What happened on 6 April?

16 events from the Ever-When timeline, ranked by how much they mattered.

1. 1453 Fall of Constantinople The Ottomans under Mehmed II take Constantinople after a 53-day siege, ending the eastern Roman Empire after a thousand years and reshaping Europe and the Mediterranean.
2. 1917 United States enters WWI Wilson abandons neutrality after unrestricted German submarine warfare; tilts the war.
3. 1992 Bosnian War Multi-sided war in the former Yugoslavia involving Bosniaks, Bosnian Serbs and Bosnian Croats. Saw the worst atrocities in Europe since 1945 — including the Srebrenica genocide — a
4. 1896 First modern Olympic Games (1896) Athens hosts the first modern Olympics.
5. 1955 Anthony Eden's premiership Eden destroys himself at Suez, the moment Britain discovers it can no longer act alone.
6. 1793 Committee of Public Safety takes charge of France With the war going badly, the Vendée in revolt and prices soaring, the National Convention concentrates emergency power in a twelve-man committee. Under Robespierre it becomes the
7. 1915 Obregón breaks Villa at Celaya Álvaro Obregón — who has studied the trenches of Flanders — meets Villa's famous cavalry with barbed wire, machine guns and artillery, and destroys it twice in a week. Villa never
8. 1862 Battle of Shiloh A Confederate dawn attack nearly drives Grant's army into the Tennessee River before reinforcements turn the field on the second day. Shiloh's 23,000 casualties exceed all previous
9. 1868 Charter Oath The young Meiji emperor's reform manifesto sets Japan on a course of modernisation.
10. 1941 Axis invasion of Yugoslavia and Greece Germany overruns Yugoslavia in eleven days and Greece in three weeks after a Belgrade coup defies Hitler; the Balkan detour delays Barbarossa and ignites brutal occupation wars.
11. 1652 Cape Colony founded Jan van Riebeeck establishes a Dutch East India Company supply station at Table Bay; the start of European settlement in southern Africa.
12. 2014 War in Donbas begins Russian-backed separatists seize cities across eastern Ukraine; eight years of trench war follow, the smouldering fuse of the 2022 invasion.
13. 1830 Mormonism founded Joseph Smith publishes the Book of Mormon; founds The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in New York state.
14. 1909 Peary's North Pole expedition Robert Peary claims the first attainment of the North Pole, a contested milestone of polar exploration.
15. 46 BCE Battle of Thapsus Caesar defeats the optimate army of Metellus Scipio in north Africa; Cato the Younger commits suicide at Utica.
16. 1974 ABBA wins Eurovision with Waterloo Four Swedes in silver platform boots win at Brighton and become the biggest pop group of the decade — the Nordic world's loudest cultural export.