12 APRIL

1899 - During the Filipino-American War (1899-1914), Gen. Licerio Geronimo appoints a foreigner, Arthur Howard, as a Captain of Infantry of the Philippine army and orders his forces, as well as civil and military authorities, to accord him the respect due his rank; Geronimo's division, his Tiradores de la Muerte troop in particular, will be responsible for felling American Gen. Henry Ware Lawton eight months later during a historic battle in San Mateo, then wholly part of Rizal province.

1861 - The American Civil War begins--the only war fought on United States soil, not counting the military operations staged against the Native American Indians in the bid of the white government to further push its frontier; the War that broke out over the issue of black slavery commenced when pro-slavery Confederate shore batteries under General P.G.T. Beauregard open fire on Union-held Fort Sumter in South Carolina's Charleston Bay.

1877 - Britain annexes South Africa after convincing the Transvaal government to accept  the annexation; the Transvaal Boers (African of Dutch descent) will later claim the annexation violates the Sand River and Bloemfontein Conventions of 1852 and 1854, and after the British defeat at Majuba Hill by Boers in 1881, Transvaal autonomy will be restored.

1961 - The Soviet Union wins the space race as it sends the first man, Major Yuri Alexeyevich Gagarin, into space aboard the space craft Vostok (East); during the height of the Cold War, the United Stated has hoped to be the first to send a human into space, although some eight years later, the US will be the first to send humans to the moon.