April 19th Major News Events

1961 Cuba Bay of Pigs

1961: On April 17th 1,500 CIA-trained force of Cuban exiles invade southern Cuba at the "Bay of Pigs" by the 19th 118 are killed and 1,202 are captured by Cuban forces. President Kennedy inherited the operation from US President Dwight D. Eisenhower and approved the operation but it has to be one of the worst planned and executed covert invasions in modern times poorly thought out, as Cuban and Soviet Forces knew almost to the day where and when the operation would occur.

1969 Students Occupy Willard Straight Hall

1969: Militant black students at Cornell Univ. use force to take over Willard Straight Hall demanding a black studies program, after a deal was reached with the administration the news showed students leaving the hall carrying rifles although they were never used.

1972 Lunar Rover Apollo 16

1972: Apollo 16 the fifth mission to land on the Moon with astronauts John W Young and Charles M Duke are preparing to descend from lunar orbit and land on the moons surface in the Descartes Mountains, When landed they drove an electric powered Lunar Rover to explore fully the Descartes Plateau. Young and Duke spent three days exploring the Descartes highland region and testing the Lunar Rover getting up to a top speed of eleven miles per hour which still stands as the record speed for any wheeled vehicle on the Moon.

1987 USA The Simpsons

1987: The Simpsons which had originally been created as a series of shorts for The Tracey Ullman Show with the first showing on This Day 1987

1989 Central Park Attack on Jogger

1989: On the 19th approximately 30 teenage perpetrators committed several attacks, assaults, and robberies in the northernmost part of New York City's Central Park. Around the same time an attack on Trisha Meili occurred, who was jogging on her own on her usual path in Central Park shortly before 9 pm. She was raped and beaten almost to death, at 1:30 AM she was found naked, gagged, and tied up, covered in mud and blood. Five juveniles (called the "Central Park 5") were interviewed for hours about the crime and intimidated into confessions. Since no DNA evidence tied the suspects to the crime, the prosecution's case rested almost entirely on the confessions. They were all found guilty but the convictions were overturned in 2002 after Matias Reyes, a convicted rapist and murderer, confessed to the crime and was linked to it with DNA evidence. The city was forced to pay out $41 million in damages.

2001 South Africa Aids Drugs Profit Before The Lives Of Millions

2001: The world's biggest pharmaceutical companies bring legal action to fight legislation which would allow generic versions of their patented drugs being made in or imported to South Africa. Following uproar around the world and the pharmaceutical industry accused of putting profit before the lives of millions of people in the developing world, they have backed out of the court battle over cheap, non-branded anti-Aids drugs and also after dropping the case, agree to sell Aids drugs at cost price in developing countries - a discount of up to 90%.

2005 Vatican Pope Benedict XVI

2005: Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger has been elected as the successor to Pope John Paul II The new Pope has taken the name Pope Benedict XVI and is the head of the world's 1.1 billion Roman Catholics.

2006 Romano Prodi Confirmed as Italian Prime Minister

2006: Italy's supreme court has ruled that Romano Prodi was won the country's general election, after the result was challenged by the standing Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi. Berlusconi made no comment on the ruling, but his aides have said that he is still refusing to concede defeat. The supreme court has confirmed a narrow win for the center-left opposition leader, nine days after polls closed. It has been thoroughly reviewing the disputed ballots.

2008 Moqtada Sadr Threatens Severe Tactics Against Baghdad Government

2008: The Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada Sadr has said that he'll wage "open war" on the Baghdad government if it doesn't stop its operations against his insurgents. Sadr warns that this will be the government's "last warning", and he has urged it to take "the path of peace". His statement comes as Iraqi troops, with U.S. support, clash with his forces in Baghdad.

2008 Saudi / U.S.A. The publication of Perpetual Minors

2008: The Human Rights Watch group has said that Saudi women are being kept in perpetual childhood so that male relatives can exercise "guardianship" over them. The New York-based group says that they have to obtain permission from male relatives to work, travel, study, marry or even receive health care. The group's report, Perpetual Minors: Human Rights Abuses Stemming from Male Guardianship and Sex Segregation in Saudi Arabia has been published today, and draws on more than one hundred interviews with Saudi women. It says that they are denied the legal right to make trivial decisions for their children, and that they can't open bank accounts for them, enroll them in school, obtain school files or travel with them without written permission from their fathers.

2010 American Charged with Funding Terrorist Activities

2010: An American businessman has been sentenced to ten years in prison for trying to send money to an Afghan militant training camp. Abdul Alishtari had admitted charges of financing terrorism at an earlier hearing in New York. A United States District Judge has said that he was facilitating the transfer of $152,500, believing that it would be used in Afghanistan and Pakistan to train terrorists, and understood that these funds would be used to purchase equipment needed at a terrorist training camp. The man with whom he was working to transfer the money was actually an undercover law enforcement officer.

2011 India Helicopter Crash Kills Seventeen

2011: Seventeen people died as the result of a helicopter crash in the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh. The helicopter carrying twenty-three people caught on fire as it approached the city of Tawang. The exact cause of the crash was unknown but officials suspected the sixteen year old helicopter had technical problems.

2012 India Tests Agni-V Long-Range Missile

2012: India successfully launched a the Agni-V long-range intercontinental ballistic missile. The missile would be capable of carrying a nuclear warhead and had a range of more than 3,100 miles. While India has denied the claim, several analysts have argued that the goal of the test was to deter China.

2013 Boston Lock-down and Boston Marathon Bomb Suspects

2013: The Boston Lock-down started with The shelter-in-place requests for several Boston-area neighborhoods in and around the Watertown area early Friday morning and extended to the entire city around 8 a.m. ET. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev runs over his brother Tamerlan dragging him a short distance down the street. Tsarnaev's cause of death was "gunshot wounds of torso and extremities, blunt trauma to head and torso," and "shot by police then run over and dragged by motor vehicle." Police trap and capture the other brother Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. The trial began in federal court in Boston on March 4, 2015 and On May 15, 2015, a verdict was reached sentencing Tsarnaev to death by lethal injection. He is currently held in ADX Florence Federal Supermax prison (Colorado) on death row.

2013 Japan Oldest Man Celebrates Birthday

2013: The world's oldest man Jiroemon Kimura, from Japan, celebrated his 116th birthday. Kimura was believed to be the last living person to have lived across three different centuries.

2013 Actress Reese Witherspoon Arrested

2013: Oscar-winning actress Reese Witherspoon was arrested in Atlanta, Georgia for disorderly conduct after her husband was pulled over on suspicion of driving while drunk.

2014 Bahrain Car Explosion Kills Two

2014: Two people have died and a third passenger was injured after the car that they were traveling exploded. Investigators were unclear as to whether the car had been targeted by an attack or if those in the car had been planning an attack of their own.