April 17 -Phnom Penh taken by Khmer Rouge
1975: The civil war in Cambodia, begun in 1970, had pushed the ruling Lon Nol government into a defensive stance and left them, by the end of 1973, in control of only the capital city of Phnom Penh, the northwest, and a handful of provincial towns. On this day the Lon Nol government collapsed, and the communist forces of the Khmer Rouge, led by Pol Pot, entered Phnom Penh and forcibly dispersed its citizenry into rural areas. The Khmer Rouge's rule over the next four years was marked by some of the worst excesses of any Marxist government in the 20th century.
1961: Cuban leader Fidel Castro's forces repelled the Bay of Pigs invasion led by recent Cuban exiles and financed by the U.S. government during the Cold War.
1956: Cominform, the international Communist Information Bureau founded in 1947, was disbanded as part of a Soviet program of reconciliation with Yugoslavia.
1895: The Treaty of Shimonoseki concluded the first Sino-Japanese War, which ended in China's defeat.
1521: Martin Luther appeared before the Diet of Worms to defend his ideas on church reform.
1194: Richard I (the Lion-Heart) was crowned king of England for the second time after earlier surrendering his kingdom to Holy Roman Emperor Henry VI.
Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev, born this day in 1894, was the first secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1953–64) and premier of the Soviet Union (1958–64). His policy of de-Stalinization had widespread repercussions throughout the communist world. During his tenure he broke the tradition of the Stalin dictatorship and established a basis for liberalizing tendencies within Soviet communism.
"There were those who loved him, there were those who hated him, but there were few who would pass him by without looking in his direction."
Sergey Khrushchev, eulogizing his father, Nikita, at his funeral, 1971
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