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Events

• 1796 (230 years ago) War of the First Coalition: Napoleon Bonaparte wins his first victory as an army commander at the Battle of Montenotte, splitting the Austrian and Piedmontese armies away from each other, and marking the beginning of the Piedmontese surrender in the war.
• 1807 (219 years ago) The Froberg mutiny on Malta ends when the remaining mutineers blow up the magazine of Fort Ricasoli.
• 1877 (149 years ago) The United Kingdom annexes the Transvaal.
• 1945 (81 years ago) World War II: The U.S. Ninth Army under General William H. Simpson crosses the Elbe River astride Magdeburg, and reaches Tangermünde—only 80 kilometres from Berlin.
• 1961 (65 years ago) Space Race: The Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin becomes the first human to travel into outer space and perform the first crewed orbital flight, Vostok 1.
• 1990 (36 years ago) Widerøe Flight 839 crashes after takeoff from Værøy Airport in Norway, killing five people.
• 2009 (17 years ago) Zimbabwe officially abandons the Zimbabwean dollar as its official currency.
• 2014 (12 years ago) The Great Fire of Valparaíso ravages the Chilean city of Valparaíso, killing 16 people, displacing nearly 10,000, and destroying more than 2,500 homes.

Births

• 1903 (123 years ago) Jan Tinbergen, Dutch economist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (died 1994)
• 1933 (93 years ago) Montserrat Caballé, Spanish soprano and actress (died 2018)
• 1942 (84 years ago) Jacob Zuma, South African politician, 4th President of South Africa
• 1947 (79 years ago) David Letterman, American comedian and talk show host
• 1947 (79 years ago) Tom Clancy, American historian and author (died 2013)
• 1950 (76 years ago) Joyce Banda, Malawian politician, 4th president of Malawi
• 1979 (47 years ago) Claire Danes, American actress
• 1994 (32 years ago) Saoirse Ronan, American-born Irish actress

Deaths

• 352 (1674 years ago) Julius I, pope of the Catholic Church
• 1555 (471 years ago) Joanna, Queen of Castile and Aragon (born 1479)
• 1782 (244 years ago) Metastasio, Italian-Austrian poet and composer (born 1698)
• 1817 (209 years ago) Charles Messier, French astronomer and academic (born 1730)
• 1945 (81 years ago) Franklin D. Roosevelt, American lawyer and politician, 32nd President of the United States (born 1882)
• 1975 (51 years ago) Josephine Baker, French actress, activist, and humanitarian (born 1906)
• 1981 (45 years ago) Joe Louis, American boxer and wrestler (born 1914)
• 2022 (4 years ago) Gilbert Gottfried, American comedian, actor, and singer (born 1955)

All 410 events, births and deaths of April 12