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On this day in 1999, two teenage gunmen kill 13 people in a shooting spree at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, south of Denver. At approximately 11:19 a.m., Dylan Klebold, 18, and Eric Harris, 17, dressed in trench coats, began shooting students outside the school before moving inside to continue their rampage. By 11:35 a.m., Klebold and Harris had killed 12 fellow students and a teacher and wounded another 23 people. Shortly after noon, the two teens turned their guns on themselves and committed suicide. The crime prompted a national debate on gun control and school safety, as well as a major investigation to determine what motivated the teen gunmen. In the days immediately following the shootings, it was speculated that Klebold and Harris purposely chose jocks, minorities, and Christians as their victims. It was initially reported that one student, Cassie Bernall, was allegedly asked by one of the gunmen if she believed in God. When Bernall said, “Yes,” she was shot to death. Her parents later wrote a book titled She Said Yes, honoring their martyred daughter. Apparently, however, the question was not actually posed to Bernall but to another student who had already been wounded by a gunshot. When that victim replied, “Yes,” the shooter walked away. Subsequent investigations also determined that Harris and Klebold chose their victims randomly. Their original plan was for two propane bombs to explode in the school’s cafeteria, potentially killing hundreds of people and forcing the survivors outside and into the gunmen’s line of fire. When the bombs didn’t work, Harris and Klebold went into the school to carry out their murderous rampage. There was speculation that Harris and Klebold committed the killings because they were members of a group of social outcasts called the “Trenchcoat Mafia” that was fascinated by Goth culture. Violent video games and music were also blamed for influencing the killers. However, none of these theories was ever proven. Columbine High School reopened in the fall of 1999, but the massacre left a scar on the Littleton community. Mark Manes, the young man who sold a gun to Harris and bought him 100 rounds of ammunition the day before the murders, was sentenced to six years in prison. Carla Hochhalter, the mother of a student who was paralyzed in the attack, killed herself at a gun shop. Several other parents filed suit against the school and the police. Even Dylan Klebold’s parents filed a notice of their intent to sue, claiming that police should have stopped Harris earlier. And when a carpenter from Chicago erected 15 crosses in a local park on behalf of everyone who died on April 20, parents of the victims tore down the two in memory of Klebold and Harris. The shootings at Columbine were among the worst school shootings in U.S. history until April 16, 2007, when 32 people were shot and many others wounded by a student gunman on the Virginia Tech campus in Blacksburg, Virginia. Subsequent school shootings, including in Newtown, Connecticut in December 2012 and in Parkland, Florida in February 2018, continued to pain the nation. A March 2018 analysis by the Washington Post found that since the Columbine shootings in 1999, there have been 10 school shootings each year on average in the United States. (Mass Shootings)

The Bay of Pigs Invasion was a failed landing operation that ended on this day in 1961 on the southwestern coast of Cuba by Cuban exiles who opposed Fidel Castro's Cuban Revolution. Covertly financed and directed by the U.S. government, the operation took place at the height of the Cold War, and its failure led to major shifts in international relations between Cuba, the United States, and the Soviet Union. In 1952, American ally General Fulgencio Batista led a coup against President Carlos Prio and forced Prio into exile in Miami, Florida. Prio's exile inspired the creation of the 26th of July Movement against Batista by Castro. The movement successfully completed the Cuban Revolution in December 1958. Castro nationalized American businesses—including banks, oil refineries, and sugar and coffee plantations—then severed Cuba's formerly close relations with the United States and reached out to its Cold War rival, the Soviet Union. In response, U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower allocated $13.1 million to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in March 1960, for use against Castro. With the aid of Cuban counter-revolutionaries, the CIA proceeded to organize an invasion operation. After Castro's victory, Cuban exiles who had traveled to the U.S. had formed the counter-revolutionary military unit Brigade 2506. The brigade fronted the armed wing of the Democratic Revolutionary Front (DRF), and its purpose was to overthrow Castro's government. The CIA funded the brigade, which also included some U.S. military personnel, and trained the unit in Guatemala. Over 1,400 paramilitaries, divided into five infantry battalions and one paratrooper battalion, assembled and launched from Guatemala and Nicaragua by boat on 17 April 1961. Two days earlier, eight CIA-supplied B-26 bombers had attacked Cuban airfields and then returned to the U.S. On the night of 17 April, the main invasion force landed on the beach at Playa Girón in the Bay of Pigs, where it overwhelmed a local revolutionary militia. Initially, José Ramón Fernández led the Cuban Army counter-offensive; later, Castro took personal control. As the invaders lost the strategic initiative, the international community found out about the invasion, and U.S. President John F. Kennedy decided to withhold further air support. The plan devised during Eisenhower's presidency had required the involvement of both air and naval forces. Without air support, the invasion was being conducted with fewer forces than the CIA had deemed necessary. The invaders surrendered on 20 April. Most of the invading counter-revolutionary troops were publicly interrogated and put into Cuban prisons. The invading force had been defeated within three days by the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces (Spanish: Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias – FAR). The invasion was a U.S. foreign policy failure. The invasion's defeat solidified Castro's role as a national hero and widened the political division between the two formerly-allied countries. It also pushed Cuba closer to the Soviet Union, setting the stage for the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. (Cold War)

Also on this day in 1914, the Ludlow Massacre occurred when the Colorado National Guard and a private security force attacked 1,200 striking coal miners, killing 21 people, including women and children. The event took place during the Colorado Coalfield War, a period of violent labor unrest in Colorado from 1913-1914. The massacre was the culmination of months of labor strife in Ludlow, Colorado. It began at a meeting between the anti-union militia and a reluctant labor leader Louis Tikas. Although Tikas discouraged violence, the strikers, who had noticed machine guns placed above the Ludlow colony, took cover in ad hoc fire positions. Accounts differ as to who shot first, but a battle commenced between the armed factions, leading to nearly a dozen deaths, including one twelve-year-old boy who was shot in the head. After the violence subdued, Tikas and other strikers were found shot in the back. The chief owner of the mine, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., was widely condemned for having orchestrated the massacre. In retaliation, the miners armed themselves and attacked dozens of anti-union establishments over the next ten days, destroying property and engaging in several skirmishes with the Colorado National Guard in a 40-mile front from Trinidad to Walsenburg. An estimated 69 to 199 deaths occurred total during the strike, leading historian Thomas G. Andrews has called it the "deadliest strike in the history of the United States". Although the strikers' demands were not met, the event electrified national discussions of labor and had a positive impact on labor rights in the long run. (Massacres)