This is a list of selected April 12 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. Before doing so, please review the selected anniversaries guidelines. If your suggestion is potentially controversial or relates to a day currently or soon to appear on the Main Page, post it on the talk page instead.
Please note:
- Events listed on the Main Page are selected based on article quality and to provide a diverse range of topics, rather than solely on the importance or significance of the events.
- Only four or five events are featured each day; therefore, not all important or significant events can be included.
- An event is generally excluded if it is already the subject of the scheduled featured article, featured list or picture of the day.
To report an error in content currently on the Main Page, see Wikipedia:Main Page/Errors. If a listed event is inaccurate, please first seek consensus and update the corresponding article before making changes here.
Staging area
Images
Use only ONE image at a time
- Space Shuttle Columbia
Space Shuttle Columbia- STS-1 Crew Patch
Space Shuttle Columbia launching
Union Flag, 1606 version
Stained glass portrait of King Edwin of Northumbria
Yuri Gagarin
Bombardment of Fort Sumter
SMS Zrínyi
.svg)
Ineligible
| Blurb | Reason |
|---|---|
| 240 – Shapur I was crowned shahanshah ("king of kings") of the Sasanian Empire, the last Iranian empire before the rise of Islam. | refimprove, unreferenced section |
| 467 – Anthemius was proclaimed Western Roman Emperor at the third or twelfth mile from Rome. | refimprove section |
| 1606 – A royal decree established the Union Jack to symbolise the Union of the Crowns, merging the designs of the Flag of England and the Flag of Scotland. | refimprove sections |
| 1782 – American Revolutionary War: The Royal Navy defeated a French fleet in the Battle of the Saintes, forcing the latter to abandon a planned invasion of Jamaica. | unreferenced section |
| 1927 – Chinese Civil War: A large-scale purge of communists from the nationalist Kuomintang began in Shanghai. | refimprove section |
| 1980 – Samuel Doe took control of Liberia in a coup d'etat, overthrowing President William R. Tolbert, Jr. and ending over 130 years of national democratic presidential succession. | needs more footnotes |
| 1981 – Columbia, the first spaceworthy space shuttle, was launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida for its first flight. | refimprove section |
| 1990 – Jim Gary became the only sculptor to present a solo show at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., featuring his trademark dinosaur sculptures made of automobile parts. | unreferenced section |
| 1992 – Disneyland Paris, the first Walt Disney Park in Europe, opened in the Paris suburb of Marne-la-Vallée. | refimprove section |
| 1994 – Husband-and-wife law partners Laurence Canter and Martha Siegel posted the first massive commercial spam on Usenet. | citation-needed tags |
Eligible
- 1776 – The fourth North Carolina Provincial Congress passed the Halifax Resolves, the first official action in the American colonies calling for independence from Great Britain during the American Revolution.
- 1807 – The Froberg mutiny at Fort Ricasoli in Malta came to a close when the rebels blew up 600 barrels of gunpowder and escaped, although they were later caught and executed.
- 1831 – Broughton Suspension Bridge in Manchester, England, collapsed, reportedly because of mechanical resonance induced by troops marching in step over the bridge.
- 1861 – Confederate forces began firing at Fort Sumter in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina, starting the American Civil War.
- 1961 – Aboard Vostok 3KA-3, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first man to enter outer space, completing one orbit in a time of 108 minutes.
- 2007 – The canteen of the Council of Representatives of Iraq building was attacked by a suicide bomber, killing one Member of Parliament and wounding 23 other people.
- Born/died: Charles VII of Sweden (d. 1167) | George N. Briggs (b. 1796) | Alexander Ostrovsky (b. 1823) | Peter Hesketh-Fleetwood (d. 1866) | Imogen Holst (b. 1907) | Keiko Fukuda (b. 1913) | Beverly Cleary (b. 1916) | Xin Fengxia (d. 1998) | Karim Fakhrawi (d. 2011)
Notes
- Disney's Animal Kingdom appears on April 22, so Disneyland Paris should not be used in the same year.
April 12: Easter Sunday (Western Christianity, 2020); Holy Week begins (Eastern Christianity, 2020); Yuri's Night; Cosmonautics Day in Russia (1961)
Terry Fox
- 627 – King Edwin of Northumbria was baptised by Bishop Paulinus of York.
- 1822 – Greek War of Independence: Ottoman troops began a massacre of tens of thousands of Greeks on the island of Chios.
- 1910 – SMS Zrínyi, one of the last pre-dreadnoughts built by the Austro-Hungarian Navy, was launched.
- 1980 – Canadian athlete Terry Fox (pictured) embarked on an east–west "Marathon of Hope" with a prosthetic leg, beginning in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador, and intending to reach Vancouver, to raise funds for cancer research.
- 2014 – A fire broke out in the hills near Valparaíso, Chile, eventually destroying at least 2,500 homes and leaving approximately 11,000 people homeless.
- Margaret of Bourbon, Queen of Navarre (d. 1256)
- Addie Joss (b. 1880)
- Sydney Allard (d. 1966)