The Daily Standard
World News
Today is Wednesday, April 22, the 112th day of 2026. There are 253 days left in the year.
Today in history:
On April 22, 1889, the Oklahoma Land Rush began at noon as thousands of homesteaders staked claims to nearly 1.9 million acres (770,000 hectares) of land that was formerly part of Indian Territory. By the end of the day, the cities of Oklahoma City and Guthrie were established with as many as 10,000 settlers each.
Also on this date:
In 1915, German forces unleashed their first full-scale use of chlorine gas against Allied troops at the start of the Second Battle of Ypres (EE'-preh) in Belgium during World War I. Thousands of Allied soldiers are believed to have died from the poison gas attacks.
In 1954, the publicly televised sessions of the Senate Army-McCarthy hearings began, probing Wisconsin U.S. Sen. Joseph McCarthy's allegations of communist influence within the federal government, the U.S. Army and other spheres of American life.
In 1970, an estimated 20 million Americans took part in the first Earth Day, a series of events proposed by Sen. Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin to promote environmental protection. It marked the start of the modern environmental movement.
In 1994, Richard M. Nixon, the 37th president of the United States and the first to resign from office (after the Watergate scandal), died at a New York hospital four days after suffering a stroke. He was 81.
In 2000, in a dramatic predawn raid, heavily armed immigration agents seized 6-year-old Elian Gonzalez, the Cuban boy at the center of an intense international custody dispute, from his relatives' home in Miami. Elian was reunited with his father at Andrews Air Force Base near Washington and returned to Cuba in June.
In 2005, Zacarias Moussaoui (zak-uh-REE'-uhs moo-SOW'-ee) pleaded guilty in a federal courtroom outside Washington, D.C., to conspiring with the Sept. 11 hijackers to kill Americans. (Moussaoui was sentenced to life in prison in May 2006.)
In 2010, the Deepwater Horizon oil platform, operated by BP, sank into the Gulf of Mexico two days after a massive explosion that killed 11 workers. The explosion and fire touched off one of the largest environmental disasters in U.S. history, spewing hundreds of millions of gallons of oil over pristine Gulf coasts and fragile wetlands.
In 2016, the bodies of eight members of a single family were discovered shot at four homes in a southern Ohio county. Authorities later said a custody dispute triggered by a young mother's refusal to give up her daughter prompted the massacre; four people were convicted in the case.
In 2025, gunmen shot and killed 26 tourists at a resort in Indian-controlled Kashmir. Police blamed militants fighting against Indian rule for the attack near the disputed region's resort town of Pahalgam.
Today's Birthdays: Actor Jack Nicholson is 89. Singer Mel Carter is 87. Author Janet Evanovich is 83. Filmmaker John Waters is 80. Basketball Hall of Famer Spencer Haywood is 77. Singer Peter Frampton is 76. Actor-comedian Ryan Stiles is 67. Actor Jeffrey Dean Morgan is 60. Actor Sheryl Lee is 59. Actor-talk show host Sherri Shepherd is 59. Actor Eric Mabius is 55. Entrepreneur Sam Altman is 41. Actor Amber Heard is 40. Former NFL running back Marshawn Lynch is 40. Rapper-singer Machine Gun Kelly is 36. NFL wide receiver Rashee Rice is 26.
