The Daily Standard
World News
Today is Sunday, April 19, the 109th day of 2026. There are 256 days left in the year.
Today in history:
On April 19, 1775, the American Revolutionary War began with the Battles of Lexington and Concord - the start of an eight-year armed conflict between American colonists and the British Army.
Also on this date:
In 1897, the first Boston Marathon was held. Winner John J. McDermott ran the course in 2 hours, 55 minutes and 10 seconds.
In 1943, during World War II, tens of thousands of Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto began a valiant but ultimately futile uprising against Nazi forces.
In 1977, the Supreme Court, in Ingraham v. Wright, ruled 5-4 that even severe spanking of schoolchildren by faculty members did not violate the Eighth Amendment ban against cruel and unusual punishment.
In 1989, 47 sailors were killed when a gun turret exploded aboard the USS Iowa during training exercises in the Caribbean.
In 1993, the 51-day siege at the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas, ended when the Davidians set fire to the compound following an FBI tear gas attack. Seventy-five people, including 25 children and sect leader David Koresh, were killed.
In 1995, Timothy McVeigh, seeking to strike at the government he blamed for the Branch Davidian deaths two years earlier, destroyed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people. (McVeigh was convicted of federal murder charges and executed in 2001.)
In 2005, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger of Germany was elected pope in the first conclave of the new millennium; he took the name Benedict XVI.
In 2013, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, a 19-year-old college student wanted in the Boston Marathon bombings, was taken into custody after a search that the city virtually paralyzed. His older brother and alleged accomplice, 26-year-old Tamerlan, was killed earlier during an attempt to elude police capture.
In 2015, Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old Black man, died a week after suffering a spinal cord injury in the back of a Baltimore police van while he was handcuffed and shackled, prompting weeks of violent protests and unrest. (Six police officers were charged. Three were acquitted and the city's top prosecutor eventually dropped the three remaining cases.)
In 2020, a gunman disguised as a police officer began a two-day series of shootings across Nova Scotia that left 22 people dead in Canada's worst mass killing incident. The suspect, Gabriel Wortman, 51, was shot and killed by police on April 20.
Today's Birthdays: Singer-songwriter Roberto Carlos is 85. Actor Tim Curry is 80. Motorsports Hall of Famer Al Unser Jr. is 64. Actor Ashley Judd is 58. Latin pop singer Luis Miguel is 56. Actor James Franco is 48. Actor Kate Hudson is 47. Actor Hayden Christensen is 45. Football Hall of Famer Troy Polamalu is 45. Actor-comedian Ali Wong is 44. Baseball Hall of Famer Joe Mauer is 43. Former WNBA star Candace Parker is 40. Former tennis player Maria Sharapova is 39. Actor Simu Liu is 37. Singer Loren Gray is 24.
