These historical events took place on April 19th:
1775: American Revolution begins in Lexington, Massachusetts. The “Shot Heard Round the World” took place in Concord later that day.
1782: The second President of the United States, John Adams secures Dutch Republic’s recognition of the United States as an independent government and house he purchased in The Hague, Netherlands became first American embassy.
1919: Leslie Irvin of United States makes first premeditated free-fall parachute jump.
1927: Actress Mae West found guilty of “obscenity and corrupting the morals of youth” in a New York stage play entitled “Sex”. She is sentenced to 10 days in prison and was fined $500, the resulting publicity launches her Hollywood career.
1932: Bonnie Parker is captured in a failed hardware store burglary, and subsequently jailed. A grand jury fails to indict her, however, and she is released a few months later.
1971: Charles Manson sentenced to life in prison for the first-degree murder of Sharon Tate Polanski and six others.
1982: Sally Ride is named the first American woman astronaut.
1989: Violent rape of jogger Trisha Meili in NYC’s Central Park became one of the most widely publicized crimes of the 1980s. Five men were wrongfully convicted and spent between 6-13 years in prison, they would be named the Central Park Five.