Russian soldiers in a former Armenian village, 1915

The Armenian genocide was the systematic destruction of the Armenian people and identity in the Ottoman Empire during World War I. At the orders of Talaat Pasha, an estimated 800,000 to 1,200,000 Armenian women, children, and elderly or infirm people were sent on death marches to the Syrian Desert in 1915 and 1916. Driven forward by paramilitary escorts, the deportees were deprived of food and water and subjected to robberies, rapes, and massacres. In the desert, the survivors were dispersed into concentration camps. In 1916 another wave of massacres was ordered, leaving about 200,000 deportees alive by the end of 1916. Around 100,000 to 200,000 Armenian women and children were forcibly converted to Islam and integrated into Muslim households. The Turkish nationalist movement carried out massacres and ethnic cleansing of survivors during the Turkish War of Independence after World War I. The Armenian genocide destroyed more than two millennia of Armenian civilization in eastern Anatolia. (Full article...)

Williamsburgh Savings Bank Building

• ... that though one publication said in 2001 that going to the Williamsburgh Savings Bank Building was like "an act of religious devotion", it was poorly suited for modern uses?
• ... that legislator Henry Alcazar successfully defended everyone accused of inciting the 1903 Water Riots that burned down the Trinidad and Tobago seat of government?
• ... that eight sailors on USS Varuna received the Medal of Honor for actions during the Battle of Forts Jackson and St. Philip?
• ... that the final silent film directed by Giulia Cassini Rizzotto was partly funded by the Vatican and featured Italian aristocrats?
• ... that a 2020 study concluded that taco pizza is the favorite pizza of Iowa?
• ... that Khalid ibn Barmak was so close to the first Abbasid caliph, al-Saffah, that his daughter was suckled by al-Saffah's wife?
• ... that the now-destroyed statue of Alexander Wood was the first LGBT monument in Canada?
• ... that Mimi Reinhardt typed Schindler's list?

José Ramos-Horta

• José Ramos-Horta (pictured) is elected as President of East Timor.
• Russia's Black Sea Fleet flagship, the cruiser Moskva, sinks off the coast of Ukraine.
• Flooding across KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, leaves at least 440 people dead.
• Shehbaz Sharif is elected as Prime Minister of Pakistan after Imran Khan is removed in a no-confidence motion.

April 24: Easter (Eastern Christianity, 2022); Divine Mercy Sunday (Catholicism, 2022); Night of Decree (Shia Islam, 2022); Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day (1915)

North flank of Kinder Scout

• 1704 – John Campbell released the first issue of The Boston News-Letter, the first continuously published newspaper in British North America.
• 1866 – German composer Max Bruch conducted the premiere of his first violin concerto, which later became his most famous work.
• 1922 – The first portion of the Imperial Wireless Chain, a strategic international wireless telegraphy communications network created to link the countries of the British Empire, opened.
• 1932 – An estimated 400 ramblers committed a wilful mass trespass of Kinder Scout (pictured) in the Peak District to highlight the denial of access to areas of open country in England.
• 1965 – Cold War: The Dominican Civil War broke out due to tensions following a military coup against the democratically elected government of President Juan Bosch two years earlier.