April 6, 1941. Hitler orders World War II.

April 9, 1942. Japanese capture Bataan and 36,000 troops. The 6-day Bataan Death March killed 6,000 Filipinos and 500 Americans.

April 1, 1954. The US Atomic Energy Commission announced its ability to build a hydrogen bomb equivalent to one million tons of TNT, that can wipe out any city dropped from a plane.

April 14, 1865. President Abraham Lincoln is assassinated.

April 9, 1947. Texas-panhandle tornado tears a 221-mile path through Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas killing 169.

April 11, 1951. The president recognizes that General of the Army Douglas MacArthur will not back US/UN policies. MacArthur had to be relieved of all his commands.

April 14, 1912. Titanic ocean liner hits an iceberg, dooming more than 1,500 passengers to a watery grave.

April 18, 1998. After 14 weeks at No. 1, Titanic (the movie) sets a new record for soundtracks, dooming 26 million worldwide to Celine Dion.

April 18, 1906. San Francisco earthquake and resulting fires kill 500.

April 19. FBI raid the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas killing leader David Koresh and 86 others including 17 children.

April 22, 1915. German troops at the 2nd Battle of Ypres release 5,700 cylinders of mustard gas, in the first instance of chemical warfare; by the end of the war, 91,000 would die from gassing.

April 5, 1968. Martin Luther King, who preached nonviolence and racial brotherhood, is slain in Memphis, Tennessee by a lone gunman.

April 26, 1986. Chernobyl plant explosion 70 miles north of Kiev exposes tens of thousands in Ukraine to dangerous levels of radiation.

April 30, 1999. Some predict the apocalypse in 245 days, but there are those of us who are unafraid, having already lived through April 18, 1998.

April 20, 1995. Car bomb destroys Federal Office building in Oklahoma City, the deadliest in 75 years in the US, killing 31 mostly children at a 2nd floor day care center.

April 8, 2008. The Magdalo soldiers, mostly brilliant graduates of the elite PMA, received life sentences for protesting corruption in the government.

April 8, 2008. Senate is compelled to go back to SC to ask Justices Arturo Brion, Renato Corona and Presbitero Velasco to inhibit themselves from the Senate’s appeal. The appeal is to reverse the SC ruling on executive privilege.