April 19, federal building bombed in Oklahoma City

Today is Saturday, April 19, the 109th day of 2025. There are 256 days left in the year.

Today in history:

On April 19,1995, Timothy McVeigh, seeking to strike at the government he blamed for the Branch Davidian deaths two years earlier, destroyed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people. (McVeigh was convicted of federal murder charges and executed in 2001.)

Also on this date:

In 1775, the American Revolutionary War began with the Battles of Lexington and Concord—the start of an eight-year armed conflict between American colonists and the British Army.

In 1897, the first Boston Marathon was held. Winner John J. McDermott ran the course in 2 hours, 55 minutes and 10 seconds.

In 1943, during World War II, tens of thousands of Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto began a valiant but ultimately futile uprising against Nazi forces.

In 1977, the Supreme Court, in Ingraham v. Wright, ruled 5-4 that even severe spanking of schoolchildren by faculty members did not violate the Eighth Amendment ban against cruel and unusual punishment.

In 1989, 47 sailors were killed when a gun turret exploded aboard the USS Iowa during training exercises in the Caribbean.

In 1993, the 51-day siege at the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas, ended as the Davidians set fire to their compound following an FBI tear gas attack. Seventy-five people, including 25 children and sect leader David Koresh, were killed.

In 2005, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger of Germany was elected pope in the first conclave of the new millennium; he took the name Benedict XVI.

In 2013, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev (joh-HAHR’ tsahr-NEYE’-ehv), a 19-year-old college student wanted in the Boston Marathon bombings, was taken into custody after a manhunt that had left the city virtually paralyzed. His older brother and alleged accomplice, 26-year-old Tamerlan (TAM’-ehr-luhn), was killed earlier in a furious attempt to escape police.

In 2015, Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old Black man, died a week after suffering a spinal cord injury in the back of a Baltimore police van while he was handcuffed and shackled. (Six police officers were charged. Three were acquitted and the city’s top prosecutor eventually dropped the three remaining cases.)