April 14: Tamil New Year and other New Year festivals in South and Southeast Asia (2024); N'Ko Alphabet Day in West Africa Hailstones from the 1999 Sydney hailstorm 1471 – Wars of the Roses: The Yorkists under Edward IV defeated the Lancastrians at the Battle of Barnet, killing Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick. 1945 – World War II: The German town of Friesoythe was razed by the 4th Canadian Division on the orders of Major General Christopher Vokes. 1999 – A storm dropped around 500,000 tonnes of hailstones on Sydney (examples pictured) and the east coast of New South Wales, causing about A$2.3 billion in damages, the costliest natural disaster in Australian insurance history. 2010 – Plumes of ash from a major eruption of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano in Iceland led to widespread disruption of air travel throughout Europe for several days. 2014 – Boko Haram militants kidnapped 276 schoolgirls from a government secondary school in the town of Chibok, Nigeria. Alexander Greenlaw Hamilton (b. 1852)Robert Carlyle (b. 1961)Rachel Carson (d. 1964) More anniversaries: April 13 April 14 April 15 Archive By email List of days of the year About