On This Day - 30th April

1873 - Explorer Dr David Livingstone dies
1908 - Eve Arden born
1926 - Cloris Leachman born
1933 - Willie Nelson born
1940 - Burt Young born
1944 - Jill Clayburgh born
1945 - Dachau concentration camp liberated by Americans
1946 - Carl XVI Gustav born

1952 - The British public gets the chance to read The Diary of a Young Girl, written by Anne Frank who hid from the Nazis in Holland during the war.
1961 - Isiah Thomas born
1971 - Carolyn Dawn Johnson born
1973 - President Richard Nixon takes responsibility for the Watergate scandal but denies any personal involvement. Also Jeff Timmons born

1975 - The war in Vietnam ends as the government in Saigon announces its unconditional surrender to the Vietcong.
1982 - Kirsten Dunst born
1993 - The world number one women's tennis player, Monica Seles, is stabbed in the back during a quarter-final match in Hamburg.

1999 - Two people are killed and at least 30 injured in the third nail-bomb attack in London in two weeks.

On This Day - 29th April

1863 - William Randolph Hearst born
1899 - Duke Ellington born
1909 - Tom Ewell born
1919 - Celeste Holm born
1936 - Zubin Mehta born
1951 - Dale Earnhardt born
1954 - Jerry Seinfeld born
1955 - Kate Mulgrew born
1957 - Michelle Pfeiffer and Daniel Day-Lewis born
1958 - The Broadway musical, My Fair Lady, opens for its first night in London to a rapturous reception.
1970 - Uma Thurman and Andre Agassi born
1978 - The new left-wing rulers of Afghanistan say almost all the leaders of the ousted Daoud regime are dead.
1979 - Jo O'Meara born
1986 - The Duchess of Windsor, Wallis Simpson, is laid to rest alongside her husband, the abdicated King Edward VIII, at Frogmore in Windsor.

1992 - Fierce rioting breaks out in Los Angeles following the acquittal of four white police officers accused of beating black motorist Rodney King.

1993 - It is announced that the public will be allowed inside Buckingham Palace for the first time this summer for an adult entrance fee of £8.

2011 - Prince William and Catherine Elizabeth Middleton marry at Westminster Abbey

On This Day - 28th April

1758 - 5th U.S. president James Monroe born
1926 - Harper Lee born
1937 - Saddam Hussein born
1941 - Ann-Margret born
1945 - Benito Mussolini, dictator of Italy until his downfall in 1943, is killed by partisans along with his mistress, Clara Petacci, and some close associates.

1950 - Jay Leno born
1958 - Nancy Lee Grahn born
1969 - The French president, Charles de Gaulle, resigns from office after 11 years, following his defeat in a referendum on governmental reforms.

1974 - Penelope Cruz born
1981 - Jessica Alba born
1986 - The Soviet Union has acknowledges there has been an accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine.
1994 - Former CIA agent Aldrich Ames admits selling secrets to the Soviet Union and then Russia, in one of the most damaging spy cases in US history.
1996 - 35 people die when a man opens fire indiscriminately on a crowded tourist area of Tasmania, Australia.
2001 - Denis Tito, a billionaire businessman from California has become the first paying passenger to go to outer space.

On This Day - 27th April

1791 - Samuel Morse born
1822 - Ulysses S. Grant born
1865 - Abraham Lincoln's assassin, John Wilkes Booth, is killed
1882 - Writer Ralph Waldo Emerson dies
1922 - Jack Klugman born

1927 - Coretta Scott King born
1932 - Anouk Aimée and Casey Kasem born
1937 - Guernica in Spain is destroyed by Luftwaffe. Also Sandy Dennis born
1945 - Russian and American troops have joined hands at the River Elbe in Germany, bringing the end of the war a step closer.
1951 - Ace Frehley born
1959 - Sheena Easton born
1961 - Sierra Leone becomes the latest West African state to win independence, after more than 150 years of British colonial rule.
1971 - Police in Wales have to remove demonstrators from the entrance of a courtroom after they disrupted proceedings inside.

1984 - The siege of the Libyan Embassy in London ends 11 days after the shooting of WPC Yvonne Fletcher outside the St James's Square building.
1992 - The House of Commons has elected a woman, Betty Boothroyd to the post of Speaker for the first time in its 700-year history.

On This Day - 26th April

1785 - John James Audubon born
1917 - I.M. Pei born
1933 - Carol Burnett born
1938 - Duane Eddy born
1942 - Bobby Rydell born

1962 - The American Moon rocket Ranger IV lands on the far side of the moon but has fails to send back pictures due to a technical fault. Also Michael Damian born
1963 - Jet Li born
1967 - Kane born
1970 - Tionne "T-Boz" Watkins born
1975 - A one-day conference held by the Labour Party to debate Britain's membership of Europe has voted by almost 2-1 to leave the European Economic Community.

1982 - Jon Lee born
1983 - The Chernobyl nuclear disaster occurs at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the Ukrainian SSR.
1984 - US President Ronald Reagan lands in China at the start of a six-day state visit, the first by an American president since 1972.
1993 - The British government announces that the recession is over after new figures show growth in the economy for the first time in over two years.
2000 - The Home Secretary, Jack Straw, witnesses nine people being caught attempting to illegally enter the UK as he inspects immigration procedures in Dover.
2005 - Syria pulls all of its troops out of Lebanon after 29 years as a military band sees off the last soldiers.

On This Day - 25th April

1859 - Building of the Suez Canal begins
1898 - The Spanish American war begins
1908 - Edward R. Murrow born
1918 - Ella Fitzgerald born
1930 - Paul Mazursky born
1932 - Meadowlark Lemon born
1940 - Al Pacino born
1945 - Björn Ulvaeus born
1945 - Stu Cook born
1946 - Talia Shire born
1953 - Two Cambridge University scientists publish their answer to one of the most fundamental questions of biology - how do living things reproduce themselves? In an article published in Nature magazine, James D Watson and Francis Crick describe the structure of a chemical called deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA.
1964 - Hank Azaria born
1969 - Renée Zellweger born
1974 - Army rebels are in control of Portugal tonight after an almost bloodless dawn coup ended nearly 50 years of dictatorship.
1980 - A top-secret attempt by the United States to free American hostages held in Iran collapses in failure, with the death of eight soldiers. Also Jacob Underwood born

1982 - Britain re-establishes its presence in the Falkland Islands after a two-hour assault by Royal Marines on the remote island of South Georgia.
1983 - The German magazine, Stern, publishes the first instalment of the controversial "Hitler Diaries", said to be written by the Führer himself.
2002 - Two teenage brothers are cleared of the murder of 10-year-old Damilola Taylor.

On This Day - 24th April

1815 - Anthony Trollope born
1930 - Amy Johnson becomes the first woman to fly solo from England to Australia
1934 - Shirley MacLaine born
1936 - Jill Ireland born
1942 - Barbra Streisand born
1945 - Doug Clifford born
1952 - Jean-Paul Gaultier born
1954 - 1954: British security forces round up more than 10,000 men in the biggest anti-Mau Mau operation since the state of emergency was declared in Kenya 18 months ago.

1967 - The Soviet Union has announced the catastrophic failure of its latest space mission, with the crash of Soyuz 1 and the death of cosmonaut Colonel Vladimir Komarov who was on board.
1972 - Chipper Jones born
1975 - A tense stand-off at the West German embassy in Stockholm has ended in violence, with the death of at least three people.

1982 - Britain suffess its first casualty in the Falklands campaign before a single shot has been fired. Petty Officer Kevin Stuart Casey is announced missing presumed drowned after the Sea King helicopter he was travelling in ditched into the sea. Also Kelly Clarkson born
1990 - The American space agency Nasa successfully launches the space shuttle Discovery from Cape Canaveral in Florida on its historic mission to carry the Hubble space telescope into orbit 380 miles (611.5 km) above the Earth.
1993 - A massive IRA bomb rips through the heart of the City of London, killing one and injuring more than 40.