1509 Henry VIII, 2nd Tudor king of England ascends to the throne at age 17, after the death of his father, Henry VII
- 1793 President Washington attends the opening of Ricketts's, the first circus in the US
- 1817 Curaçao prohibits the use of white paint due to intense sunlight
- 1823 British inventor Robert John Tyers patents an in-line roller skate he calls the "Volito" with a single row of five wooden wheels, a wooden sole, and a curved iron bar at the front as a rudimentary brake [1]
- 1838 English steamship "Sirius" docks in NYC after crossing the Atlantic, providing the first transatlantic steam passenger service
- 1884 Thomas Stevens leaves San Francisco on the first bicycle trip around the world, which takes him 2 years and 9 months
- 1969 First human eye transplant is performed
- 1970 First Earth Day celebrated, founded by Gaylord Nelson
- 1971 Soyuz 10 launches as the world's first mission to the first-ever space station (the Salyut 1) however the docking was unsuccessful and the cosmonauts returned to Earth
- 1972 NASA Apollo 16 astronauts John Young and Charles Duke ride the Lunar Rover on the Moon
- 1981 More than $3.3 million is stolen from the First National Bank of Arizona in Tucson in one of the largest US bank robberies in history
- 1993 Web browser Mosaic version 1.0 is released
- 1994 World's largest lollipop, weighing 3,011 pounds, made by BonBon, a candy factory in Home-Olstrup, Denmark; record later broken
- 1998 Disney's Animal Kingdom opens at Walt Disney World near Orlando, Florida
- 2025 Earth Day: National Geographic releases a new documentary, "Secrets of the Penguins," featuring the first drone footage in the world of penguin chicks jumping off a 50-foot cliff to take their first swim [1]
