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HISTORY & TIMELINE
1 April

A journey through
1 April in history

From the Nazi boycott of Jewish shops in 1933 to the world’s first same-sex weddings in Amsterdam in 2001, 1 April has seen the first weather satellite, the founding of Apple, a famous BBC hoax about spaghetti trees and a tsunami that swept through Hilo in Hawaii. This timeline follows the date through the 20th century and into the 21st.

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V
THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

The 1900s

War and peace, technological leaps, social change, politics, sport and popular culture.

1918
An Airco DH.9A bomber in flight; the type joined the RAF in 1918.An Airco DH.9A bomber in flight; the type joined the RAF in 1918.Image: Royal Air Force · Public domain
world · Europe

The Royal Air Force is born

On 1 April 1918, in the last year of the First World War, the army’s Royal Flying Corps and the navy’s Royal Naval Air Service were merged into a single new service, the Royal Air Force. It followed a report by the South African general Jan Smuts after German bombing raids on London. The RAF began with more than 20,000 aircraft and about 300,000 men and women, the first independent air force of any of the great powers. In 1940 it won the Battle of Britain.

Source: RAF Museum: British military aviation in 1918 ↗
1933
Nazis put up posters on the windows of Jewish shops in Berlin on 1 April 1933.Nazis put up posters on the windows of Jewish shops in Berlin on 1 April 1933.Image: Georg Pahl · CC BY-SA 3.0 de
world · Europe

The Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses

Two months after Hitler came to power, Nazi stormtroopers stood outside Jewish-owned shops and the offices of Jewish doctors and lawyers across Germany, daubing Stars of David on windows and telling Germans not to go in. Many people ignored the one-day boycott, but it was the regime’s first nationwide action against Jews, and anti-Jewish laws followed within days.

Source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum: Boycott of Jewish businesses ↗
1935
A Reserve Bank of India 10-rupee note of 1937, in the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History.A Reserve Bank of India 10-rupee note of 1937, in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History.Image: National Museum of American History · Public domain
world · Asia

The Reserve Bank of India opens

India’s central bank began work in Calcutta under an act of 1934, taking over the issue of banknotes from the colonial government. Its first governor was Sir Osborne Smith. It moved its headquarters to Bombay in 1937 and was nationalised after independence.

Source: Reserve Bank of India: Brief history ↗
1945
US Marines come ashore on Okinawa, 1945.US Marines come ashore on Okinawa, 1945.Image: Unknown · Public domain
world · Asia

American forces land on Okinawa

On Easter Sunday, 1 April 1945, more than 60,000 American soldiers and Marines landed on the island of Okinawa, just 550 kilometres from mainland Japan. It was the largest amphibious assault of the Pacific war, and on the first day it met almost no resistance. The Japanese had dug in further south. The battle that followed lasted nearly three months and was one of the bloodiest of the war: more than 200,000 people died, among them a huge number of Okinawan civilians, and kamikaze pilots sank dozens of ships offshore.

Source: US Naval History and Heritage Command: Battle of Okinawa ↗
1946
People run from an approaching wave in Hilo, Hawaii, on 1 April 1946.People run from an approaching wave in Hilo, Hawaii, on 1 April 1946.Image: Unknown · Public domain
world · Americas

A tsunami strikes Hilo

A huge earthquake off Unimak Island in the Aleutians, Alaska, sent a tsunami racing across the Pacific. Nearly five hours later waves up to about 17 metres high hit Hawaii without warning; more than 150 people died there, most of them in the town of Hilo. The disaster led the United States to set up a Pacific tsunami warning system.

Source: US Geological Survey: M 8.6, 1946 Unimak Island earthquake ↗
1948
The afterglow of the Big Bang: a map of the whole sky from nine years of NASA's WMAP satellite, 2012.The afterglow of the Big Bang: a map of the whole sky from nine years of NASA’s WMAP satellite, 2012.Image: NASA / WMAP Science Team · Public domain
science · Global

The ‘alpha-beta-gamma’ paper on the Big Bang

The journal Physical Review published ‘The Origin of Chemical Elements’ by Ralph Alpher and George Gamow, showing how the hot, dense early universe could have made the light elements in the amounts we see. As a joke, Gamow added the name of Hans Bethe, who had not worked on it, so the authors read Alpher, Bethe, Gamow. The paper became a cornerstone of Big Bang theory.

Source: American Physical Society: April 1, 1948, The Origin of Chemical Elements ↗
1957
An April Fool 'spaghetti harvest' staged in California in 2012, in the spirit of the BBC's hoax.An April Fool ‘spaghetti harvest’ staged in California in 2012, in the spirit of the BBC’s hoax.Image: Robert Couse-Baker from Sacramento, California · CC BY 2.0
culture · Europe

The BBC’s spaghetti harvest

On 1 April 1957 the BBC’s serious current affairs programme Panorama ended with a three-minute film of a family in the Swiss canton of Ticino picking spaghetti from trees. The respected presenter Richard Dimbleby explained that a mild winter had brought a bumper crop. Pasta was still unusual in Britain, and hundreds of viewers phoned the BBC, some asking how to grow their own. It is often called the greatest April Fool’s joke ever played by a news organisation.

Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica: Why did the BBC once report about spaghetti harvests? ↗
1960
A cyclone over the South Atlantic photographed by TIROS I on 28 April 1960.A cyclone over the South Atlantic photographed by TIROS I on 28 April 1960.Image: NOAA Photo Library · Public domain
science · Global

The first weather satellite

NASA launched TIROS-1, the Television Infrared Observation Satellite, from Cape Canaveral on 1 April 1960. Its two small television cameras sent back the first pictures of the Earth’s weather taken from orbit. It worked for only 78 days but returned about 23,000 images, showing forecasters for the first time the great spiral patterns of storms from above. Weather satellites have watched the planet ever since.

Source: NOAA NESDIS: 65 years of the world’s first weather satellite ↗
1976
An Apple I computer on display at the Smithsonian.An Apple I computer on display at the Smithsonian.Image: Ed Uthman · CC BY-SA 2.0
science · Americas

Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak found Apple

On 1 April 1976 Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne signed the partnership agreement for the Apple Computer Company in California. To raise money, Jobs sold his Volkswagen van and Wozniak his programmable calculator. Wayne pulled out within two weeks, selling his tenth of the company for $800. Their first product was the Apple I, a circuit board Wozniak had designed, sold without a case or keyboard. Apple went on to make the Macintosh, the iPod and the iPhone, and became one of the most valuable companies in the world.

Source: Computer History Museum: Apple timeline ↗
1979
Voting in Iran's referendum on an Islamic Republic, March 1979.Voting in Iran’s referendum on an Islamic Republic, March 1979.Image: Unknown author · Public domain
politics · Middle East

Iran becomes an Islamic Republic

Two months after the Shah fled, Iranians were asked a single question on 30 and 31 March 1979: should Iran become an Islamic Republic? The official result was 98 per cent yes, though several groups boycotted the vote. On 1 April Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini proclaimed the Islamic Republic. It ended some 2,500 years of monarchy. A new constitution approved that December made Khomeini Supreme Leader, with power over the elected president and parliament. Iran still marks the day as Islamic Republic Day.

Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica: Iranian Revolution, aftermath ↗
1999
Sea ice and snow-covered land in Nunavut near Roes Welcome Sound, April 2017.Sea ice and snow-covered land in Nunavut near Roes Welcome Sound, April 2017.Image: Harrison Keely · CC BY 4.0
politics · Americas

Canada creates Nunavut

On 1 April 1999 the eastern part of the Northwest Territories became a new territory, Nunavut, meaning ‘our land’ in Inuktitut. Covering about a fifth of Canada but home to fewer than 30,000 people, most of them Inuit, it was the first big change to Canada’s map since Newfoundland joined in 1949. It grew out of the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement of 1993, the largest Indigenous land settlement in Canadian history. Its capital is Iqaluit, on Baffin Island.

Source: The Canadian Encyclopedia: Nunavut timeline ↗
VI
2000 TO TODAY

Modern Day

The events of recent decades that have already become part of the historical record.

2001
A same-sex wedding ceremony in the Netherlands in 2001.A same-sex wedding ceremony in the Netherlands in 2001.Image: Jeffpw · CC BY 3.0
world · Europe

The first same-sex marriages

The Netherlands became the first country in the world to open civil marriage to same-sex couples. Just after midnight, the mayor of Amsterdam, Job Cohen, married four couples at the city hall. Dozens of countries have since followed.

Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica: Same-sex marriage ↗
RESEARCH

Sources & Further Reading

Selected authoritative references supporting the events on this page.

WHY THESE MOMENTS?

Significance before volume

This page is not the longest possible list of events. It is a chronological journey through 1 April, where each entry is chosen for historical significance, human interest and reliability.

Facts are checked against authoritative museums, archives, universities and reference works. Where sources disagree, the page says so.

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