Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/April 12
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. Please read the selected anniversaries guidelines before making your edit. However, if your addition might be controversial or on a day that is or will soon be on the Main Page, please post your suggestion on the talk page instead.
Please note that the events listed on the Main Page are chosen based more on relative article quality and to maintain a mix of topics, not based solely on how important or significant their subjects are. Only four to five events are posted at a time and thus not everything that is "most important and significant" can be listed. In addition, an event is generally not posted this year if it is also the subject of the scheduled featured article or picture of the day.
To report an error when this appears on the Main Page, see Main Page errors. Please remember that this list defers to the supporting articles, so it is best to achieve consensus and make any necessary changes there first.
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 -
Edwin of Northumbria -
Terry Fox -
Yuri Gagarin -
Bombardment of Fort Sumter -
SMS Zrínyi -
.svg)
Ineligible
| Blurb | Reason |
|---|---|
| 240 – Shapur I was crowned the 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 at 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 Chinese communists from the nationalist Kuomintang began in Shanghai. | refimprove section |
| 1981 – Columbia, the first spaceworthy space shuttle, was launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on 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. | refimprove 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 |
| 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. | citation-needed tags |
| * 627 – King Edwin of Northumbria was baptised by Bishop Paulinus of York. | citations needed |
Eligible
- 1204 – Troops of the Fourth Crusade entered Constantinople and began a sack of the city, temporarily dissolving the Byzantine Empire.
- 1776 – American Revolution: The North Carolina Provincial Congress passed the Halifax Resolves, the first official action in the American colonies calling for independence from Great Britain.
- 1822 – Greek War of Independence: Ottoman troops began a massacre of tens of thousands of Greeks (depicted) on the island of Chios.
- 1861 – Confederate forces began a bombardment of Fort Sumter in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina, starting the American Civil War.
- 1910 – SMS Zrínyi, one of the last pre-dreadnoughts built by the Austro-Hungarian Navy, was launched in Trieste.
- 1961 – Aboard Vostok 1, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin performed the first human spaceflight, completing one orbit of Earth in 108 minutes.
- 1980 – Samuel Doe took control of Liberia in a coup d'etat, overthrowing President William Tolbert and ending over 130 years of national democratic presidential succession.
- 1980 – Canadian athlete Terry Fox embarked on an east-to-west "Marathon of Hope" from St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador, with a prosthetic leg to raise funds for cancer research.
- 1983 – Harold Washington was elected as the first African-American mayor of Chicago.
- 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.
- Born/died: | Richeza of Poland, Queen of Sweden |b|1116| Charles VII of Sweden |d|1167| Margaret of Bourbon, Queen of Navarre |d|1256| Nicola Amati |d|1684| George N. Briggs |b|1796| Peter Hesketh-Fleetwood |d|1866| Addie Joss |b|1880| Tenby Davies |b|1884| Imogen Holst |b|1907| Beverly Cleary |b|1916| Jane Withers |b|1926| Zelia Nuttall |d|1933| Sydney Allard |d|1966| Abbie Hoffman |d|1989| Xin Fengxia |d|1998
Notes
- Disney's Animal Kingdom appears on April 22, so Disneyland Paris should not be used in the same year.
April 12: First day of Passover (Judaism, 2025); Third Month Fair begins in southwest China (2025); Cosmonautics Day in Russia; Yuri's Night
- 1807 – The Froberg mutiny of Greek and Albanian troops in British service ended with the explosion of the gunpowder magazine at Fort Ricasoli, Malta.
- 1831 – The Broughton Suspension Bridge near Manchester, England, collapsed reportedly because of mechanical resonance induced by troops marching in step across it.
- 1993 – Bosnian War: NATO forces began Operation Deny Flight (aircraft pictured) to enforce a no-fly zone over Bosnia and Herzegovina ordered by the United Nations Security Council.
- 2012 – The Guinea-Bissau military seized control in a coup amid a presidential election, later handing power to a transitional administration under Manuel Serifo Nhamadjo.
- 2013 – Four Chadian soldiers were killed in a suicide bombing by jihadist rebels in Kidal, Mali.
- Alexander Ostrovsky (b. 1823)
- Keiko Fukuda (b. 1913)
- Karim Fakhrawi (d. 2011)