What happened on 15 April?

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

1. 1989 Tiananmen Square protests Pro-democracy demonstrations in Beijing crushed by the People's Liberation Army.
2. 1912 Sinking of the Titanic RMS Titanic strikes an iceberg and sinks on her maiden voyage; over 1,500 die.
3. 2023 Sudan civil war (2023) Rival generals plunge Sudan into a war that has killed and displaced millions.
4. 1762 Rousseau's The Social Contract Treatise grounding political legitimacy in the general will.
5. 1843 Born: Henry James American-born novelist; psychological realism.
6. 1865 Presidency of Andrew Johnson Reconstruction battles with Congress; first president impeached.
7. 2019 Notre-Dame de Paris fire Spire and roof of the medieval cathedral burn; restoration is completed in 2024.
8. 1945 British troops enter Bergen-Belsen Handed over under local truce because typhus is loose, Belsen is the first major camp the Western Allies see: 60,000 dying prisoners and thousands of unburied dead. Richard Dimbleb
9. 1980 Mariel boatlift 125,000 Cubans flee to Florida in a six-month boatlift.
10. 1563 Born: Guru Arjan Fifth Sikh guru; compiled the Adi Granth.
11. 1996 The Truth and Reconciliation Commission Chaired by Archbishop Tutu, the TRC trades amnesty for truth: perpetrators of political crimes confess in public, on television, in front of their victims, and walk free. Imperfect
12. 1755 A Dictionary of the English Language Samuel Johnson's landmark dictionary, the pre-eminent English dictionary for over a century until the Oxford English Dictionary.
13. 1947 Jackie Robinson breaks the colour line Robinson becomes the first Black player in modern Major League Baseball, a landmark of the US civil-rights story.
14. 1452 Mehmed builds Rumeli Hisarı In under five months the young sultan throws a great fortress across the narrowest point of the Bosphorus, opposite his grandfather's castle — 'the throat-cutter'. Its guns close t
15. 1989 Hillsborough disaster 97 Liverpool fans die in a crush at an FA Cup semi-final; long fight for justice follows.
16. 1450 Formigny: France takes back Normandy The French army — professional now, and bringing field artillery to battle — destroys England's last field force in Normandy; within four months the duchy Henry V conquered is enti
17. 1986 United States bombing of Libya Operation El Dorado Canyon: US airstrikes on Tripoli and Benghazi retaliate for Libyan-linked terrorism against Americans.
18. 1951 Pauling's structure of the alpha helix Linus Pauling and colleagues propose the alpha helix as a fundamental structure of proteins.