1770: British explorer Captain James Cook first sights Australia and writes in his logbook that “what we have as yet seen of this land appears rather low, and not very hilly, the face of the Country green and Woody, but the Sea shore is all a white Sand”

1775: American Revolution begins in Lexington, Massachusetts, with the “Shot Heard Round the World” fired later that day in Concord

1982: Sally Ride is named the first American woman astronaut

1995: Oklahoma City bombing: Timothy McVeigh sets a truck bomb at Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, killing 168. including 19 children, and injuring 500

2011: Fidel Castro resigns his position of First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba after 45 years in power

Source: Onthisday.com