April 22 – Some important events on this day
1500 👉🏼 Pedro Álvares Cabral is the first european to discover Brazil, landing near Monte Pascoal, claims it for Portugal.
Pedro Álvares Cabral was chosen by the Portuguese crown to lead a major expedition to India in 1500. A fleet of 13 ships and an estimated 1500 men left Portugal to follow in the footsteps of Vasco da Gama’s earlier expedition in search of new trade routes.
It is still unclear today whether Cabral’s journey into the west Atlantic was deliberate or not but on this day land was spotted at what Cabral christened Monte Pascoal in what is now modern Brazil. The expedition went on to spend about 10 days exploring the coast and interacting with indigenous peoples. Cabral claimed the lands for the Portuguese crown under the conditions of the Treaty of Tordesillas, agreed with Spain which granted Portugal sway over undiscovered lands along the meridian of 370 leagues.
The rest of the expedition was equally momentous. Cabral lost six of his ships in a storm off Mozambique before reaching India, where he battled with locals and competing Arab merchants before loading up with spices and returning home in July 1501.
1526 👉🏼 1st slave revolt in the American colonies occurs in South Carolina
1529 👉🏼 Treaty of Saragosa: Spain and Portugal divide eastern hemisphere 🌎
1692 👉🏼 Edward Bishop is jailed for proposing flogging as a cure for witchcraft in Salem, Massachusetts.
Probably the most notorious case of mass hysteria in colonial America, the Salem witch trials saw around 200 people accused of witchcraft, with 19 found guilty and executed. Another man was crushed to death for refusing to plead, while five others died in jail.
The incident began in February 1692 when a group of young girls claimed to have been possessed by the devil and accused other women of being witches. Hysteria spread through colonial Massachusetts and a special court was convened to hear trials of those accused.
By September public opinion turned against the trials and they eventually closed early in 1693. The cases became notorious and were interpreted by later generations as a warning sign against the dangers of religious fanaticism, isolation and lapses in due process. In 1711 the convictions of twenty-two people were reversed by the courts and their families were given monetary compensation.
1876 👉🏼 Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky completes his ballet “Swan Lake” 🩰
1915 👉🏼 1st military use of poison gas (chlorine, by Germany) in WW I
1945 👉🏼 Adolf Hitler admits defeat.
Hitler, learning from one of his generals that no German defense was offered to the Russian assault at Eberswalde, admits to all in his underground bunker that the war is lost and that suicide is his only recourse. Almost as confirmation of his assessment, a Soviet mechanized corps reaches Treuenbrietzen, 40 miles southwest of Berlin, liberates a POW camp and releases, among others, Norwegian Commander in Chief Otto Ruge.
1976 👉🏼 Barbara Walters becomes 1st female nightly network news anchor (Today Show)
1981 👉🏼 More than $3.3 million is stolen from the First National Bank of Arizona in Tucson in the then largest US bank robbery in history
1993 👉🏼 Holocaust Memorial Museum dedicated in Washington, D.C.
1994 👉🏼 7,000 Tutsis slaughtered by Hutus in the stadium at Kibuye, Rwanda
1994 👉🏼 In Denmark the largest lollipop, weighing 3,011 pounds, made 🍭
2006 👉🏼 243 people are injured in pro-democracy protest in Nepal after Nepali security forces open fire on protesters against King Gyanendra.
2016 👉🏼 Paris Agreement on climate change signed in New York binding 195 nations to an increase in the global average temperature to less than 2°C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the increase to 1.5°C