Today:
1. 1861: The American Civil War began when Confederate forces attacked Fort Sumter in South Carolina.
2. 1912: The RMS Titanic set sail from Southampton, England on its ill-fated maiden voyage.
3. 1945: President Franklin D. Roosevelt died suddenly of a cerebral hemorrhage in Warm Springs, Georgia, leading to Vice President Harry S. Truman assuming the presidency.
4. 1961: Yuri Gagarin became the first human to travel into space, orbiting the Earth once aboard the Vostok 1 spacecraft.
5. 1981: The first space shuttle, Columbia, launched on its maiden flight from Cape Canaveral, Florida.
6. 1989: Thousands of students began protests in Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China, marking the beginning of the Tiananmen Square protests.
7. 1992: Euro Disneyland (now Disneyland Paris) opened in Marne-la-Vallée, France.
8. 2009: Zimbabwe officially abandoned its currency, the Zimbabwean dollar, due to hyperinflation.
9. 2016: The world’s largest airplane, the Stratolaunch, made its debut flight over the Mojave Desert in California.
10. 2021: NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter successfully completed its first flight on Mars, marking the first powered flight on another planet.