Easter Sunday falls on April 20, a date notable for a number of recent tragedies.
The religious holiday, when Christians celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ, falls on the first Sunday after the full moon that follows the spring equinox. In 2025, the date falls almost a month later than it did in 2024.
The U.S. and most of the world use the Gregorian calendar, which can place the date of Easter anywhere between March 22 and April 25.
Easter 2025 happens to fall on a day with an unusual number of historical tragedies and ironies.
For those curious, the last time Easter occurred on April 20 was in 2014, and the next time the holiday is on April 20 will be in 2087, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
1999: Columbine High School shooting
The mass shooting at Columbine High School on April 20, 1999, where two students fatally shot 12 classmates and one teacher in Littleton, Colorado, made the tragedy one of the most infamous in U.S. history because it occurred under a 24-hour news cycle and and Americans’ growing use of the internet, media experts previously told USA TODAY.
Columbine students Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold initially planned a bomb attack, but the propane bombs they planted in the school cafeteria failed to detonate, so they turned to gun violence. The massacre, which also wounded 21 people, became a blueprint for dozens of copycats and shattered the notion that kids were safe in school.
The Columbine shootings also prompted major changes in school safety and sparked an ongoing legacy of activism as survivors then and in other school and mass shootings advocate for better gun control, while offering their support to the next generation of Americans affected by gun violence.
2010: Deepwater Horizon oil spill
On April 20, 2010, the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded, becoming the largest offshore oil spill in American history. The spill killed 11 people and injured 17 others as 210 million gallons of crude oil were released into the Gulf of Mexico (recently renamed by the U.S. government as Gulf of America) for a total of 87 days. Oil slicks from the blowout covered an area estimated at 57,000 square miles.
A 2020 study by the peer-reviewed journal Science Advances showed the spill was worse than originally thought.
Researchers say the full extent of the damage could take decades to assess. The spill was also toxic enough to kill about half of the marine life in its path, the journal study said.
1889: Adolf Hitler born
Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler was born on April 20, 1889 in in western Austria. Neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups have a history of staging events across the United States on or close to April 20, groups such as the Anti-Defamation League have previously noted.
Also of note: April 20 and marijuana
Easter Sunday and 4/20, the unofficial marijuana holiday celebrated globally, fall on the same day this year. The two shared the same date in 2003 and 2014 too.
Contributing: N’Dea Yancey-Bragg, Doyle Rice and Greta Cross
