On April 18, 1958, treason charges against American poet Ezra Pound, first laid in 1943 in connection with his wartime broadcasts for the Italian Fascist government of Benito Mussolini, were dropped.
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On April 18, 1949, the Republic of Ireland Act went into force, creating a republic in the state of Ireland.
On April 17, 1982, the Constitution Act 1982 was proclaimed in Ottawa, establishing the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and terminating the British Parliament’s power to amend the Canadian constitution.
On April 17, 1969, Sirhan Sirhan was convicted of assassinating Senator Robert F. Kennedy and sentenced to death. The sentence was later commuted to life in prison after the Supreme Court of California overturned the death penalty in the state.
On April 16, 2003, the 2003 Treaty of Accession was signed by 10 countries, admitting them to the European Union (EU). After Malta and Cyprus, eight of the ten new EU nations (Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania) were former communist countries. The signing of the treaty in Athens marked [...]
On April 16, 1963, an incarcerated Martin Luther King, Jr. (arrested for demonstrating in defiance of a court order) wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail in response to a published statement by eight fellow clergymen from Alabama. Part of the letter read: We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given [...]
On April 15, 1865, Vice-President Andrew Johnson was sworn in as the seventeenth President of the United States, after Abraham Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth. Johnson became the first US President to be impeached, but he was not convicted. Learn more about Andrew Johnson and his impeachment from the US Senate.
The Titanic sank early in the morning of April 15, 1912 after colliding with an iceberg in the North Atlantic. Of 2228 passengers and crewmembers aboard, only 705 survived. The sinking gave rise to a variety of lawsuits against the White Star Line, the Titanic‘s owners.
On April 14, 1988, the USSR signed the Geneva Accords, pledging to withdraw its military forces from Afghanistan. Soviet troops had been in the country since the USSR invaded in 1979 in order to support the communist government there. In addition to setting a timetable for Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Geneva Accords further defined [...]
On April 14, 1775, Benjamin Franklin and Benjamin Rush of Philadelphia helped organize the first American society for the abolition of slavery. Learn more about the Pennsylvania Abolition Society.
