This Day in History - April 1

1572 - Start of Dutch War for Independence from Spain.

1666 - French forces capture St. Kitts, Leeward Islands, West Indies, from England.

1789 - The U.S. House of Representatives holds its first full meeting in New York City. Frederick Muhlenberg of Pennsylvania is elected the first House Speaker.

1852 - Second Burmese War breaks out after British ultimatum to King of Burma. It ends within the year with the British annexation of Rangoon.

1853 - Cincinnati, Ohio, becomes the first U.S. city to pay its firefighters a regular salary.

1863 - The first wartime U.S. conscription law is enacted.

1867 - British East India Company rule in Malay Straits Settlements (now in Malaysia and Singapore) ends, and they become a Crown Colony of Britain.

1918 - Britain's Royal Air Force is founded.

1933 - Nazi Germany begins persecuting Jews with a boycott of Jewish-owned businesses.

1937 - India Constitution goes into effect but All-India Party abstains from forming government, demanding complete independence.

1939 - Spanish Civil War ends with Nationalist victory, 1 million dead and a dictatorship as the United States recognizes the Franco government in Spain.

1944 - Allies bomb Belgrade, targeting Nazi Germany occupiers, but 1,160 local people and 200 German troops are killed.

1945 - U.S. Marines land on Japanese-held island of Okinawa in World War II.

1946 - Tidal waves strike the Hawaiian Islands, killing more than 170 people.

1948 - Soviet Union begins to interfere with traffic between Berlin and West Germany.

1960 - South African government bans African National Congress and Pan-African Congress; the first weather satellite, TIROS-1, is launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida.

1962 - Swiss referendum rejects manufacture or importation of atomic weapons.

1964 - A military coup in Brazil overthrows the leftist government of President Joao Goulart.

1970 - U.S. President Richard M. Nixon signs a measure banning cigarette advertising on radio and television.

1986 - In his first major speech on the epidemic, U.S. President Ronald Reagan tells doctors in Philadelphia, "We've declared AIDS public health enemy No. 1."

1988 - Sikh gunmen go on murder spree across India's Punjab State and kill 37 people, including 7 children, police and witnesses say.

1989 - South Africa reports major clashes with guerrillas in Namibia on eve of cease-fire.

1990 - Lithuanian President Vytautas Landsbergis says Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev is demanding "impossible things" in asking annulment of independence declaration.

1991 - Many food stores in Moscow are closed to prevent panic buying on the eve of scheduled price hikes of 200 to 1,000 percent on consumer goods.

1992 - U.S. President George H.W. Bush pledges United States will help finance the $24-billion international aid fund for the former Soviet Union.

1993 - Israeli forces thrust deep into Lebanon, blasting Palestinian guerrilla bases near Tripoli with helicopters and gunboats.

1994 - South African soldiers roll into Natal to quell unrest threatening the national election.

1995 - Four months after going into Chechnya, Russian forces declare control of all major cities and wage a war of attrition against remaining rebels in the mountains.

1996 - Britain proposes slaughtering 15,000 of its cattle every week for the next six years to fight mad cow disease and convince its EU partners to quickly lift a ban on British beef exports.

1997 - In Tegucigalpa, a U.S. Air Force cargo plane overshoots the runway in the Honduran capital, crashing on a busy street and killing three of those aboard.

1998 - Israel formally accepts a U.N. resolution calling for its withdrawal from south Lebanon, a policy change that represents a first step toward ending a 20-year occupation.

1999 - Nunavut, a self-governing territory for Canada's indigenous Inuit people, is created out of the eastern part of the Northwest Territories.

2001 - Former Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic surrenders after a 26-hour standoff against police looking to arrest him for charges linked to a decade of repressive rule.

2003 - A court in Britain convicts two Algerian illegal immigrants of raising funds for the al-Qaida terror network, and sentences both to 11 years in prison. They are the first persons convicted in Britain of having ties to al-Qaida.

2006 - Kurdish protesters attack government offices and a bank while police fire shots and tear gas to scatter thousands of demonstrators in Turkey's Kurdish-dominated southeast.

2007 - Nepal's communist rebels join an interim government as part of a landmark peace deal that ended their decade-long insurgency. Six former Maoists take an oath of office in a ceremony broadcast on national television, along with 16 other ministers and junior ministers.

2008 - Gunmen fire on a car carrying foreign aid workers and abduct a Briton and a Kenyan in southern Somalia.

2009 - Doggedly optimistic in the face of doubts, President Barack Obama, in an eventful first day on the international stage, and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown predict an emergency G-20 economic summit will produce a significant global deal to tackle the deepening worldwide recession. In the streets of London thousands of protesters clash with police.