2014: The South Korean ferry MV Sewol capsizes and sinks near Jindo Island, killing 304 passengers and crew and leading to widespread criticism of the South Korean government, media, and shipping authorities.
1945: More than 7,000 die when the German refugee ship Goya is sunk by a Soviet submarine.
1945: The United States Army liberates Nazi Sonderlager (high security) prisoner-of-war camp Oflag IV-C (better known as Colditz).
1945: World War II: The Red Army begins the final assault on German forces around Berlin, with nearly one million troops fighting in the Battle of the Seelow Heights.
1944: World War II: Allied forces start bombing Belgrade, killing about 1,100 people. This bombing fell on the Orthodox Christian Easter.
1943: Albert Hofmann accidentally discovers the hallucinogenic effects of the research drug LSD. He intentionally takes the drug three days later on April 19.
1919: Mohandas Gandhi organizes a day of "prayer and fasting" in response to the killing of Indian protesters in the Jallianwala Bagh massacre by the British colonial troops three days earlier.
1917: Vladimir Lenin returns to Petrograd, Russia from exile in Switzerland.
1863: American Civil War: During the Siege of Vicksburg, gunboats commanded by Acting Rear Admiral David Dixon Porter run downriver past Confederate artillery batteries at Vicksburg.
1746: The Battle of Culloden is fought between the French-supported Jacobites and the British Hanoverian forces commanded by William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, in Scotland. After the battle many highland traditions were banned and the Highlands of Scotland were cleared of inhabitants.
AD 73: Masada, a Jewish fortress, falls to the Romans after several months of siege, ending the Great Jewish Revolt.
1457 BC: Likely date of the Battle of Megiddo between Thutmose III and a large Canaanite coalition under the King of Kadesh, the first battle to have been recorded in what is accepted as relatively reliable detail.