837 - Comet 1P/837 F1 (Halley) approaches within 0.0334 AUs of Earth
1813 – Died Joseph-Louis Lagrange, Italian-born mathematician and astronomer (b. 1736)
1912 - RMS Titanic sets sail from Southampton for her maiden (and final) voyage
1925 - Tsaritsyn re-named Stalingrad (now Volgograd)
1932 - Paul von Hindenburg elected 1st German president (Hitler is 2nd)
1955 – Died Teilhard de Chardin, French paleontologist and theologian (b. 1881)
1984 - Damaged Solar Max satellite snared by Challenger shuttle
1991 - A rare tropical storm develops in the Southern Hemisphere near Angola; the first to be documented by satellites.
1996 - Fastest wind speed ever recorded (not a tornado) 408 km/h (220 kn; 253 mph; 113 m/s) during tropical cyclone Olivia on Barrow Island, Australia
