Allies through the crisis of World War II, retires as prime minister of Great Britain. Born at Blenheim Palace in 1874, Churchill joined the British Fourth Hussars upon his father’s death in 1895. During the next five years, he enjoyed an […]

On April 5, 1974, Stephen King, a Maine high school teacher who had been writing on evenings and weekends, sees his first full-length novel, Carrie, published. The release by Doubleday & Co. becomes a bestseller and inspires a movie of the same name. For King, Carrie kicks off a phenomenal writing career, one in which […]

On April 5, 1984, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar scores the 31,420th point of his career, breaking the NBA’s all-time scoring record, which had been held by Wilt Chamberlain. Abdul-Jabbar’s record remained unbroken for 38 years.   Over 18,000 fans gathered at the Thomas and Mack Center at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, to watch the Utah Jazz play Abdul-Jabbar […]