Today is Thursday, April 2, the 92nd day of 2026. There are 273 days left in the year.

Today in history:

On April 2, 2005, John Paul II, the Polish pope born Karol Józef Wojtyła, died in his Vatican apartment at age 84. The first non-Italian pope in over 450 years, John Paul II became one of the most influential leaders of the late 20th and early 21st centuries while playing a crucial role in the fall of communism in Europe and the former Soviet Union.

Also on this date:

In 1792, Congress passed the Coinage Act, which authorized establishment of the U.S. Mint.

In 1865, Confederate President Jefferson Davis and most of his Cabinet fled the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia, after Union troops broke through Confederate lines in the Third Battle of Petersburg.

In 1917, President Woodrow Wilson asked Congress to declare war against Germany, saying, “The world must be made safe for democracy.” (Congress declared war four days later.)

In 1982, Argentine troops seized the disputed Falkland Islands from the United Kingdom, sparking the Falklands War.

In 1992, mob boss John Gotti was convicted in New York of murder and racketeering; he was later sentenced to life in prison without parole. (Gotti died in prison in 2002.)

In 2007, in its first case on climate change, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency, ruled 5-4 that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases were air pollutants under the Clean Air Act.

In 2012, a gunman killed seven people at Oikos University, a Christian school in Oakland, California. (The gunman, One Goh, died in 2019 while serving a life prison sentence.)

In 2014, a soldier opened fire on fellow service members at Fort Hood in Texas, killing three people and wounding 16 others before taking his own life. (More than a dozen people were killed at the same base in a 2009 attack by an Army major and psychiatrist who was sentenced to death in 2013 for the shootings.)

In 2021, a U.S. Capitol Police officer was killed after a man rammed a car into two officers at a barricade outside the Capitol in Washington, D.C. Authorities fatally shot the man when he got out of the car with a knife and began running at the officers.

Today’s Birthdays: Disc jockey Dr. Demento is 85. Actor Linda Hunt is 81. Musician Emmylou Harris is 79. Actor Christopher Meloni is 65. Tennis Hall of Famer Todd Woodbridge is 55. Actor Pedro Pascal is 51. Actor Adam Rodriguez is 51. Actor Michael Fassbender is 49. Country musician Chris Janson is 40. Actor Jesse Plemons is 38. Rapper Quavo is 35. Country musician Zach Bryan is 30. Actor Emma Myers is 24. Singer-songwriter Daniel Seavey is 27.