As you walk the path of American history, you can find many dates that, even without a year attached, will evoke thoughts and emotions of a notable event. July 4. Dec. 7. Sept. 11. But perhaps no set of days in history is as packed with events big and small that impact us today than April 12 to 19. These eight days – just a shade over a week – contain the starts of revolutions, in all senses of the word, and many beginnings and a few endings of eras. If you combined those 192 hours of every year into one period, this is what your week would look like, with a little help from historychannel.com.

April 12: Before dawn, at 4:30 a.m., Confederate forces begin firing on Fort Sumter in 1865. Still early in the morning, at 7:00:03 a.m. in 1981, the skies of central Florida are disrupted when the first space shuttle, Columbia, lifts off and sends the United States into a new era of space exploration. In the late afternoon in 1945, a presidential era ends after Franklin Roosevelt complains “I have a terrific headache” and dies of a cerebral hemorrhage.

April 13: Two hundred thousand miles above the earth, an oxygen tank explodes on Apollo 13, and probably makes a lot of people at NASA a little more superstitious. By the end of the week, though, all three astronauts will return safely.

April 14: During the day in 1894, Thomas Edison debuts his Kinetoscope in a New York City arcade, introducing movies to the average person. Sixty-two years later to the day, the first videotape recorder is demonstrated, and CBS buys three machines for $75,000 apiece.

Also during the 14th, in 1865, Abraham Lincoln will give the go-ahead for a proposal to create an agency to track down counterfeiters called the Secret Service. It would be one of his last acts as president, because hours later John Wilkes Booth makes his way to the presidential box at Ford’s Theater and shoots Lincoln. He will die at 7:22 a.m. tomorrow. The 14th isn’t over yet in history, though. In 1912, at 11:40 p.m., in the middle of the North Atlantic, the Titanic hits an iceberg.

April 15: As the Titanic sinks, a young man named David Sarnoff sits atop Wanamaker’s Department Store in New York City and receives the distress calls. Sarnoff will play a major role in later development of communications, founding NBC radio, creating NBC television and becoming president of RCA. The Titanic sinks at 2:20.

Over in San Francisco on April 15, 1977, the first West Coast Computer Fair begins. By the time it is over, the tech world will see the debut of the first mass-produced, non-hobbyist personal computer, the Apple II.

April 18: At 5:13 a.m. in 1906, the San Andreas Fault comes to life with an earthquake later estimated to be a magnitude of 8.0. San Francisco is left in ruins as fires sweep through the city, and it is estimated that 3,000 people died as a result of the quake.

April 19: Today is the day of revolutions. Early in the morning, around five, British troops sent to seize a rebel arsenal find 77 minutemen in their way at Lexington. Someone fires a gun, and the Revolutionary War begins.

Technological revolutions begin today, also. In New York in 1938, RCA-NBC begins regular TV broadcasts, only five hours a week, but the start of something big.

In 1995, Timothy McVeigh carries out his own revolution against the government, as a bomb goes off at the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City at 9:02 a.m. He picks the day because on the 19th two years earlier, the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, burned to the ground.

As you walk around next week, give a little thought to events that have created the world you live in today. They may have taken place decades apart, but in the grand scheme of things, some may have happened just yesterday.

Jeff Morrison is a sophomore in journalism and mass communication and political science from Traer. He is a copy editor for the Daily.