12 April 1770

The Guinea-Bissau military seized control in a coup amid a presidential election, later handing power to a transitional administration under Manuel Serifo Nhamadjo.

Husband-and-wife law partners Laurence Canter and Martha Siegel posted the first massive commercial spam on Usenet.

Bosnian War: NATO forces began Operation Deny Flight to enforce a no-fly zone over Bosnia and Herzegovina ordered by the United Nations Security Council.

Harold Washington was elected as the first African-American mayor of Chicago.

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.

About 1,700 gravediggers in New York City began a 12-week strike, causing a delay in the burial of roughly 1,400 bodies in the city.

Aboard Vostok 1, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin performed the first human spaceflight, completing one orbit of Earth in 108 minutes.

SMS Zrínyi, one of the last pre-dreadnoughts built by the Austro-Hungarian Navy, was launched in Trieste.

Confederate forces began a bombardment of Fort Sumter in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina, starting the American Civil War.

The Broughton Suspension Bridge near Manchester, England, collapsed reportedly because of mechanical resonance induced by troops marching in step across it.

Greek War of Independence: Ottoman troops began a massacre of tens of thousands of Greeks (depicted) on the island of Chios.

The Froberg mutiny of Greek and Albanian troops in British service ended with the explosion of the gunpowder magazine at Fort Ricasoli, Malta.

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.

Troops of the Fourth Crusade entered Constantinople and began a sack of the city, temporarily dissolving the Byzantine Empire.

King Edwin of Northumbria was baptised by Bishop Paulinus of York.

Merano derailment: A rail accident in South Tyrol kills nine people and injures a further 28.

Zimbabwe officially abandons the Zimbabwean dollar as its official currency.

A suicide bomber penetrates the Green Zone and detonates in a cafeteria within a parliament building, killing Iraqi MP Mohammed Awad and wounding more than twenty other people.

A suicide bomber blows herself up at the entrance to Jerusalem's Mahane Yehuda Market, killing seven people and wounding 104.

United States President Bill Clinton is cited for contempt of court for giving "intentionally false statements" in a civil lawsuit; he is later fined and disbarred.

During the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, an American McDonnell Douglas F-15E Strike Eagle shoots a passenger train, killing between 20 and 60 people.

The Euro Disney Resort officially opens with its theme park Euro Disneyland; the resort and its park's name are subsequently changed to Disneyland Resort Paris.

Widerøe Flight 839 crashes after takeoff from Værøy Airport in Norway, killing five people.

Space Shuttle Discovery launches on STS-51D to deploy two communications satellites.