This is a list of selected April 4 anniversaries that appear in the "On this day" section of the Main Page. To suggest a new item, in most cases, you can be bold and edit this page. Please read the selected anniversaries guidelines before making your edit. However, if your addition might be controversial or on a day that is or will soon be on the Main Page, please post your suggestion on the talk page instead.
Please note that the events listed on the Main Page are chosen based more on relative article quality and to maintain a mix of topics, not based solely on how important or significant their subjects are. Only four to five events are posted at a time and thus not everything that is "most important and significant" can be listed. In addition, an event is generally not posted this year if it is also the subject of the scheduled featured article, featured list or picture of the day.
To report an error when this appears on the Main Page, see Main Page errors. Please remember that this list defers to the supporting articles, so it is best to achieve consensus and make any necessary changes there first.
Images
Only use ONE IMAGE at a time!
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Astley's Amphitheatre -
William Henry Harrison -
Martin Luther King, Jr. speaking -
Portrait of Martin Luther King, Jr. -
Martin Luther King, Jr -
William Henry Harrison -
Bill Gates in 1977 -
Flag of Hong Kong -
World Trade Center -
Napoleon II, age 4 -
Martin Luther King Jr.
Ineligible
| Blurb | Reason |
|---|---|
| Independence Day in Senegal (1960) | refimprove section |
| Qingming Festival in the Chinese calendar | refimprove |
| Children's Day in Hong Kong and Taiwan; | refimprove section |
| 1460 – The University of Basel was opened as Switzerland's first university. | refimprove section |
| 1660 – Charles II of England issued the Declaration of Breda, describing his conditions for the Restoration of the crown of England. | refimprove section |
| 1768 – Philip Astley set up the first modern amphitheatre for the display of horse riding tricks in Lambeth, London, the origin of the modern circus. | Astley: refimprove sections; Circus: refimprove section |
| 1796 – French naturalist Georges Cuvier delivered a lecture at the National Museum of Natural History on living and fossil remains of elephants and related species, founding the science of paleontology. | reimprove sections |
| 1814 – Napoleon abdicated as Emperor of the French and named his son Napoleon II to replace him. | refimprove section |
| 1866 – Russian tsar Alexander II narrowly survived an assassination attempt by Dmitry Karakozov. | "Lede too short" banner, many citation needed tags |
| 1945 – World War II: The U.S. Third Army captured the German city of Kassel after three days of fighting. | refimprove section |
| 1969 – Surgeons Denton Cooley and Domingo Liotta implanted the first total artificial heart. | reimprove section |
| 1973 – A C-141, dubbed the Hanoi Taxi, flew the last mission of Operation Homecoming to return American prisoners of war from Vietnam. | refimprove |
| 1979 – Deposed Pakistani prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was controversially executed for authorising the murder of a political opponent. | lots of CN tags (21) |
| 1990 – The current flag of Hong Kong was adopted for post-colonial use during the Third Session of the Seventh National People's Congress. | off topic |
| 2002 – The Angolan government and UNITA rebels signed a memorandum of understanding, agreeing to observe the 1994 Lusaka Protocol and ending the 26-year-long Angolan Civil War. | refimprove section |
Eligible
- 1268 – The Byzantine Empire and the Republic of Venice signed a five-year peace treaty.
- 1841 – William Henry Harrison (pictured) became the first U.S. president to die in office, sparking a brief constitutional crisis regarding questions of presidential succession that were unanswered by the U.S. Constitution.
- 1873 – The Kennel Club, the world's oldest kennel club, was founded in the United Kingdom after Sewallis Shirley became frustrated by trying to organise dog shows without a consistent set of rules.
- 1905 – An earthquake hit the Kangra Valley in India, killing at least 20,000 people and destroying 100,000 buildings.
- 1968 – American civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. (pictured) was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee.
- 1973 – A year after the completion of the second of the complex's twin towers, the World Trade Center in New York City was officially dedicated.
- 1975 – Bill Gates and Paul Allen founded Microsoft in Albuquerque, New Mexico, to develop and sell BASIC interpreters for the Altair 8800.
- 1975 – Vietnam War: On a mission to evacuate children from South Vietnam, a U.S. Air Force plane crash-landed at Tan Son Nhut Air Base, killing 78 children and 60 others.
- 1988 – Evan Mecham, Governor of Arizona, was removed from office after being convicted in his impeachment trial.
- 2013 – A building collapsed on tribal land in Thane in Maharashtra, India, causing 74 deaths.
- Born/died this day: | Liu Yin |d|911| Robert III of Scotland |d|1406| Elena Glinskaya |d|1538| William Strachey |b|1572| Jean-Pierre Saint-Ours |b|1752| Philippa Fawcett |b|1868|Pierre Monteux |b|1875| Maurice de Vlaminck |b|1876| Isaac K. Funk |d|1912| Maya Angelou |b|1928 |Jonathan Agnew |b|1960| Karen Spärck Jones |d|2007| Roger Ebert |d|2013
Notes
- Byzantine–Venetian treaty of 1277 appears on March 19, so 1268 treaty should not appear in the same year
- United States v. Microsoft Corp. appears on April 3, so Microsoft should not appear in the same year
April 4: Hansik in Korea (2024); Qingming Festival (traditional Chinese, 2025)
- 503 BC – Roman consul Agrippa Menenius Lanatus celebrated a triumph for a military victory over the Sabines.
- 1081 – The Komnenos dynasty came to full power with the coronation of Alexios I Komnenos (pictured) as Byzantine emperor.
- 1859 – Bryant's Minstrels premiered the minstrel song "Dixie" in New York City as part of their blackface show.
- 1949 – Twelve nations signed the North Atlantic Treaty, establishing NATO, an international military alliance whereby its member states agree to mutual defense in response to an attack by any external party.
- A. Thomas Bradbury (b. 1902)
- Martin Rundkvist (b. 1972)
- Xu Lai (d. 1973)
- Inez Robb (d. 1979)