Robert Alton Harris
On April 21, 1992, Robert Alton Harris is executed in California’s gas chamber after 13 years on death row. This was California's first execution since former Chief Justice Rose Bird and two other California state Supreme Court justices, Joseph Grodin and Cruz Reynoso, had been rejected by California voters. From 1979 to 1986, the Bird court had reversed 64 out of the 68 death penalty cases on appeal.
April 20, 2013 Associated Press
DENVER — Gunfire erupted at a Denver pot celebration Saturday, injuring two people and scattering a crowd of thousands who had gathered for the first 4/20 counterculture holiday since the state legalized marijuana.
The man and woman who were shot were expected to survive, and police were looking for one or two suspects, said Denver Police spokesman Sonny Jackson. Police asked festival attendees for possible photo or video of the shootings, and had no immediate motive.
Witnesses described a scene in which a jovial atmosphere quickly turned to one of panic at the downtown Civic Center Park just before 5 p.m. Several thought firecrackers were being set off, then a man fell bleeding, his dog also shot.
"I saw him fall, grabbing his leg," said Travis Craig, 28, who was at the celebration, saw the shooting and said he used a belt to apply a tourniquet to the man's leg.
Columbine Memorial Library
On April 20, 1999, two teenage gunmen kill 13 people in a shooting spree at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. At about 11:20 a.m., Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, dressed in long trench coats, began shooting students outside the school before moving inside to continue their rampage. By the time SWAT team officers finally entered the school at about 3:00 p.m., Klebold and Harris had killed 12 fellow students and a teacher, and had wounded another 23 people. Then, around noon, they turned their guns on themselves and committed suicide.
Aftermath of the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building
On April 19, 1995, a massive truck bomb explodes outside the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. The blast collapsed the north face of the nine-story building, instantly killing more than 100 people and trapping dozens more in the rubble. Emergency crews raced to Oklahoma City from across the country, and when the rescue effort finally ended two weeks later the death toll stood at 168 people killed, including 19 young children who were in the building's day-care center at the time of the blast.
April 18, 2013 The Smoking Gun
The two men described as “possible suspects” in the Boston Marathon bombing are actually a 24-year-old track coach and a teenage high school runner who works at Subway and 
posted photos to Facebook of his trip Monday to watch the race.
Yassine Zaimi and student Salaheddin Barhoum, 17, had their photos published today on the front page of the New York Post, which described them as “Bag Men” whose identity was being sought by investigators probing the deadly terror attack.
As seen below, the Post photo, which includes red circles around Zaimi and Barhoum, is slugged “suspect--525x415.jpg.” Barhoum is pictured wearing a blue Adidas warmup jacket, while Zaimi is seen in a white baseball cap.
Several photos of Zaimi and Barhoum watching the race from near the Copley Square finish line have been widely circulated online by amateur sleuths attempting to determine who might have been responsible for detonating the pressure cooker bombs.
In a CNN update last night, correspondent Deborah Feyerick reported that investigators were looking at two “possible suspects” who had initially been considered “men of interest.” However, Feyerick added, the pair had subsequently “risen to the top of the list” of probers. While not showing photos of the two purported suspects, Feyerick gave detailed descriptions of the pair’s clothing and the bags they carried.
U.S. Embassy Bombing in Beirut
On April 18, 1983, the U.S. embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, is almost completely destroyed by a car-bomb explosion that kills 63 people, including the suicide bomber and 17 Americans. The terrorist attack was carried out in protest of the U.S. military presence in Lebanon. In 1975, a bloody civil war erupted in Lebanon, with Palestinian and leftist Muslim guerrillas battling militias of the Christian Phalange Party, the Maronite Christian community, and other groups.
On the night of November 29, 1988, near the impoverished Marlborough neighborhood in south Kansas City, an explosion at a construction site killed six of the city’s firefighters. It was a clear case of arson, and five people from Marlborough were duly convicted of the crime. But for veteran crime writer and crusading editor J. Patrick O’Connor, the facts—or a lack of them—didn’t add up. Justice on Fire is OConnor’s detailed account of the terrible explosion that led to the firefighters’ deaths and the terrible injustice that followed. Also available from Amazon
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