April 19th

Cuba's Communist Party picked 79-year-old Raul Castro to replace his ailing brother Fidel as first secretary during a key Party Congress.

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger of Germany was elected pope and took the name Benedict XVI.

The Mel Brooks musical "The Producers" opened on Broadway.

The Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Okla., was destroyed by a car bomb. 168 people, including 19 children were killed in the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history up to that time.

A Los Angeles jury awarded $3.8 million to beaten motorist Rodney King.

A 51-day siege at the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas, ended when fire destroyed the structure after federal agents smashed their way in. Dozens of people, including sect leader David Koresh, were killed.

The first installment of The Simpsons is aired. The hugely popular animated sitcom debuted on the Tracey Ullman Show in the form of one-minute shorts.

The Soviet Union launches the world's first manned space station. Salyut 1 was 23 meters long and offered 100 cubic meters of pressurized space.

The Federal Communications Commission authorized regular FM stereo broadcasting starting on June 1, 1961.

Gen. Douglas MacArthur, relieved of his command by President Harry S. Truman, bid farewell to Congress, quoting a line from a ballad: 'Old soldiers never die. they just fade away.'

Tens of thousands of Jews living in the Warsaw Ghetto began an uprising against Nazi forces.

The United States went off the gold standard.

Leslie Irvin makes the world's first free-fall parachute jump. The jump was executed to test a new kind of parachute, which was also the first featuring a ripcord. The Hollywood stuntman broke a leg on landing.

Joan of Arc receives beatification by the Roman Catholic Church.

The first Boston Marathon was run.

Naturalist Charles Darwin, developer of the theory of evolution, died.

Lord Byron died of a fever while helping the Greeks fight the Turks.

The "shot heard around the world" was fired. Colonial Minute Men took on British Army regulars at Lexington and Concord, Mass., starting the American Revolution.

British explorer Captain James Cook first sights Australia.