On April 8, 1985, the government of India filed a lawsuit against the Union Carbide Corporation for the Bhopal industrial disaster in which forty-two tons of methyl isocyanate gas was released from the pesticide plant of a Union Carbide subsidiary in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, India. The disaster initially killed 2,000 Indians and injured another 200,000. These injuries led to another 16,000 deaths as a result of exposure to the gas. In 1989, the parties reached a $470 million settlement out of court. Learn more about the Bhopal industrial disaster from the Bhopal Gas Tragedy Relief and Rehabilitation Department of the government of Madhya Pradesh.

On April 8, 1913, the Seventeenth Amendment to the US Constitution, providing for the election of senators by popular vote rather than selection by state legislatures, was ratified. Learn more about the Seventeenth Amendment.