On This Day - What happened 8 April

Caracalla was assassinated while en route to a campaign against the Parthians by the Praetorian Guard.

In 1142, John returned to press his claims to Antioch, but he died in the spring of 1143 following a hunting accident.

John's chosen heir was his fourth son, Manuel I Komnenos, who campaigned aggressively against his neighbors both in the west and in the east.

On April 8, 1848, a law allowing universal suffrage and an indirect (two-stage) voting system was agreed to by the assembly.

On April 9, Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox, officially ending the war.

Asquith succeeded Campbell-Bannerman on 8 April 1908 and, four days later, Churchill was appointed President of the Board of Trade. Aged 33, he was the youngest Cabinet member since 1866.

In April 1918, the British Cabinet, in the face of the crisis caused by the German Spring Offensive, attempted with a dual policy to simultaneously link the enactment of conscription into Ireland with the implementation of Home Rule, as outlined in the report of the Irish Convention of 8 April 1918.

The following year, Philip's uncle and guardian Lord Milford Haven died of bone marrow cancer.

Operation Wilfred was a British naval operation during the Second World War that involved the mining of the channel between Norway and her offshore islands to prevent the transport of Swedish iron ore through neutral Norwegian waters to be used to sustain the German war effort. The Allies assumed that Wilfred would provoke a German response in Norway and prepared a separate operation known as Plan R 4 to occupy Narvik and other important locations. On 8 April 1940, the operation was partly carried out, but was overtaken by events as a result of the following day′s German invasion of Norway and Denmark (Operation Weserübung), which began the Norwegian Campaign.

The Norwegian campaign was an attempted Allied occupation of northern Norway, during the early stages of World War II. Resulted evacuation of the Norwegian government and the royal family, establishment of the Norwegian armed forces from the exile. The 62 days of fighting made Norway the nation that withstood a German land invasion for the second longest period of time, after the Soviet Union.

By May 1944, the Soviets had liberated Crimea. The Crimean Offensive was led by the Red Army on Crimea, the Offensive begun on 8 April 1944, and ended with the evacuation of the Crimea by the Germans.

The Battle of Königsberg was one of the last operations of the East Prussian Offensive. The siege started in late January 1945 when the Soviets initially surrounded the city. The battle ended when the German garrison surrendered to the Soviets on 9 April after a three-day assault made their position untenable. As result, Königsberg and its surrounding areas are annexed by the Soviet Union.

From Russia, with Love novel was published.

Charles de Gaulle, the first President of the Fifth Republic, decided to open a series of negotiations with the FLN. These concluded with the signing of the Évian Accords in March 1962. A referendum took place on 8 April 1962 and the French electorate approved the Évian Accords.

In the second referendum on the independence of Algeria, held in April 1962, 91 percent of the French electorate approved the Evian Accords.

In 1967, these became known as the European Communities (EC). The Merger Treaty, also known as the Treaty of Brussels, was a European treaty that unified the executive institutions of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), Atomic Energy Community (Euratom) and the Economic Community (EEC). The treaty was signed in Brussels on 8 April 1965 and came into force on 1 July 1967. It set out that the Commission of the EEC and the Council of the EEC should replace the Commission and Council of Euratom and the High Authority and Council of the ECSC. Although each Community remained legally independent, they shared common institutions (prior to this treaty, they already shared a Parliamentary Assembly and Court of Justice) and were together known as the European Communities. This treaty is regarded by some as the real beginning of the modern European Union.

ARPANET development was centered around the Request for Comments (RFC) process, still used today for proposing and distributing Internet Protocols and Systems. RFC 1, entitled "Host Software", was written by Steve Crocker from the University of California, Los Angeles, and published on April 7, 1969. These early years were documented in the 1972 film Computer Networks: The Heralds of Resource Sharing.

Pablo Picasso died on 8 April 1973 in Mougins, France from pulmonary edema and heart failure.

Kyle was born in Odessa, Texas, the first of two boys born to Deby Lynn (née Mercer) and Wayne Kenneth Kyle, a Sunday school teacher and deacon.

On April 8, SARS started to plague the Lower Ngau Tau Kok Estate near Amoy Gardens in Kowloon. Hong Kong health officials warned that SARS had spread so far domestically and abroad that it was here to stay.

Baroness Thatcher died on 8 April 2013, at the age of 87, after suffering a stroke.

Uber launches Uber Rush in New York City, a courier service using bicycle messengers to deliver packages. This marks the beginning of Uber's transition into a logistics company.

When Sanders suspended his campaign on April 8, 2020, Biden became the Democratic Party's presumptive nominee for president.

A Flemish painter named Louis de Vadder was born in 1655.

Philip IV was born in the Royal Palace of Valladolid, Spain.