Template:On this day - April 8

Pablo Picasso

• 1455 – Cardinal Alfonso de Borja is elected Pope and takes the name Callixtus III.
• 1596 – Birth of Juan van der Hamen y León, Spanish Baroque painter of the Golden Age (d. 1631).
• 1605 – Birth of Philip IV, King of Spain, Portugal, Naples, Sicily and Sardinia, Duke of Milan, Duke of Burgundy, sovereign of the Netherlands and Count of Flanders (d. 1665).
• 1684 – Death of Payo Enríquez de Rivera, Spanish religious and Viceroy of New Spain (b. 1622).
• 1691 – In the Spanish Netherlands, the army of Louis XIV takes the fortress of Mons after almost a month of siege, despite the resistance put up by the defenders, who suffer numerous casualties.
• 1701 – The Spanish Cortes recognize Philip V as King.
• 1754 – Birth of Juan Sempere y Guarinos, Spanish politician, jurist, bibliographer and economist (d. 1830).
• 1816 – Birth of Francisca Carrasco Jiménez, Pancha Carrasco, Costa Rican peasant woman, a national heroine for her participation in the National Campaign of 1856-1857 (d. 1890).
• 1827 – At the battle of Monte Santiago, the fleet of the Irish-Argentine admiral Guillermo Brown repels the Brazilian ships.
• 1871 – Death of Francisco Javier Muñiz, Argentine physician and scientist, noted for his epidemiological, zoological and paleontological research (b. 1795).
• 1879 – In northeastern Argentina, near the border with Paraguay, Lieutenant Colonel Luis Jorge Fontana founds the town of Formosa.
• 1898 – In Spain, the Atlantic Squadron, under the command of Admiral Pascual Cervera y Topete, leaves Cádiz for Cuba to put down the pro-independence outbreaks in the colony.
• 1973 – Death of Pablo Picasso, Spanish painter and sculptor, the foremost exponent of Cubism (b. 1881).
• 1996 – Death of León Klimovsky, Argentine film director (b. 1906).
• 2000 – In Bolivia, President Hugo Bánzer decrees a state of siege, the sixth time this emergency measure has been applied in the country since the restoration of democracy in October 1982.
• 2003 – Death of José Couso, Spanish photojournalist, from the shots of a U.S. tank at the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad (b. 1965).
• 2006 – Ecuador lifts the state of emergency in several provinces, imposed because of indigenous protests against the Peru-United States Free Trade Agreement.
• 2013 – Death of José Luis Sampedro, Spanish writer, humanist and economist (b. 1917).