(UPDATED 4/2013) Two horrific bombings near the finish line of the Boston Marathon killed three people and injured nearly 170 others April 15, adding that day in 2013 to a dozen other mid-April events that some are labeling one of history’s worst calendar weeks.
During the week of April 14 to April 20, the following events have occurred in history:
April 14, 1865: President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in Ford’s Theater on Good Friday.
April 20, 1889: Adolf Hitler, former chancellor of Germany, was born.
April 18, 1906: One of the most deadly earthquakes in U.S. history hit San Francisco. It is considered one of the nation’s worst natural disasters, killing 3,000 people and destroying 80 percent of the city.
April 14, 1912: The “unsinkable ship”, the Titanic, hit a massive iceberg close to midnight and sank. More than 1,500 people were lost in the cold, icy waters of the North Atlantic..
April 19, 1993: A 51-day siege by Federal and Texas law enforcement officials on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas ended on this day after a Feb. 28 shootout in which four U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents were killed along with six members of the Protestant sect. The siege ended when, during an FBI assault April 19, a fire erupted and 76 occupants, including women and children, were killed.
April 19, 1995: Domestic terrorists Timothy McVeigh, Terry Nichols and Michael and Lori Fortier sought revenge against the government by bombing a federal building in downtown Oklahoma City. Nearly 170 people were killed, 19 of them children under the age of six. The blast destroyed 324 buildings in a one-mile radius.
April 20, 1999: Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold launched a killing spree at Columbine High School in Columbine, Colo., shooting and killing 12 students, one teacher and injuring 21 others. Six students suffered injuries when they jumped from windows to escape the shooters. Harris and Klebold committed suicide after the slaughter.
April 16, 2007: Seung-Hui Cho, a senior at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Va., carried out a massacre, killing 32 people and wounding 17 others in two separate attacks. He committed suicide after the attacks.
April 20, 2010: The BP Oil Spill was one of the worst disasters in history after an oil rig exploded killing 11 people and injuring 17. More than 200 million gallons of oil spilled into the Gulf of Mexico for 87 days, the largest oil spill in U.S. history. More than 16,000 miles of coastline was impacted including Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. Over 8,000 animals were reported dead six months after the spill.