Facts & Historical Events On This Day.
Bill Gates left the Microsoft board after founding the company four decades prior.
Marvel's 'Captain America: The Winter Soldier' premiered in Los Angeles.
Pope Francis succeeds Pope Benedict XVI.
Luciano Pavarotti's final opera took place at New York Metropolitan Opera.
A series of unidentified lights appear over Phoenix, Arizona.
Sixteen primary school children and one teacher were killed in a mass shooting in Dunblane, Scotland.
Prolific killer John Wayne Gacy was given the death sentence for the murder of 33 young men and boys.
Apollo 9 and its crew returned to Earth after a 10-day mission orbiting Earth.
German troops liquidate the Jewish ghetto in Kraków.
The US army enlisted its first female colonel, Julia Flikke.
American baseball catcher Wilbert Robinson tried to claim a record by catching a ball dropped from a plane 525 feet above him.
Earmuffs were patented.
The first major revolt of the 1848-1849 German revolutions began in Vienna.
Felix Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto is premiered.
Pope Leo XII renewed the prohibition of members of the Catholic Church from joining the Freemasons.
Astronomer William Herschel first observed Uranus.
Itza, the last Mayan kingdom, was conquered by Spanish forces.
