Today in History : April 19

• 65 – The freedman Milichus betrayed Piso's plot to kill the Emperor Nero and all the conspirators are arrested.
• 531 – Battle of Callinicum: A Byzantine army under Belisarius is defeated by the Persian at Ar-Raqqah (northern Syria).
• 1012 – Martyrdom of Ælfheah in Greenwich, London.
• 1529 – Beginning of the Protestant Reformation: The Second Diet of Speyer bans Lutheranism; a group of rulers (German: Fürst) and independent cities (German: Reichsstadt) protests the reinstatement of the Edict of Worms.
• 1539 – Charles V and Protestants signs Treaty of Frankfurt.
• 1677 – The French army captures the town of Cambrai held by Spanish troops.
• 1713 – With no living male heirs, Charles VI, Holy Roman Emperor, issues the Pragmatic Sanction of 1713 to ensure that Habsburg lands and theAustrian throne would be inherited by his daughter, Maria Theresa of Austria (not actually born until 1717).
• 1770 – Captain James Cook sights the eastern coast of what is now Australia.
• 1770 – Marie Antoinette marries Louis XVI in a proxy wedding.
• 1775 – American Revolutionary War: The war begins with an American victory in Concord during the battles of Lexington and Concord.
• 1782 – John Adams secures the Dutch Republic's recognition of the United States as an independent government. The house which he had purchased in The Hague, Netherlands becomes the first American embassy.
• 1809 – An Austrian corps is defeated by the forces of the Duchy of Warsaw in the Battle of Raszyn, part of the struggles of the Fifth Coalition. On the same day the Austrian main army is defeated by a First French Empire Corps led by Louis-Nicolas Davout at the Battle of Teugen-Hausen in Bavaria, part of a four-day campaign that ended in a French victory.
• 1810 – Venezuela achieves home rule: Vicente Emparan, Governor of the Captaincy General is removed by the people of Caracas and a junta is installed.
• 1839 – The Treaty of London establishes Belgium as a kingdom and guaranteeing its neutrality.
• 1855 – Visit of Napoleon III to Guildhall, London
• 1861 – American Civil War: Baltimore riot of 1861: a pro-Secession mob in Baltimore, Maryland, attacks United States Army troops marching through the city.
• 1892 – Charles Duryea claims to have driven the first automobile in the United States, in Springfield, Massachusetts.
• 1897 – Léo Taxil exposes his own fabrications concerning Freemasonry
• 1903 – The Kishinev pogrom in Kishinev (Bessarabia) begins, forcing tens of thousands of Jews to later seek refuge in Israel and the Western world.
• 1919 – Leslie Irvin of the United States makes the first successful voluntary free-fall parachute jump using a new kind of self-contained parachute.
• 1927 – Mae West is sentenced to 10 days in jail for obscenity for her play Sex.
• 1928 – The 125th and final fascicle of the Oxford English Dictionary is published.
• 1942 – World War II: In Poland, the Majdan-Tatarski ghetto is established, situated between the Lublin Ghetto and a Majdanek subcamp.
• 1943 – World War II: In Poland, the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising begins, after German troops enter the Warsaw ghetto to round up the remaining Jews.
• 1945 – Diplomatic relations between the Soviet Union and Guatemala are established.
• 1948 – Burma joins the United Nations.
• 1950 – Argentina becomes a signatory to the Buenos Aires copyright treaty.
• 1951 – General Douglas MacArthur retires from the military.
• 1954 – The Constituent Assembly of Pakistan recognises Urdu and Bengali as the national languages of Pakistan.
• 1956 – Actress Grace Kelly marries Prince Rainier of Monaco.
• 1960 – Students in South Korea hold a nationwide pro-democracy protest against president Syngman Rhee, eventually forcing him to resign.
• 1971 – Sierra Leone becomes a republic, and Siaka Stevens the president.
• 1971 – Vietnam War: Vietnam Veterans Against the War begin a five-day demonstration in Washington, D.C..
• 1971 – Launch of Salyut 1, the first space station.
• 1971 – Charles Manson is sentenced to death (later commuted life imprisonment) for conspiracy to commit the Tate/LaBianca murders.
• 1973 – The Portuguese Socialist Party is founded in the German town of Bad Münstereifel.
• 1975 – India's first satellite, Aryabhata, is launched.
• 1984 – Advance Australia Fair is proclaimed as Australia's national anthem, and green and gold as the national colours.
• 1985 – FBI siege on the compound of The Covenant, The Sword, and the Arm of the Lord (CSAL) in Arkansas.
• 1985 – U.S.S.R performs nuclear tests at Eastern Kazakhstan/Semipalatinsk.
• 1987 – The Simpsons premieres as a short cartoon on The Tracey Ullman Show.
• 1989 – A gun turret explodes on the USS Iowa, killing 47 sailors.
• 1993 – The 51-day siege of the Branch Davidian building outside Waco, Texas, USA, ends when a fire breaks out. Eighty-one people die.
• 1993 – South Dakota governor George Mickelson and seven others are killed when a state-owned aircraft crashes in Iowa.
• 1995 – Oklahoma City bombing: The Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, USA, is bombed, killing 168.
• 1997 – The Red River Flood of 1997 overwhelms the city of Grand Forks, North Dakota. Fire breaks out and spreads in downtown Grand Forks, but high water levels hamper efforts to reach the fire, leading to the destruction of 11 buildings.
• 1999 – The German Bundestag returns to Berlin, the first German parliamentary body to meet there since the Reichstag was dissolved in 1933.
• 2011 – Fidel Castro resigns from the Communist Party of Cuba's central committee after 45 years of holding the title.
• 2013 – Boston Marathon bombings suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev killed in a shootout with police. His brother Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is captured while hiding in a boat inside a backyard in Watertown, Massachusetts.