Apr. 20. 1972: A rally of 2,000 Univ. of Washington students against renewed bombing of Hanoi votes to strike and to support a Vietnamese student, Nguyen Thai Binh, resisting possible deportation for anti-war activity. Nguyen is killed on July 2 while attempting to hijack an airliner to Hanoi. 1985: Some 250,000 march in Washington to protest U.S. policy in Central America.

Apr. 21. 1782: The Presidio, overlooking San Francisco, is erected by the Spanish to subdue Indians interfering with mail transmissions along El Camino Real. 1835: John Muir, early western conservationist, born. 1870: Birth of Vladimir Lenin, patron saint of Fremont. 1898: U.S. uses sinking of battleship Maine as rallying cry, declaring war on Spain in a (successful) attempt to acquire colonies attempting to win independence from Spain. The U.S. picked up, among other new properties, Puerto Rico and the Philippines in the deal, and used its new presence in the Pacific as an excuse for annexing the independent nation of Hawai'i later that year.

Apr. 22. 1526: First slave revolt in an American settlement. 1963: Secretary of State Rusk stated that South Vietnam, under Diem, was "steadily moving toward a constitutional system resting upon popular consent." Six months later, South Vietnamese generals, charging that Diem had "trampled on the people's rights," seized power in a coup allegedly "encouraged" by the U.S. 1993: Holocaust Museum dedicated, Washington, D.C.

Apr. 23. 1904: Flathead Indian Reservation (in northwestern Montana) split into allotments; nearly half the land is then given to white settlers. 1969: Northern Ireland independence activist Bernadette Devlin takes a seat as Member of Parliament in the British House of Commons. 1993: Death of Cesar Chavez, nonviolent civil rights activist and founder of the United Farm Workers.

Apr. 24. 1954: Birth of jailed African-American journalist and activist Mumia Abu-Jamal. 1971: Largest ever (over 1,000,000) demonstration opposing U.S. war in Southeast Asia. Washington, D.C.

Apr. 25. 1968: 80 Olympic Community College students are arrested in a protest on their Bremerton, WA, campus. 1982: Women lay wreath for all women of all countries raped in war, Canberra, Australia. 1993: Over one million join march in Washington, D.C. for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender rights.

Apr. 26. 1655: Dutch West India Co. refuses to exclude Jews from New Amsterdam (later New York). 1858: The California legislature passed a bill prohibiting Chinese or "other Mongolians" from landing at any port in the state unless the boat on which they were passengers was driven ashore by storm or unavoidable accident. 1953: Radioactive rain fell on Troy, New York. 1986: Worst known nuclear disaster in history occurs at Chernobyl, USSR (now Ukraine). Explosion kills at least 200 and irradiates much of Eastern Europe and Scandinavia. Subsequent death toll from radiation exposure is now estimated in the hundreds of thousands.