April 12:

Events

• 1776 - North Carolina's Provincial Congress authorized its delegates to the Second Continental Congress to vote for independence by issuing the Halifax Resolves.
• 1861 - American Civil War: The war begins with Confederate forces firing on Fort Sumter, in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina.
• 1864 - American Civil War: Fort Pillow massacre -- Confederate forces under General Nathan Bedford Forrest kill most of the African American soldiers who had surrendered at Fort Pillow, Tennessee.
• 1865 - American Civil War: Mobile, Alabama, falls to the Union Army.
• 1934 - The strongest surface wind gust in the world, 231 mph, was measured by the staff of the Mount Washington Observatory on the summit of Mount Washington
• 1934 - The Auto-Lite Strike, which culminated in a five-day melee between Ohio National Guard troops and 6,000 strikers and picketers, began.
• 1945 - President Franklin D. Roosevelt dies while in office; vice-president Harry S. Truman is sworn in as the 33rd President of the United States.
• 1955 - The polio vaccine, developed by Dr. Jonas Salk, is declared safe and effective.
• 1968 - Nerve gas accident at Skull Valley, Utah.

Columbia launching during STS-1.

• 1981 - Human spaceflight: The first launch of a Space Shuttle: Columbia launches on the STS-1 mission.
• 1990 - opening of Jim Gary's Twentieth Century Dinosaurs exhibition, the work of the only living sculptor ever invited to present a solo exhibition at the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C.
• 1999 - American President Bill Clinton was cited for contempt of court for giving "intentionally false statements" in the Paula Jones sexual harassment civil lawsuit.