Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/April 12

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 * 1204 – Troops of the Fourth Crusade entered Constantinople and began a sack of the city, temporarily dissolving the Byzantine Empire.
 * 1776 – American Revolution: The North Carolina Provincial Congress passed the Halifax Resolves, the first official action in the American colonies calling for independence from Great Britain.
 * 1822 – Greek War of Independence: Ottoman troops began a massacre of tens of thousands of Greeks (depicted) on the island of Chios.
 * 1861 – Confederate forces began a bombardment of Fort Sumter in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina, starting the American Civil War.
 * 1910 – SMS Zrínyi, one of the last pre-dreadnoughts built by the Austro-Hungarian Navy, was launched in Trieste.
 * 1961 – Aboard Vostok 1, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin performed the first human spaceflight, completing one orbit of Earth in 108 minutes.
 * 1980 – Samuel Doe took control of Liberia in a coup d'etat, overthrowing President William Tolbert and ending over 130 years of national democratic presidential succession.
 * 1980 – Canadian athlete Terry Fox embarked on an east-to-west "Marathon of Hope" from St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador, with a prosthetic leg to raise funds for cancer research.
 * 1983 – Harold Washington was elected as the first African-American mayor of Chicago.
 * 2014 – A fire broke out in the hills near Valparaíso, Chile, eventually destroying at least 2,500 homes and leaving approximately 11,000 people homeless.
 * Born/died: | Richeza of Poland, Queen of Sweden |b|1116| Charles VII of Sweden |d|1167| Margaret of Bourbon, Queen of Navarre |d|1256| Nicola Amati |d|1684| George N. Briggs |b|1796| Peter Hesketh-Fleetwood |d|1866| Addie Joss |b|1880| Tenby Davies |b|1884| Imogen Holst |b|1907| Beverly Cleary |b|1916| Jane Withers |b|1926| Zelia Nuttall |d|1933| Sydney Allard |d|1966| Abbie Hoffman |d|1989| Xin Fengxia |d|1998