1865, Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Union General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House in Virginia. The Civil War, during which half a million men were killed, formally ended three days later.
1866, the Civil Rights Bill was passed over President Andrew Johnson’s veto.
1913, the first baseball game was played in Brooklyn’s Ebbets Field, home of the Brooklyn Dodgers.
1959, NASA announced the selection of America’s first seven astronauts. They were Scott Carpenter,Gordon Cooper, John Glenn, Gus Grissom, Wally Schirra, Alan Shepard and Donald Slayton.
1963, Congress made former British leader Winston Churchill an honorary U.S. citizen.
1963, President Kennedy opened the baseball season by throwing out the first ball at Washington’s new District of Columbia Stadium, now known as Robert F. Kennedy Stadium.
1965, the Houston Astrodome opened with an exhibition game between the Astros and the New York Yankees. The stadium was called the “Eighth Wonder of the World.”
1968, the assassinated Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. was buried in Atlanta.
1984, Actress Shirley MacLaine received her first Academy Award for the film Terms of Endearment at the 56th annual Oscars presentation. MacLaine had been nominated five times over 26 years before winning the statuette.
1989, Hundreds of thousands of people marched Washington DC, demanding continued safe and legal abortion and urging the Supreme Court to uphold its 1973 “Roe versus Wade” decision.
1990, The baseball season opened a week late because of a labor dispute.
1992, a U.S. court found former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega guilty of cocaine trafficking, money laundering, and racketeering. Noriega is serving a 40-year sentence.
2002, Britain’s Queen Mother Elizabeth was buried at Windsor Castle in a vault beside her late husband,King George the Sixth, after her funeral at Westminster Abbey. She had died 10 days earlier, at 101.
2003, Invasion of Iraq, Baghdad falls to American forces.
2005, Prince Charles of Wales marries Camilla Parker Bowles.