15 Things That Happened On 420 Having Nothing To Do With Weed

A lot of important historical stuff happened on April 20th besides Columbus discovering Boulder, Colorado or the invention of Dave Chappelle or whatever reason everyone gets baked today. It's an awful day for Colorado. And let's not forget all the wonderful birthdays.

• 1769 - Chief Pontiac of the Ottowa tribe is murdered by a member of the Peoria tribe

  

• 1841 - The first detective story is published, Edgar Allan Poe's Murders at the Rue Morge

  

• 1871 - Congress passes the Ku Klux Act, allowing President Grant to use military force against the Ku Klux Klan

  

• 1898 - President McKinley asks Congress for declaration of war with Spain

  

• 1902 - Marie and Pierre Curie isolate radium

  

• 1912 - Boston Red Sox play their first game in Fenway Park

  

• 1912 - Bram Stoker, author of Dracula, dies

  

• 1914 - Militias employed by Standard Oil and the Rockefeller family open fire on striking coal miners in Ludlow, Colorado, killing dozens of men, women and children in what will come to be known as The Ludlow Massacre

  

• 1926 - Warner Bros. and Western Electric release Vitaphone, the first viable technology for sound in film

  

• 1945 - Allied forces launch Operation Corncob, airstrikes meant to cut off lines of retreat for German forces, as Hitler celebrates his birthday

  

• 1949 - Willie Shoemaker, legendary American jockey, wins his first horse race at Golden Gate Fields in Albany, California

  

• 1985 - Wham! are the first Western pop musicians to release cassettes in the People's Republic of China

  

• 1999 - Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris kill 13 students and faculty members of Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, then turn their guns on themselves

  

• 2008 - Danica Patrick becomes the first woman to win an IndyCar race at the Japan 300

  

• 2010 - The Deepwater Horizon explodes, killing 11 crewmembers and triggering the largest offshore oil spill in American history