On This Day

March 20, 2013

0141 - The 6th recorded perihelion passage of Halley's Comet took place.

1413 - Henry V took the throne of England upon the death of his father Henry IV.

1525 - Paris' parliament began its pursuit of Protestants.

1602 - The United Dutch East Indian Company (VOC) was formed.

1616 - Walter Raleigh was released from Tower of London to seek gold in Guyana.

1627 - France & Spain signed an accord for fighting Protestantism.

1739 - In India, Nadir Shah of Persia occupied Delhi and took possession of the Peacock throne.

1760 - The great fire of Boston destroyed 349 buildings.

1792 - In Paris, the Legislative Assembly approved the use of the guillotine.

1800 - French army defeated the Turks at Helipolis, Turkey, and advanced into Cairo.

1814 - Prince Willem Frederik became the monarch of Netherlands.

1815 - Napoleon Bonaparte entered Paris after his escape from Elba and began his "Hundred Days" rule.

1816 - The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed its right to review state court decisions.

1833 - The U.S. and Siam signed a commercial treaty.

1852 - Harriet Beecher Stowe’s book "Uncle Tom’s Cabin," subtitled "Life Among the Lowly," was first published.

1865 - A plan by John Wilkes Booth to abduct U.S. President Abraham Lincoln was ruined when Lincoln changed his plans and did not appear at the Soldier’s Home near Washington, DC.

1868 - Jesse James Gang robbed a bank in Russelville, KY, of $14,000.

1883 - The Unity treaty of Paris was signed to protect industrial property.

1885 - John Matzeliger of Suriname patented the shoe lacing machine.

1886 - The first AC power plant in the U.S. began commercial operation.

1888 - The Sherlock Holmes Adventure, "A Scandal in Bohemia," began.

1890 - The General Federation of Womans' Clubs was founded.

1891 - The first computing scale company was incorporated in Dayton, OH.

1896 - U.S. Marines landed in Nicaragua to protect U.S. citizens in the wake of a revolution.

1897 - The first U.S. orthodox Jewish Rabbinical seminary was incorporated in New York.

1897 - The first intercollegiate basketball game that used five players per team was held. The contest was Yale versus Pennsylvania. Yale won by a score of 32-10.

1899 - At Sing Sing prison, Martha M. Place became the first woman to be executed in the electric chair. She was put to death for the murder of her stepdaughter.

1900 - It was announced that European powers had agreed to keep China's doors open to trade.

1902 - France and Russia acknowledged the Anglo-Japanese alliance. They also asserted their right to protect their interests in China and Korea.

1903 - In Paris, paintings by Henri Matisse were shown at the "Salon des Independants".

1906 - In Russia, army officers mutiny at Sevastopol.

1911 - The National Squash Tennis Association was formed in New York City.

1914 - The first international figure skating championship was held in New Haven, CT.

1915 - The French called off the Champagne offensive on the Western Front.

1918 - The Bolsheviks of the Soviet Union asked for American aid to rebuild their army.

1922 - U.S. President Warren G. Harding ordered U.S. troops back from the Rhineland.

1922 - The USS Langley was commissioned. It was the first aircraft carrier for the U.S. Navy.

1932 - The German dirigible, Graf Zepplin, made the first flight to South America on regular schedule.

1933 - The first German concentration camp was completed at Dachau.

1934 - Rudolf Kuhnold gave a demonstration of radar in Kiel Germany.

1940 - The British Royal Air Force conducted an all-night air raid on the Nazi airbase at Sylt, Germany.

1943 - The Allies attacked Field Marshall Erwin Rommel's forces on the Mareth Line in North Africa.

1947 - A blue whale weighing 180-metric tons was caught in the South Atlantic.

1952 - The U.S. Senate ratified a peace treaty with Japan.

1956 - Mount Bezymianny on Kamchatka Peninsula (USSR) exploded.

1956 - Tunisia gained independence from France.

1963 - The first "Pop Art" exhibit began in New York City.

1964 - The ESRO (European Space Research Organization) was established.

1965 - U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson orders 4,000 troops to protect the Selma-Montgomery civil rights marchers.

1967 - Twiggy arrived in the U.S. for a one-week stay.

1969 - U.S. Senator Edward Kennedy called on the U.S. to close all bases in Taiwan.

1972 - 19 mountain climbers were killed on Japan's Mount Fuji during an avalanche.

1976 - Patricia Hearst was convicted of armed robbery for her role in the hold up of a San Francisco Bank.

1980 - The U.S. made an appeal to the International Court concerning the American Hostages in Iran.

1981 - Argentine ex-president Isabel Peron was sentenced to eight years in a convent.

1982 - U.S. scientists' return from Antarctica with the first land mammal fossils found there.

1984 - The U.S. Senate rejected an amendment to permit spoken prayer in public schools.

1985 - For the first time in its 99-year history, Avon representatives received a salary. Up to that time they had been paid solely on commissions.

1985 - CBS-TV presented "The Romance of Betty Boop."

1985 - Libby Riddles won the 1,135-mile Anchorage-to-Nome dog race becoming the first woman to win the Iditarod.

1986 - Fallon Carrington and Jeff Colby were wed on the TV drama "The Colby’s". "The Colby’s" was an offshoot of "Dynasty".

1987 - The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved AZT. The drug was proven to slow the progress of AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome).

1989 - A Washington, DC, district court judge blocked a curfew imposed by Mayor Barry and the City Council.

1989 - In Belfast, two policemen were killed. The IRA claimed responsibility.

1989 - It was announced that Cincinnati Reds manager Pete Rose was under investigation.

1990 - The Los Angeles Lakers retired Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's #33.

1990 - Namibia became an independent nation ending 75 years of South African rule.

1990 - Imelda Marcos, widow of ex-Philippines dictator Ferdinand Marcos, went on trial for racketeering, embezzlement and bribery.

1990 - In Rumania, tanks were sent to the town of Tirgu Mures to quell ethnic riots.

1991 - The U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously that employers could not exclude women from jobs where exposure to toxic chemicals could potentially damage a fetus.

1991 - The U.S. forgave $2 billion in loans to Poland.

1992 - Janice Pennington was awarded $1.3 million for accident on the set of the "Price is Right" TV show.

1993 - Russian President Boris Yeltsin declared emergency rule. He set a referendum on whether the people trusted him or the hard-line Congress to govern.

1993 - An Irish Republican Army bomb was detonated in Warrington, England. A 3-year-old boy and a 12-year-old boy were killed.

1995 - About 35,000 Turkish troops crossed the northern border of Iraq in pursuit of the separatist rebels of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

1995 - In Tokyo, 12 people were killed and more than 5,500 others were sickened when packages containing the nerve gas Sarin was released on five separate subway trains. The terrorists belonged to a doomsday cult in Japan.

1996 - In Los Angeles, Erik and Lyle Menendez were found guilty of first-degree murder in the killing of their parents.

1996 - The U.K. announced that humans could catch CJD (Mad Cow Disease).

1997 - Brian Grazer received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

1997 - Liggett Group, the maker of Chesterfield cigarettes, settled 22 state lawsuits by admitting the industry marketed cigarettes to teenagers and agreed to warn on every pack that smoking is addictive.

1998 - India's new Hindu nationalist-led government pledges to "exercise the option to induct nuclear weapons."

1999 - Bertrand Piccard and Brian Jones became the first men to circumnavigate the Earth in a hot air balloon. The non-stop trip began on March 3 and covered 26,500 miles.

2000 - Former Black Panther Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, once known as H. Rap Brown, was captured following a shootout that left a sherriff's deputy dead.

2002 - Actress Pamela Anderson disclosed that she had hepatitis C.

2002 - Arthur Andersen pled innocent to charges that it had shredded documents and deleted computer files related to the energy company Enron.

2003 - Cisco Systems Inc. announced it was buying The Linksys Group INc. for $500 million in stock.

2003 - U.S. and British forces invaded Iraq from Kuwait.

March 21, 2013

1349 - 3,000 Jews were killed in Black Death riots in Efurt Germany.

1556 - Thomas Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury, was burned at the stake at Oxford after retracting the last of seven recantations that same day.

1788 - Almost the entire city of New Orleans, LA, was destroyed by fire. 856 buildings were destroyed.

1790 - Thomas Jefferson reported to U.S. President George Washington as the new secretary of state.

1804 - The French civil code, the Code Napoleon, was adopted.

1824 - A fire at a Cairo ammunitions dump killed 4,000 horses.

1826 - The Rensselaer School in Troy, NY, was incorporated. The school became known as Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and was the first engineering college in the U.S.

1835 - Charles Darwin & Mariano Gonzales met at Portillo Pass.

1851 - Emperor Tu Duc ordered that Christian priests be put to death.

1851 - Yosemite Valley was discovered in California.

1857 - An earthquake hit Tokyo killing about 107,000.

1858 - British forces in India lift the siege of Lucknow, ending the Indian Mutiny.

1859 - In Philadelphia, the first Zoological Society was incorporated.

1868 - The Sorosos club for professional women was formed in New York City by Jennie June. It was the first of its kind.

1871 - Journalist Henry M Stanley began his famous expedition to Africa.

1902 - Romain Roland's play "The 4th of July" premiered in Paris.

1902 - In New York, three Park Avenue mansions were destroyed when a subway tunnel roof caved in.

1904 - The British Parliament vetoed a proposal to send Chinese workers to Transvaal.

1905 - Sterilization legislation was passed in the State of Pennsylvania. The governor vetoed the measure.

1906 - Ohio passed a law that prohibited hazing by fraternities after two fatalities.

1907 - The U.S. Marines landed in Honduras to protect American interests in the war with Nicaragua.

1907 - The first Parliament of Transvaal met in Pretoria.

1908 - A passenger was carried in a bi-plane for the first time by Henri Farman of France.

1909 - Russia withdrew its support for Serbia and recognized the Austrian annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina. Serbia accepted Austrian control over Bosnia-Herzegovina on March 31, 1909.

1910 - The U.S. Senate granted ex-President Teddy Roosevelt a yearly pension of $10,000.

1918 - During World War I, the Germans launched the Somme Offensive.

1928 - U.S. President Calvin Coolidge gave the Congressional Medal of Honor to Charles Lindbergh for his first trans-Atlantic flight.

1934 - A fire destroyed Hakodate, Japan, killing about 1,500.

1935 - Incubator ambulance service began in Chicago, IL.

1941 - The last Italian post in East Libya, North Africa, fell to the British.

1945 - During World War II, Allied bombers began four days of raids over Germany.

1946 - The Los Angeles Rams signed Kenny Washington. Washington was the first black player to join a National Football League team since 1933.

1946 - The United Nations set up a temporary headquarters at Hunter College in New York City.

1953 - The Boston Celtics beat Syracuse Nationals (111-105) in four overtimes to eliminate them from the Eastern Division Semifinals. A total of seven players (both teams combined) fouled out of the game.

1955 - NBC-TV presented the first "Colgate Comedy Hour".

1957 - Shirley Booth made her TV acting debut in "The Hostess with the Mostest" on CBS.

1960 - About 70 people were killed in Sharpeville, South Africa, when police fired upon demonstrators.

1963 - Alcatraz Island, the federal penitentiary in San Francisco Bay, CA, closed.

1965 - The U.S. launched Ranger 9. It was the last in a series of unmanned lunar explorations.

1965 - More than 3,000 civil rights demonstrators led by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. began a march from Selma to Montgomery, AL.

1971 - Two U.S. platoons in Vietnam refused their orders to advance.

1972 - The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that states could not require one year of residency for voting eligibility.

1974 - An attempt was made to kidnap Princess Anne in London's Pall Mall.

1980 - U.S. President Jimmy Carter announced to the U.S. Olympic Team that they would not participate in the 1980 Summer Games in Moscow as a boycott against Soviet intervention in Afghanistan.

1980 - On the TV show "Dallas", J.R. Ewing was shot.

1982 - The movie "Annie" premiered.

1982 - The United States, U.K. and other Western countries condemned the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan.

1984 - A Soviet submarine crashed into the USS Kitty Hawk off the coast of Japan.

1985 - Larry Flynt offered to sell his pornography empire for $26 million or "Hustler" magazine alone for $18 million.

1985 - Police in Langa, South Africa, opened fire on blacks marching to mark the 25th anniversary of the Sharpeville shootings. At least 21 demonstrators were killed.

1989 - Randall Dale Adams was released from a Texas prison after his conviction was overturned. The documentary "The Thin Blue Line" had challenged evidence of Adams' conviction for killing a police officer.

1990 - "Normal Life" with Moon Unit & Dweezil Zappa premiered on CBS-TV.

1990 - Australian businessman Alan Bond sold Van Gogh's "Irises" to the Gerry Museum. Bond had purchased the painting for $53.9 million in 1987.

1990 - "Sydney" starring Valerie Bertinelli premiered on CBS-TV.

1990 - Namibia became independent of South Africa.

1991 - 27 people were lost at sea when two U.S. Navy anti-submarine planes collided.

1991 - The U.N. Security Council lifted the food embargo against Iraq.

1994 - Dudley Moore was arrested for hitting his girlfriend.

1994 - Steven Spielberg won his first Oscars. They were for best picture and best director for "Schindler's List."

1994 - Wayne Gretzky tied Gordie Howe's NHL record of 801 goals.

1994 - Bill Gates of Microsoft and Craig McCaw of McCaw Cellular Communications announced a $9 billion plan that would send 840 satellites into orbit to relay information around the globe.

1995 - New Jersey officially dedicated the Howard Stern Rest Area along Route 295.

1995 - Tokyo police raided the headquarters of Aum Shinrikyo in search of evidence to link the cult to the Sarin gas released on five Tokyo subway trains.

1999 - Israel's Supreme Court rejected the final effort to have American Samuel Sheinbein returned to the U.S. to face murder charges for killing Alfred Tello, Jr. Under a plea bargain Sheinbein was sentenced to 24 years in prison.

2000 - The U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration had overstepped its regulatory authority when it attempted to restrict the marketing of cigarettes to youngsters.

2001 - Nintendo released Game Boy Advance.

2002 - In Pakistan, Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh was charged with murder for his role in the kidnapping of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pear. Three other Islamic militants that were in custody were also charged along with seven more accomplices that were still at large.

2002 - In Paris, an 1825 print by French inventor Joseph Nicephore Niepce was sold for $443,220. The print, of a man leading a horse, was the earliest recorded image taken by photographic means.

March 22, 2013

1457 - Gutenberg Bible became the first printed book.

1622 - Indians attacked a group of colonist in the James River area of Virginia. 347 residents were killed.

1630 - The first legislation to prohibit gambling was enacted. It was in Boston, MA.

1638 - Anne Hutchinsoon, a religious dissident, was expelled from the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

1719 - Frederick William abolished serfdom on crown property in Prussia.

1733 - Joseph Priestly invented carbonated water (seltzer).

1765 - The Stamp Act was passed. It was the first direct British tax on the American colonists. It was repealed on March 17, 1766.

1775 - Edmund Burke presented his 13 articles to the English parliament.

1790 - Thomas Jefferson became the first U.S. Secretary of State.

1794 - The U.S. Congress banned U.S. vessels from supplying slaves to other countries.

1822 - New York Horticultural Society was founded.

1841 - Englishman Orlando Jones patented cornstarch.

1871 - William Holden of North Carolina became the first governor to be removed by impeachment.

1872 - Illinois became the first state to require sexual equality in employment.

1873 - Slavery was abolished in Puerto Rico.

1874 - The Young Men's Hebrew Association was organized in New York City.

1882 - The U.S. Congress outlawed polygamy.

1888 - The English Football League was established.

1894 - The first playoff competition for the Stanley Cup began. Montreal played Ottawa.

1895 - Auguste and Louis Lumiere showed their first movie to an invited audience in Paris.

1901 - Japan proclaimed that it was determined to keep Russia from encroaching on Korea.

1902 - Great Britain and Persia agreed to link Europe and India by telegraph.

1903 - Niagara Falls ran out of water due to a drought.

1903 - In Columbia, the region near Galera De Zamba was devastated by a volcanic eruption.

1904 - The first color photograph was published in the London Daily Illustrated Mirror.

1905 - Child miners in Britain received a maximum 8-hour workday.

1906 - France lost the first ever rugby game ever played against Britain.

1907 - Russians troops completed the evacuation of Manchuria in the face of advancing Japanese forces.

1907 - In Paris, it was reported that male cab drivers dressed as women to attract riders.

1910 - In Liberia, a telegraph cable linked Tenerife and Monrovia.

1911 - Herman Jadlowker became the first opera singer to perform two major roles in the same day at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City.

1915 - A German zeppelin made a night raid on Paris railway stations.

1919 - The first international airline service was inaugurated on a weekly schedule between Paris and Brussels.

1933 - U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed a bill legalizing the sale and possession of beer and wine containing up to 3.2% alcohol.

1934 - The first Masters golf championship began in Augusta, GA.

1935 - In New York, blood tests were authorized as evidence in court cases.

1935 - Persia was renamed Iran.

1941 - The Grand Coulee Dam in Washington began operations.

1943 - The Dutch workweek was extended to 54 hours.

1943 - Obligatory work for woman ends in Belgium.

1945 - The Arab League was formed with the adoption of a charter in Cairo, Egypt.

1946 - The British granted Transjordan independence.

1946 - The first U.S. built rocket to leave the earth's atmosphere reached a height of 50-miles.

1947 - The Greek government imposed martial law in Laconia and southern Greece.

1948 - The United States announced a land reform plan for Korea.

1948 - "The Voice of Firestone" became the first commercial radio program to be carried simultaneously on both AM and FM radio stations.

1954 - The first shopping mall opened in Southfield, Michigan.

1954 - The London gold market reopened for the first time since 1939.

1956 - Perry Como became the first major TV variety-show host to book a rock and roll act on his program. The act was Carl Perkins.

1960 - A.L. Schawlow & C.H. Townes obtained a patent for the laser. It was the first patent for any laser.

1965 - U.S. confirmed that its troops used chemical warfare against the Vietcong.

1972 - The U.S. Senate passed the Equal Rights Amendment. It was not ratified by the states.

1974 - The Viet Cong proposed a new truce with the U.S. and South Vietnam. The truce included general elections.

1975 - Walt Disney World Shopping Village opened.
Disney movies, music and books

1977 - The Dutch Den Uyl government fell.

1977 - Comedienne Lily Tomlin made her debut on Broadway in "Lily Tomlin on Stage" in New York.

1977 - Indira Ghandi resigned as the prime minister of India.

1978 - Karl Wallenda, of the Flying Wallendas, fell to his death while walking a cable strung between to hotels in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

1979 - The National Hockey League (NHL) voted to accept 4 WHA teams, the Oilers, Jets, Nordiques & Whalers.

1980 - People for Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) was founded by Ingrid Newkirk and Alex Pacheco.

1981 - U.S. Postage rates went from 15-cents to 18-cents an ounce.

1981 - RCA put its Selectra Vision laser disc players on the market.

1981 - A group of twelve Green Berets arrived in El Salvador. This brought the total number of advisors to fifty-four.

1981 - The first Mongolian entered space aboard the Russian Soyuz 39.

1982 - The Space Shuttle Columbia was launched into orbit on mission STS-3. It was the third orbital flight for the Columbia.

1987 - A barge loaded with 32,000 tons of refuse left Islip, NY, to find a place to unload. After being refused by several states and three countries space was found back in Islip.

1988 - The Congress overrode U.S. President Reagan's veto of a sweeping civil rights bill.

1989 - Oliver North began two days of testimony at his Iran-Contra trial in Washington, DC.

1989 - The U.S. House Ways and Means Committee reported the class gap was widening.

1990 - A jury in Anchorage, Alaska, found Captain Hazelwood not guilty in the Valdez oil spill.

1991 - Pamela Smart, a high school teacher, was found guilty in New Hampshire of manipulating her student-lover to kill her husband.

1992 - A Fokker F-28 veered off a runway at New York's LaGuardia airport and into Flushing Bay, killing 27 people.

1993 - Cleveland Indians pitchers Steve Olin and Tim Crews were killed in a boating accident in Florida. Bob Ojeda was seriously injured in the accident.

1993 - Intel introduced the Pentium-processor (80586) 64 bits-60 MHz-100+ MIPS.

1995 - Russian cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov returned to Earth after setting a record for 438 days in space.

1997 - Tara Lipinski, at 14 years and 10 months, became the youngest women's world figure skating champion.

2002 - The U.S. Postal Rate Commission approved a request for a postal rate increase of first-class stamps from 34 cents to 37 cents by June 30. It was the first time a postal rate case was resolved through a settlement between various groups. The groups included the U.S. Postal Service, postal employees, mailer groups and competitors.

2002 - A collection of letters and cards sent by Princess Diana of Wales sold for $33,000. The letters and cards were written to a former housekeeper at Diana's teenage home.

March 25, 2013

0421 - The city of Venice was founded.

0708 - Constantine began his reign as Catholic Pope.

1306 - Robert the Bruce was crowned king of Scotland.

1409 - The Council of Pisa opened.

1609 - Henry Hudson left on an exploration for Dutch East India Co.

1634 - Lord Baltimore founded the Catholic colony of Maryland.

1655 - Puritans jailed Governor Stone after a military victory over Catholic forces in the colony of Maryland.

1655 - Christian Huygens discovered Titan. Titan is Saturn's largest satellite.

1668 - The first horse race in America took place.

1669 - Mount Etna in Sicily erupted destroying Nicolosi. 20,000 people were killed.

1700 - England, France and Netherlands ratify the 2nd Extermination Treaty.

1753 - Voltaire left the court of Frederik II of Prussia.

1774 - English Parliament passed the Boston Port Bill.

1776 - The Continental Congress authorized a medal for General George Washington.

1802 - France, Netherlands, Spain and England signed the Peace of Amiens.

1807 - The first railway passenger service began in England.

1807 - British Parliament abolished the slave trade.

1813 - The frigate USS Essex flew the first U.S. flag in battle in the Pacific.

1814 - The Netherlands Bank was established.

1820 - Greece freedom revolt against anti Ottoman attack

1821 - Greece gained independence from Turkey.

1856 - A. E. Burnside patented Burnside carbine.

1857 - Frederick Laggenheim took the first photo of a solar eclipse.

1865 - The SS General Lyon at Cape Hatteras caught fire and sank. 400 people were killed.

1865 - During the American Civil War, Confederate forces captured Fort Stedman in Virginia.

1879 - Japan invaded the kingdom of Liuqiu (Ryukyu) Islands, formerly a vassal of China.

1895 - Italian troops invaded Abyssinia (Ethiopia).

1898 - The Intercollegiate Trapshooting Association was formed in New York City.

1900 - The U.S. Socialist Party was formed in Indianapolis.

1901 - 55 people died when a Rock Island train derailed near Marshalltown, IA.

1901 - The Mercedes was introduced by Daimler at the five-day "Week of Nice" in Nice, France.

1901 - It was reported in Washington, DC, that Cubans were beginning to fear annexation.

1902 - Irving W. Colburn patented the sheet glass drawing machine.

1902 - In Russia, 567 students were found guilty of "political disaffection." 95 students were exiled to Siberia.

1904 - E.D. Morel and Roger Casement formed the Congo Reform Association in Liverpool.

1905 - Rebel battle flags that were captured during the American Civil War were returned to the South.

1905 - Russia received Japan's terms for peace.

1907 - Nicaraguan troops took Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras.

1908 - Wilhelm II paid an official visit to Italy's king in Venice.

1909 - In Russia, revolutionary Popova was arrested on 300 murder charges.

1911 - In New York City, 146 women were killed in fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company in New York City. The owners of the company were indicted on manslaughter charges because some of the employees had been behind locked doors in the factory. The owners were later acquitted and in 1914 they were ordered to pay damages to each of the twenty-three families that had sued.

1913 - The Palace Theatre opened in New York City.

1915 - 21 people died when a U.S. F-4 submarine sank off the Hawaiian coast.

1919 - The Paris Peace Commission adopted a plan to protect nations from the influx of foreign labor.

1923 - The British government granted Trans-Jordan autonomy.

1931 - Fifty people were killed in riots that broke out in India. Gandhi was one of many people assaulted.

1931 - The Scottsboro Boys were arrested in Alabama.

1936 - The Detroit Red Wings defeated the Montreal Maroons in the longest hockey game to date. The game lasted for 2 hours and 56 minutes.

1940 - The U.S. agreed to give Britain and France access to all American warplanes.

1941 - Yugoslavia joined the Axis powers.

1941 - The first paprika mill was incorporated in Dollon, SC.

1947 - A coalmine explosion in Centralia, IL, killed 111 people.

1947 - John D. Rockefeller III presented a check for $8.5 million to the United Nations for the purchase of land for the site of the U.N. center.

1953 - The USS Missouri fired on targets at Kojo, North Korea.

1954 - RCA manufactured its first color TV set and began mass production.

1957 - The European Economic Community was established with the signing of the Treaty of Rome.

1960 - A guided missile was launched from a nuclear powered submarine for the first time.

1965 - Martin Luther King Jr. led a group of 25,000 to the state capital in Montgomery, AL.

1966 - The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the "poll tax" was unconstitutional.

1970 - The Concorde made its first supersonic flight.

1971 - The Boston Patriots became the New England Patriots.

1972 - Bobby Hull joined Gordie Howe to become only the second National Hockey League player to score 600 career goals.

1975 - King Faisal of Saudi Arabia was shot to death by a nephew. The nephew, with a history of mental illness, was beheaded the following June.

1981 - The U.S. Embassy in San Salvador was damaged when gunmen attacked using rocket propelled grenades and machine guns.

1981 - The Down Jones industrial avarage of selected stocks on the New York Stock Exchanged closed at its highest level in more than eight years.

1982 - Wayne Gretzky became the first player in the NHL to score 200 points in a season.

1983 - The U.S. Congress passed legislation to rescue the U.S. social security system from bankruptcy.

1985 - It was reported that a U.S. Army Major stationed in East Germany had been shot and killed by a Soviet Border Guard.

1986 - U.S. President Ronald Reagan ordered emergency aid for the Honduran army. U.S. helicopters took Honduran troops to the Nicaraguan border.

1988 - Robert E. Chambers Jr. pled guilty to first-degree manslaughter in the death of 18-year-old Jennifer Levin. The case was known as New York City's "preppie murder case."

1989 - In Paris, the Louvre reopened with I.M. Pei's new courtyard pyramid.

1990 - A fire in Happy Land, an illegal New York City social club, killed 87 people.

1990 - Estonia voted for independence from the Soviet Union.

1991 - Iraqi President Saddam Hussein launched a major counter-offensive to recapture key towns from Kurds in northern Iraq.

1992 - Soviet cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev returned to Earth after spending 10 months aboard the orbiting Mir space station.

1993 - President de Klerk admitted that South Africa had built six nuclear bombs, but said that they had since been dismantled.

1994 - United States troops completed their withdrawal from Somalia.

1995 - Boxer Mike Tyson was released from jail after serving 3 years.

1996 - An 81-day standoff by the antigovernment Freemen began at a ranch near Jordan, MT.
1996 - The U.S. issued a newly redesigned $100 bill for circulation.

1998 - A cancer patient was the first known to die under Oregon's doctor-assisted suicide law.

1998 - The FCC nets $578.6 million at auction for licenses for new wireless technology.

1998 - Quinn Pletcher was found guilty on charges of extortion. He had threatened to kill Bill Gates unless he was paid $5 million.

2002 - The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) dismissed complaints against Walt Disney Co.'s ABC network broadcast of a Victoria's Secret fashion show in November 2001.

2004 - The U.S. Senate voted (61-38) on the Unborn Victims of Violence Act (H.R. 1997) to make it a separate crime to harm a fetus during the commission of a violent federal crime.

March 26, 2013

1026 - Conrad II was crowned Holy Roman Emperor by Pope John XIX.

1799 - Napoleon captured Jaffa Palestine.

1780 - The British Gazette and Sunday Monitor was published for the first time. It was the first Sunday newspaper in Britain.

1793 - The Holy Roman Emperor formally declared war on France.

1804 - The U.S. Congress ordered the removal of Indians east of the Mississippi to Louisiana.

1804 - The Louisiana Purchase was divided into the District of Louisiana and the Territory of Orleans.

1854 - Charles III, duke of Parma, was attacked by an assassin. He died the next day.

1871 - The Paris Commune was formally set up.

1878 - Hastings College of Law was founded.

1885 - Eastman Kodak (Eastman Dry Plate and Film Co.) produced the first commercial motion picture film in Rochester, NY.

1898 - In South Africa, the world's first game reserve, the Sabi Game reserve, was designated.

1909 - Russian troops invaded Persia to support Muhammad Ali as shah in place of the constitutional government.

1910 - The U.S. Congress passed an amendment to the 1907 Immigration Act that barred criminals, paupers, anarchists and carriers of disease from settling in the U.S.

1913 - During the Balkan War, the Bulgarians took Adrianople.

1917 - At the start of the battle of Gaza, the British cavalry withdrew when 17,000 Turks blocked their advance.

1937 - Spinach growers in Crystal City, TX, erected a statue of Popeye.

1938 - Herman Goering warned all Jews to leave Austria.

1942 - The Germans began sending Jews to Auschwitz in Poland.

1945 - The battle of Iwo Jima ended.

1945 - In the Aleutians, the battle of Komandorski began when the Japanese attempted to reinforce a garrison at Kiska and were intercepted by a U.S. naval force.

1951 - The U.S. Air Force flag was approved. The flag included the coat of arms, 13 white stars and the Air Force seal on a blue background.

1953 - Dr. Jonas Salk announced a new vaccine that would prevent poliomyelitis.

1956 - Red Buttons made his debut as a television actor in "Studio One" on CBS television.

1958 - The U.S. Army launched America's third successful satellite, Explorer III.

1962 - The U.S. Supreme Court supported the 1-man-1-vote apportionment of seats in the State Legislature.

1969 - The TV movie "Marcus Welby" was seen on ABC-TV. It was later turned into a series.

1971 - Sheikh Mujibur Rahman declared East Pakistan to be the independent republic of Bangladesh.

1971 - "Cannon" premiered on CBS-TV as a movie. It was turned into a series later in the year.

1972 - The Los Angeles Lakers broke a National Basketball Association (NBA) record by winning 69 of their 82 games.

1973 - Egyptian President Anwar Sadat took over the premiership and said "the stage of total confrontation (with Israel) has become inevitable."

1973 - Women were allowed on the floor of the London Stock Exchange for the first time.

1979 - The Camp David treaty was signed by Israel and Egypt that ended the 31-year state of war between the countries.

1981 - In Great Britain, the Social Democratic Party (SDP) gained official recognition.

1982 - Ground breaking ceremonies were held in Washington, DC, for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

1983 - The U.S. performed a nuclear test at the Nevada Test Site.

1989 - The first free elections took place in the Soviet Union. Boris Yeltsin was elected.

1991 - The presidents of Argentina, Paraguay, Brazil and Uruguay signed an agreement that established the Southern Cone Common Market, a free-trade zone, by January 1, 1995.

1992 - In Indianapolis, heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson was found guilty of rape. He was sentenced to 6 years in prison. He only served three.

1995 - Seven of the 15 European Union states abolished border controls.

1996 - The International Monetary Fund approved a $10.2 billion loan for Russia to help the country transform its economy.

1997 - The 39 bodies of Heaven's Gate members are found in a mansion in Rancho Santa Fe, CA. The group had committed suicide thinking that they would be picked up by a spaceship following behind the comet Hale-Bopp.

1998 - In the U.S., the Federal government endorses new HIV test that yields instant results.

1998 - Unisys Corp. and Lockheed Martin Corp. pay a $3.15 million fine for selling spare parts at inflated prices to the U.S. federal government.

1999 - The macro virus "Melissa" was reported for the first.

1999 - In Michigan, Dr. jack Kevorkian was convicted of second-degree murder for giving a terminally ill man a lethal injection and putting it all on videotape on September 17, 1998 for "60 Minutes."

2000 - The Seattle Kingdome was imploded to make room for a new football arena.

2000 - In Russia, acting President Vladimir Putin was elected president outright. He won a sufficient number of votes to avoid a runoff election.

2007 - The design for the "Forever Stamp" was unveiled by the U.S. Postal Service.

March 27, 2013

1350 - While besieging Gibraltar, Alfonso XI of Castile died of the Black Death.

1794 - The U.S. Congress and President Washington authorized the creation of the U.S. Navy.

1802 - The Treaty of Amiens was signed ending the French Revolutionary War.

1814 - U.S. troops under Gen. Andrew Jackson defeated the Creek Indians at Horshoe Bend in Northern Alabama.

1836 - In Goliad, TX, about 350 Texan prisoners, including their commander James Fannin, were executed under orders from Gen. Antonio López de Santa Anna. An estimated 30 Texans escaped execution.

1836 - The first Mormon temple was dedicated in Kirtland, OH.

1841 - The first steam fire engine was tested in New York City.

1860 - The corkscrew was patented by M.L. Byrn.

1866 - U.S. President Andrew Johnson vetoed the civil rights bill, which later became the 14th amendment.

1884 - The first long-distance telephone call was made from Boston to New York.

1899 - The first international radio transmission between England and France was achieved by the Italian inventor G. Marconi.

1900 - The London Parliament passed the War Loan Act that gave 35 million pounds to the Boer War cause in South Africa.

1900 - The Russian army mobilized 250,000 troops for active duty.

1901 - Filipino rebel leader Emilio Aguinaldo was captured by the U.S.

1904 - Mary Jarris "Mother" Jones was ordered by Colorado state authorities to leave the state. She was accused of stirring up striking coal miners.

1907 - French troops occupied Oudja, Morocco, as a punitive action for the murder of French Dr. Muchamp.

1912 - The first cherry blossom trees were planted in Washington, DC. The trees were a gift from Japan.

1917 - The Seattle Metropolitans, of the Pacific Coast League of Canada, defeated the Montreal Canadiens and became the first U.S. hockey team to win the Stanley Cup.

1931 - Actor Charlie Chaplin received France’s Legion of Honor decoration.

1933 - About 55,000 people staged a protest against Hitler in New York City.

1933 - In the U.S., the Farm Credit Administration was authorized.

1941 - Tokeo Yoshikawa arrived in Oahu, HI, and began spying for Japan on the U.S. Fleet at Pearl Harbor.

1942 - The British raided the Nazi submarine base at St. Nazaire, France.

1944 - One-thousand Jews left Drancy, France, for the Auschwitz concentration camp.

1944 - Thousands of Jews were murdered in Kaunas, Lithuania.

1946 - Four-month long strikes at both General Electric and General Motors ended with a wage increase.

1952 - The U.S. Eighth Army reached the 38th parallel in Korea, the original dividing line between the two Koreas.

1955 - Steve McQueen made his network TV debut on "Goodyear Playhouse."

1958 - Nikita Khrushchev became the chairman of the Soviet Council of Ministers in addition to First Secretary of the Communist Party.

1958 - The U.S. announced a plan to explore space near the moon.

1964 - An earthquake in Alaska killed 114 people and registered 8.4 on the Richter Scale.

1968 - Yuri Gagarin, the first man to orbit the earth, died in a plane crash.

1976 - Washington, DC, opened its subway system.

1977 - About 570 people died when a KLM 747 and a Pan Am 747 collided with each other on a foggy runway on the Canary Island of Tenerife.

1985 - Billy Dee Williams received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

1988 - The U.S. Senate ratified the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty.

1989 - The U.S. anti-missile satellite failed the first test in space.

1992 - Police in Philadelphia, PA, arrested a man with AIDS on charges that he may have infected several hundred teenage boys with HIV through sexual relations.

1993 - In China, Communist Party leader Jiang Zemin was appointed President.

1995 - Maurizo Gucci was shot to death outside his office in Milan.

1997 - Russian workers, nearly 2 million, held a nationwide strike to protest unpaid wages.

1997 - In Australia, Governor-General William Deane signed a bill to overturn a 1996 Northern Territory act to legalize assisted suicides. The 1996 act was the first in the world to permit assisted suicides.

1997 - Dexter King met with James Earl Ray. Ray was in prison for the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King. Dexter King believes that Ray had nothing to do with the assassination.

1998 - In the U.S., the FDA approved the prescription drug Viagra. It was the first pill for male impotence.

1998 - Top civilian aircraft makers in France, Spain, Germany and Britain agreed to create single European aerospace and defense company.

1998 - Ax-wielders killed at least 52 people in southern Algeria, most of which were toddlers.

2002 - Rodney Dangerfield received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

2004 - NASA successfully launched an unpiloted X-43A jet that hit Mach 7 (about 5,000 mph).

2006 - Zacarias Moussaoui testified in his federal trail that he was the supposed to hijack a fifth airplane on September 11, 2001, and fly it into the White House.

2007 - NFL owners voted to make instant replay a permanent officiating tool.

March 28, 2013

1774 - Britain passed the Coercive Act against Massachusetts.

1797 - Nathaniel Briggs patented a washing machine.

1834 - The U.S. Senate voted to censure President Jackson for the removal of federal deposits from the Bank of the United States.

1854 - The Crimean War began with Britain and France declaring war on Russia.

1864 - A group of Copperheads attack Federal soldiers in Charleston, IL. Five were killed and twenty were wounded.

1865 - Outdoor advertising legislation was enacted in New York. The law banned "painting on stones, rocks and trees."

1885 - The Salvation Army was officially organized in the U.S.

1898 - The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a child born in the U.S. to Chinese immigrants was a U.S. citizen. This meant that they could not be deported under the Chinese Exclusion Act.

1903 - Anatole France's "Crainquebille" premiered in Paris.

1905 - The U.S. took full control over Dominican revenues.

1908 - Automobile owners lobbied the U.S. Congress, supporting a bill that called for vehicle licensing and federal registration.

1910 - The first seaplane took off from water at Martinques, France. The pilot was Henri Fabre.

1911 - In New York, suffragists performed the political play "Pageant of Protest."

1917 - During World War I the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) was founded.

1921 - U.S. President Warren Harding named William Howard Taft as chief justice of the United States Supreme Court.

1922 - Bradley A. Fiske patented a microfilm reading device.

1930 - Constantinople and Angora changed their names to Istanbul and Ankara respectively.

1933 - In Germany, the Nazis ordered a ban on all Jews in businesses, professions and schools.

1938 - In Italy, psychiatrists demonstrated the use of electric-shock therapy for treatment of certain mental illnesses.

1939 - The Spanish Civil War ended as Madrid fell to Francisco Franco.

1941 - The Italian fleet was defeated by the British at the Battle of Matapan.

1942 - British naval forces raided the Nazi occupied French port of St. Nazaire.

1945 - Germany launched the last of the V-2 rockets against England.

1947 - The American Helicopter Society revealed a flying device that could be strapped to a person's body.

1962 - The U.S. Air Force announced research into the use of lasers to intercept missiles and satellites.

1963 - Sonny Werblin announced that the New York Titans of the American Football League was changing its name to the New York Jets. (NFL)

1967 - Raymond Burr starred in a TV movie titled "Ironside." The movie was later turned into a television series.

1968 - The U.S. lost its first F-111 aircraft in Vietnam when it vanished while on a combat mission. North Vietnam claimed that they had shot it down.

1974 - A streaker ran onto the set of "The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson."

1979 - A major accident occurred at Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island nuclear power plant. A nuclear power reactor overheated and suffered a partial meltdown.

1981 - In Bangkok, Thailand, Indonesian terrorists hijacked an airplane. Four of the five terrorists were killed on March 31.

1986 - The U.S. Senate passed $100 million aid package for the Nicaraguan contras.

1986 - More than 6,000 radio stations of all format varieties played "We are the World" simultaneously at 10:15 a.m. EST.

1990 - Jesse Owens received the Congressional Gold Medal from U.S. President George H.W. Bush.

1990 - In Britain, a joint Anglo-U.S. "sting" operation ended with the seizure of 40 capacitors, which can be used in the trigger mechanism of a nuclear weapon.

1991 - The U.S. embassy in Moscow was severely damaged by fire.

1994 - Violence between Zulus and African National Congress supporters took the lives of 18 in Johannesburg.

1999 - Paraguay's President Raúl Cubas Grau resigned after protests inspired by the assassination of Vice-President Luis María Argaña on March 23. The nation's Congress had accused Cubas and his political associate, Gen. Lino César Oviedo, for Cubas' murder. Senate President Luis González Macchi took office as Paraguay's new chief executive.

2002 - The exhibit "The Italians: Three Centuries of Italian Art" opened at the National Gallery of Australia.

2010 - China's Zhejiang Geely Holding Group Co. signed a deal to buy Ford Motor Co.'s Volvo car unit

March 31, 2013

1492 - King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain issued the Alhambra edict expelling Jews who were unwilling to convert to Christianity.

1776 - Abigail Adams wrote to her husband John that women were "determined to foment a rebellion" if the new Declaration of Independence failed to guarantee their rights.

1779 - Russia and Turkey signed a treaty concerning military action in Crimea.

1831 - Quebec and Montreal were incorporated as cities.

1854 - The U.S. government signed the Treaty of Kanagawa with Japan. The act opened the ports of Shimoda and Hakotade to American trade.

1862 - Skirmishing between Rebels and Union forces took place at Island 10 on the Mississippi River.

1870 - In Perth Amboy, NJ, Thomas P. Munday became the first black to vote in the U.S.

1880 - Wabash, IN, became the first town to be completely illuminated with electric light.

1889 - In Paris, the Eiffel Tower officially opened.

1900 - The W.E. Roach Company was the first automobile company to put an advertisement in a national magazine. The magazine was the "Saturday Evening Post".

1900 - In France, the National Assembly passed a law reducing the workday for women and children to 11 hours.

1901 - In Russia, the Czar lashed out at Socialist-Revolutionaries with the arrests of 72 people and the seizing of two printing presses.

1902 - In Tennessee, 22 coal miners were killed by an explosion.

1904 - In India, hundreds of Tibetans were slaughtered by the British.

1905 - Kaiser Wilhelm arrived in Tangier proclaiming to support for an independent state of Morocco.

1906 - The Conference on Moroccan Reforms in Algerciras ended after two months with France and Germany in agreement.

1906 - The Intercollegiate Athletic Association of the United States was founded to set rules in amateur sports. The organization became the National Collegiate Athletic Association in 1910.

1908 - 250,000 coal miners in Indianapolis, IN, went on strike to await a wage adjustment.

1909 - Serbia accepted Austrian control over Bosnia-Herzegovina.

1917 - The U.S. purchased and took possession of the Virgin Islands from Denmark for $25 million.

1918 - For the first time in the U.S., Daylight Saving Time went into effect.

1921 - Great Britain declared a state of emergency because of the thousands of coal miners on strike.

1923 - In New York City, the first U.S. dance marathon was held. Alma Cummings set a new world record of 27 hours.

1932 - The Ford Motor Co. debuted its V-8 engine.

1933 - The U.S. Congress authorized the Civilian Conservation Corps to relieve rampant unemployment.

1933 - The "Soperton News" in Georgia became the first newspaper to publish using a pine pulp paper.

1939 - Britain and France agreed to support Poland if Germany threatened invasion.

1940 - La Guardia airport in New York officially opened to the public.

1941 - Germany began a counter offensive in North Africa.

1945 - "The Glass Menagerie" by Tennessee Williams opened on Broadway.

1946 - Monarchists won the elections in Greece.

1947 - John L. Lewis called a strike in sympathy for the miners killed in an explosion in Centralia, IL, on March 25, 1947.

1948 - The Soviets in Germany began controlling the Western trains headed toward Berlin.

1949 - Winston Churchill declared that the A-bomb was the only thing that kept the U.S.S.R. from taking over Europe.

1949 - Newfoundland entered the Canadian confederation as its 10th province.

1958 - The U.S. Navy formed the atomic submarine division.

1959 - The Dalai Lama (Lhama Dhondrub, Tenzin Gyatso) began exile by crossing the border into India where he was granted political asylum. Gyatso was the 14th Daila Lama.

1960 - The South African government declared a state of emergency after demonstrations lead to the death of more than 50 Africans.

1966 - An estimated 200,000 anti-war demonstrators march in New York City. (New York)

1966 - The Soviet Union launched Luna 10, which became the first spacecraft to enter a lunar orbit.

1967 - U.S. President Lyndon Johnson signed the Consular Treaty, the first bi-lateral pact with the Soviet Union since the Bolshevik Revolution.

1970 - The U.S. forces in Vietnam down a MIG-21, it was the first since September 1968.

1976 - The New Jersey Supreme Court ruled that Karen Anne Quinlan could be disconnected from a respirator. Quinlan remained comatose until 1985 when she died.

1980 - U.S. President Carter deregulated the banking industry.

1981 - In Bangkok, Thailand, four of five Indonesian terrorists were killed after hijacking an airplane on March 28.

1985 - ABC-TV aired the 200th episode of "The Love Boat."

1986 - 167 people died when a Mexicana Airlines Boeing 727 crashed in Los Angeles.

1987 - HBO (Home Box Office) earned its first Oscar for "Down and Out in America".

1989 - Canada and France signed a fishing rights pact.

1991 - Albania offered a multi-party election for the first time in 50 years. Incumbent President Ramiz Alia won.

1991 - Iraqi forces recaptured the northern city of Kirkuk from Kurdish guerillas.

1993 - Brandon Lee was killed accidentally while filming a movie.

1994 - "Nature" magazine announced that a complete skull of Australppithecus afarensis had been found in Ethiopia. The finding is of humankind's earliest ancestor.

1998 - U.N. Security Council imposed arms embargo on Yugoslavia.

1998 - Buddy Hackett received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

1998 - For the first time in U.S. history the federal government's detailed financial statement was released. This occurred under the Clinton administration.

1999 - Three U.S. soldiers were captured by Yugoslav soldiers three miles from the Yugoslav border in Macedonia.

1999 - Fabio was hit in the face by a bird during a promotional ride of a new roller coaster at the Busch Gardens theme park in Williamsburg, VA. Fabio received a one-inch cut across his nose.

2000 - In Uganda, officials set the number of deaths linked to a doomsday religious cult, the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments, at more than 900. In Kanungu, a March 17 fire at the cult's church killed more than 530 and authorities subsequently found mass graves at various sites linked to the cult.

2004 - Air America Radio launched five stations around the U.S.

2004 - Google Inc. announced that it would be introducing a free e-mail service called Gmail.

April 2, 2013

1513 - Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de Leon sighted Florida. The next day he went ashore.

1792 - The U.S. Congress passed the Coinage Act to regulate the coins of the United States. The act authorized $10 Eagle, $5 half-Eagle & 2.50 quarter-Eagle gold coins & silver dollar, dollar, quarter, dime & half-dime to be minted.

1801 - During the Napoleonic Wars, the Danish fleet was destroyed by the British at the Battle of Copenhagen.

1860 - The first Italian Parliament met in Turin.

1865 - Confederate President Davis and most of his Cabinet fled the Confederate capital of Richmond, VA.

1872 - G.B. Brayton received a patent for the gas-powered streetcar.

1877 - The first Egg Roll was held on the grounds of the White House in Washington, DC.

1889 - Charles Hall patented aluminum.

1902 - The first motion picture theatre opened in Los Angeles with the name Electric Theatre.

1905 - The Simplon rail tunnel officially opened. The tunnel went under the Alps and linked Switzerland and Italy.

1910 - Karl Harris perfected the process for the artificial synthesis of rubber.

1914 - The U.S. Federal Reserve Board announced plans to divide the country into 12 districts.

1917 - U.S. President Woodrow Wilson presented a declaration of war against Germany to the U.S. Congress.

1932 - A $50,000 ransom was paid for the infant son of Charles and Anna Lindbergh. He child was not returned and was found dead the next month.

1935 - Sir Watson-Watt was granted a patent for RADAR.

1944 - The Soviet Union announced that its troops had crossed the Prut River and entered Romania.

1947 - "The Big Story" debuted on NBC radio. It was on the air for eight years.

1947 - The U.N. Security Council voted to appoint the U.S. as trustee for former Japanese-held Pacific Islands.

1951 - U.S. General Dwight Eisenhower assumed command of all allied forces in the Western Mediterranean area and Europe.

1956 - "The Edge of Night" and "As the World Turns" debuted on CBS-TV.

1958 - The National Advisory Council on Aeronautics was renamed NASA.

1960 - France signed an agreement with Madagascar that proclaimed the country an independent state within the French community.

1963 - Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King began the first non-violent campaign in Birmingham, AL.

1966 - South Vietnamese troops joined in demonstrations at Hue and Da Nang for an end to military rule.

1967 - In Peking, hundreds of thousands demonstrated against Mao foe Liu Shao-chi.

1972 - Burt Reynolds appeared nude in "Cosmopolitan" magazine.

1978 - The first episode of "Dallas" aired on CBS.

1981 - In Lebanon, thirty-seven people were reported killed during fighting in the cities of Beirut and Zahle. It was the worst violence since the 1976 cease fire.

1982 - Argentina invaded the British-owned Falkland Islands. The following June Britain took the islands back.

1983 - The New Jersey Transit strike that began on March 1 came to an end.

1984 - John Thompson became the first black coach to lead his team to the NCAA college basketball championship.

1984 - In Jerusalem, three Arab gunmen wounded 48 people when they opened fire into a crowd of shoppers.

1985 - The NCAA Rules Committee adopted the 45-second shot clock for men’s basketball to begin in the 1986 season.

1986 - On a TWA airliner flying from Rome to Athens a bomb exploded under a seat killing four Americans.

1987 - The speed limit on U.S. interstate highways was increased to 65 miles per hour in limited areas.

1988 - U.S. Special Prosecutor James McKay declined to indict Attorney General Edwin Meese for criminal wrongdoing.

1989 - An editorial in the "New York Times" declared that the Cold War was over.

1989 - General Prosper Avril, Haiti's military leader, survived a coup attempt. The attempt was apparently provoked by Avril's U.S.-backed efforts to fight drug trafficking.

1990 - Iraqi President Saddam Hussein threatened to incinerate half of Israel with chemical weapons if Israel joined a conspiracy against Iraq.

1992 - Mob boss John Gotti was convicted in New York of murder and racketeering. He was later sentenced to life in prison.

1995 - The costliest strike in professional sports history ended when baseball owners agreed to let players play without a contract.

1996 - Russia and Belarus signed a treaty that created a political and economic alliance in an effort to reunite the two former Soviet republics.

1996 - Lech Walesa resumed his old job as an electrician at the Gdansk shipyard. He was the former Solidarity union leader who became Poland's first post-war democratic president.

2002 - Israeli troops surrounded the Church of the Nativity. More than 200 Palestinians had taken refuge at the church when Israel invaded Bethlehem.

April 3, 2013

1513 - Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de Leon landed in Florida. He had sighted the land the day before.

1776 - George Washington received an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Harvard College .

1829 - James Carrington patented the coffee mill.

1860 - The first Pony Express riders left St. Joseph, MO and Sacramento, CA. The trip across country took about 10 days. The Pony Express only lasted about a year and a half.

1865 - Union forces occupy Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia.

1866 - Rudolph Eickemeyer and G. Osterheld patented a blocking and shaping machine for hats.

1882 - The American outlaw Jesse James was shot in the back and killed by Robert Ford for a $5,000 reward. There was later controversy over whether it was actually Jesse James that had been killed.

1910 - Alaska's Mt. McKinley, the highest mountain in North America was climbed.

1933 - First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt informed newspaper reporters that beer would be served at the White House. This followed the March 22 legislation that legalized "3.2" beer.

1936 - Richard Bruno Hauptmann was executed for the kidnapping and death of the son of Charles and Anne Lindbergh.

1942 - The Japanese began their all-out assault on the U.S. and Filipino troops at Bataan.

1946 - Lt. General Masaharu Homma, the Japanese commander responsible for the Bataan Death March, was executed in the Philippines.

1948 - U.S. President Harry Truman signed the Marshall Plan to revive war-torn Europe. It was $5 billion in aid for 16 countries.

1949 - Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis debuted on radio on the "Martin and Lewis Show". The NBC program ran until 1952.

1953 - "TV Guide" was published for the first time.

1967 - The U.S. State Department said that Hanoi might be brainwashing American prisoners.

1968 - Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his "mountaintop" speech just 24 hours before he was assassinated.

1968 - North Vietnam agreed to meet with U.S. representatives to set up preliminary peace talks.

1972 - Charlie Chaplin returned to the U.S. after a twenty-year absence.

1979 - Jane Byrne became the first female mayor in Chicago.

1982 - John Chancellor stepped down as anchor of the "The NBC Nightly News." Roger Mudd and Tom Brokaw became the co-anchors of the show.

1983 - It was reported that Vietnamese occupation forces had overrun a key insurgent base in western Cambodia.

1984 - Sikh terrorists killed a member of the Indian Parliament in his home.

1984 - Col. Lansana Konte became the new president of Guinea when the armed forces seized power after the death of Sekou Toure.

1985 - The U.S. charged that Israel violated the Geneva Convention by deporting Shiite prisoners.

1986 - The U.S. national debt hit $2 trillion.

1987 - Riots disrupted mass during the Pope's visit to Santiago, Chili.

1993 - The Norman Rockwell Museum opened in Stockbridge, MA.

1996 - An Air Force jetliner carrying Commerce Secretary Ron Brown crashed in Croatia, killing all 35 people aboard.

1996 - Unabomber suspect Theodore Kaczynski was arrested. He pled guilty in January 1998 to five Unabomber attacks in exchange for a life sentence without chance for parole.

1998 - The Dow Jones industrial average climbed above 9,000 for the first time.

2000 - A U.S. federal judge ruled that Microsoft had violated U.S. antitrust laws by keeping "an oppressive thumb" on its competitors. Microsoft said that they would appeal the ruling.

2000 - The Nasdaq set a one-day record when it lost 349.15 points to close at 4,233.68.

April 4, 2013

0896 - Formosus ended his reign as pope.

1541 - Ignatius of Loyola became the first superior-general of the Jesuits.

1581 - Francis Drake completed the circumnavigation of the world.

1687 - King James II ordered that his declaration of indulgence be read in church.

1812 - The territory of Orleans became the 18th U.S. state and will become known as Louisiana.

1818 - The U.S. flag was declared to have 13 red and white stripes and 20 stars and that a new star would be added for the each new state.

1841 - U.S. President William Henry Harrison, at the age of 68, became the first president to die in office. He had been sworn in only a month before he died of pneumonia.

1848 - Thomas Douglas became the first San Francisco public teacher.

1850 - The city of Los Angeles was incorporated.

1862 - In the U.S., the Battle of Yorktown began as Union General George B. McClellan closed in on Richmond, VA.

1887 - Susanna M. Salter became mayor of Argonia, KS, making her the first woman mayor in the U.S.

1902 - British Financier Cecil Rhodes left $10 million in his will that would provide scholarships for Americans to Oxford University in England.

1905 - In Kangra, India, an earthquake killed 370,000 people.

1914 - The first known serialized moving picture opened in New York City, NY. It was "The Perils of Pauline".

1917 - The U.S. Senate voted 90-6 to enter World War I on the Allied side.

1918 - The Battle of Somme, an offensive by the British against the German Army ended.

1932 - After five years of research, professor C.G. King, of the University of Pittsburgh, isolated vitamin C.

1945 - Hungary was liberated from Nazi occupation.

1945 - During World War II, U.S. forces liberated the Nazi death camp Ohrdruf in Germany.

1949 - Twelve nations signed a treaty to create The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

1953 - Fifteen doctors were released by Soviet leaders. The doctors had been arrested before Stalin had died and were accused of plotting against him.

1967 - The U.S. lost its 500th plane over Vietnam.

1967 - Johnny Carson quit "The Tonight Show." He returned three weeks later after getting a raise of $30,000 a week.

1968 - Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated at the age of 39.

1969 - Dr. Denton Cooley implanted the first temporary artificial heart.

1971 - Veterans stadium in Philadelphia, PA, was dedicated this day.

1974 - Hank Aaron tied Babe Ruth's major league baseball home-run record with 714.{C}

1975 - More than 130 people, most of them children, were killed when a U.S. Air Force transport plane evacuating Vietnamese orphans crashed just after takeoff from Saigon.{C}

1979 - Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the president of Pakistan, was executed. He had been convicted of conspiring to murder a political opponent.{C}

1981 - Henry Cisneros became the first Mexican-American elected mayor of a major U.S. city, which was San Antonio, TX.{C}

1983 - At Cape Canaveral, the space shuttle Challenger took off on its first flight. It was the sixth flight overall for the shuttle program.{C}

1984 - U.S. President Reagan proposed an international ban on chemical weapons.

1985 - In Sudan, a coup ousted President Nimeiry and replaced him with General Dahab.{C}

1986 - Wayne Gretzky set an NHL record with his 213th point of the season.{C}

1987 - The U.S. charged the Soviet Union with wiretapping a U.S. Embassy.

1988 - Arizona Governor Evan Mecham was voted out of office by the Arizona Senate. Mecham was found guilty of diverting state funds to his auto business and of trying to impede an investigation into a death threat to a grand jury witness.

1990 - In the U.S., securities law violator Ivan Boesky was released from federal custody.{C}

1991 - Pennsylvanian Senator John Heinz and six others were killed when a helicopter collided with Heinz's plane over a schoolyard in Merion, PA.

1992 - Sali Berisha became the first non-Marxist president of Albania since World War II.

1994 - Netscape Communications (Mosaic Communications) was founded.

1995 - U.S. Senator Alfonse D'Amato ridiculed judge Lance Ito using a mock Japanese accent on a nationally syndicated radio program. D'Amato apologized two days later for the act.

April 5, 2013

1242 - Russian troops repelled an invasion attempt by the Teutonic Knights.

1614 - American Indian Pocahontas married English colonist John Rolfe in Virginia.

1621 - The Mayflower sailed from Plymouth, MA, on a return trip to England.

1792 - U.S. President George Washington cast the first presidential veto. The measure was for apportioning representatives among the states.

1806 - Isaac Quintard patented the cider mill.

1827 - James H. Hackett became the first American actor to appear abroad as he performed at Covent Garden in London, England.

1843 - Queen Victoria proclaimed Hong Kong to be a British crown colony.

1869 - Daniel Bakeman, the last surviving soldier of the U.S. Revolutionary War, died at the age of 109.

1887 - Anne Sullivan taught Helen Keller the meaning of the word "water" as spelled out in the manual alphabet.

1892 - Walter H. Coe patented gold leaf in rolls.

1895 - Playwright Oscar Wilde lost his criminal libel case against the Marquess of Queensberry. Wilde had been accused of homosexual practices.

1908 - The Japanese Army reached the Yalu River as the Russians retreated.

1919 - Eamon de Valera became president of Ireland.

1923 - Firestone Tire and Rubber Company began the first regular production of balloon tires.

1930 - Mahatma Ghandi defied British law by making salt in India.

1933 - The first operation to remove a lung was performed at Barnes Hospital in St. Louis, MO.

1941 - German commandos secured docks along the Danube River in preparation for Germany’s invasion of the Balkans.

1951 - Americans Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were sentenced to death for committing espionage for the Soviet Union.

1953 - Jomo Kenyatta was convicted and sentenced to 7 years in prison for orchestrating the Mau-Mau rebellion in Kenya.

1955 - Winston Churchill resigned as British prime minister.

1984 - Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (Los Angeles Lakers) became the all-time NBA regular season scoring leader when he broke Wilt Chamberlain's record of 31,419 career points.

1985 - John McEnroe said "any man can beat any woman at any sport, especially tennis."

1986 - A discotheque in Berlin was bombed by Libyan terrorists. The U.S. attacked Libya with warplanes in retaliation on April 15, 1986.

1987 - FOX Broadcasting Company launched "Married....With Children" and "The Tracey Ullman Show". The two shows were the beginning of the FOX lineup.

1989 - In Poland, accords were signed between Solidarity and the government that set free elections for June 1989. The eight-year ban on Solidarity was also set to be lifted.

1998 - The Akashi Kaikyo Bridge in Japan opened becoming the largest suspension bridge in the world. It links Shikoku and Honshu. The bridge cost about $3.8 billion.

1999 - Two Libyans suspected of bombing a Pan Am jet in 1988 were handed over so they could be flown to the Netherlands for trial. 270 people were killed in the bombing.

1999 - In Laramie, WY, Russell Henderson pled guilty to kidnapping and felony murder in the death of Matthew Shepard.

2004 - Near Mexico City's international airport, lightning struck the jet Mexican President Vicente Fox was on.

2009 - North Korea launched the Kwangmyongsong-2 rocket, prompting an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council.

April 7, 2013

1652 - The Dutch established a settlement at Cape Town, South Africa.

1712 - A slave revolt broke out in New York City.

1798 - The territory of Mississippi was organized.

1862 - Union General Ulysses S. Grant defeated Confederates at the Battle of Shiloh, TN.

1864 - The first camel race in America was held in Sacramento, California.

1888 - P.F. Collier published a weekly periodical for the first time under the name "Collier’s."

1922 - U.S. Secretary of Interior leased Teapot Dome naval oil reserves in Wyoming.

1927 - The first long-distance TV transmission was sent from Washington, DC, to New York City. The audience saw an image of Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover.

1930 - The first steel columns were set for the Empire State Building.

1933 - Prohibition ended in the United States.

1940 - Booker T. Washington became the first black to be pictured on a U.S. postage stamp.

1943 - British and American armies linked up between Wadi Akarit and El Guettar in North Africa to form a solid line against the German army.

1945 - The Japanese battleship Yamato, the world’s largest battleship, was sunk during the battle for Okinawa. The fleet was headed for a suicide mission.

1948 - The musical "South Pacific" by Rogers and Hammerstein debuted on Broadway.

1948 - The United Nations' World Health Organization began operations.

1953 - The Big Four met for the first time in 2 years to seek an end to their air conflicts.

1953 - IBM unveiled the IBM 701 Electronic Data Processing Machine. It was IBM's first commercially available scientific computer.

1957 - The last of New York City's electric trolleys completed its final run from Queens to Manhattan.

1963 - At the age of 23, jack Nicklaus became the youngest golfer to win the Green Jacket at the Masters Tournament.

1963 - Yugoslavia proclaimed itself a Socialist republic.

1963 - Josip Broz Tito was proclaimed to be the leader of Yugoslavia for life.

1966 - The U.S. recovered a hydrogen bomb it had lost off the coast of Spain.

1967 - Israel reported that they had shot down six Syrian MIGs.

1969 - The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously struck down laws prohibiting private possession of obscene material.

1970 - John Wayne won his first and only Oscar for his role in "True Grit." He had been in over 200 films.

1971 - U.S. President Nixon pledged to withdraw 100,000 more men from Vietnam by December.

1980 - The U.S. broke diplomatic relations with Iran and imposed economic sanctions in response to the taking of hostages on November 4, 1979.

1983 - Specialist Story Musgrave and Don Peterson made the first Space Shuttle spacewalk.

1983 - The Chinese government canceled all remaining sports and cultural exchanges with the U.S. for 1983.

1985 - In Goteborg, Sweden, China swept all of the world table tennis titles except for men's doubles.

1985 - In Sudan, Gen. Swar el-Dahab took over the Presidency while President Gaafar el-Nimeiry was visiting the U.S. and Egypt.

1985 - The Soviet Union announced a unilateral freeze on medium-range nuclear missiles.

1987 - In Oklahoma a 16-month-old baby was killed by a pit bull. On the same day a 67-year-old man was killed by another pit bull in Dayton, OH.

1988 - Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev agreed to final terms of a Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan. Soviet troops began leaving on May 16, 1988.

1988 - In Fort Smith, AR, 13 white supremacists were acquitted on charges for plotting to overthrow the U.S. federal government.

1989 - A Soviet submarine carrying nuclear weapons sank in the Norwegian Sea.

1990 - In the U.S., John Poindexter was found guilty of five counts at his Iran-Contra trial. The convictions were later reversed on appeal.

1990 - At Cincinnati's Contemporary Arts Center a display of Robert Mapplethorpe's photographs went on display. On the same day the center and its director were indicted on obscenity charges. The charges resulted in acquittal.

1994 - Civil war erupted in Rwanda between the Patriotic Front rebel group and government soldiers. Hundreds of thousands were slaughtered in the months that followed.

1998 - Mary Bono, the widow of Sonny Bono, won a special election to serve out the remainder of her husband's congressional term.

1999 - Yugoslav authorities sealed off Kosovo's main border crossings to prevent ethnic Albanians from leaving.

2000 - U.S. President Clinton signed the Senior Citizens Freedom to Work Act of 2000. The bill reversed a Depression-era law and allows senior citizens to earn money without losing Social Security retirement benefits.

2002 - The Roman Catholic archdiocese announced that six priests from the Archdiocese of New York were suspended over allegations of sexual misconduct.

2009 - Former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori was sentenced to 25 years in prison for ordering killings and kidnappings by security forces.

April 8, 2013

1513 - Explorer Juan Ponce de Leon claimed Florida for Spain.

1525 - Albert von Brandenburg, the leader of the Teutonic Order, assumes the title "Duke of Prussia" and passed the first laws of the Protestant church, making Prussia a Protestant state.

1789 - The U.S. House of Representatives held its first meeting.

1832 - About 300 American troops of the 6th Infantry left Jefferson Barracks, St. Louis, to confront the Sauk Indians in the Black Hawk War.

1834 - In New York City, Cornelius Lawrence became the first mayor to be elected by popular vote in a city election.

1839 - The first Intercollegiate Rodeo was held at the Godshall Ranch, Apple Valley, CA.

1873 - Alfred Paraf patented the first successful oleomargarine.

1911 - The first squash tournament was played at the Harvard Club in New York City.

1913 - The Seventeenth amendment was ratified, requiring direct election of senators.

1935 - The Works Progress Administration was approved by the U.S. Congress.

1939 - Italy invaded Albania.

1942 - The Soviets opened a rail link to the besieged city of Leningrad.

1943 - Wendell Wilkie’s "One World" was published for the first time.

1946 - The League of Nations assembled in Geneva for the last time.

1947 - The first illustrated insurance policy was issued by the Allstate Insurance Company.

1952 - U.S. President Truman seized steel mills to prevent a nationwide strike.

1953 - The bones of Sitting Bull were moved from North Dakota to South Dakota.

1962 - Bay of Pigs invaders got thirty years imprisonment in Cuba.

1974 - Hank Aaron hits 715th home run breaking Babe Ruth's record.

1975 - Frank Robinson of the Cleveland Indians became first black manager of a major league baseball team.

1985 - India filed suit against Union Carbide for the Bhopal disaster.

1985 - Phyllis Diller underwent a surgical procedure for permanent eyeliner to eliminate the need for eyelid makeup.

1986 - Clint Eastwood was elected mayor of Carmel, CA.

1987 - Los Angeles Dodgers executive Al Campanis resigned over remarks he had made. While on ABC's "Nightline" Campanis said that blacks "may not have some of the necessities" to hold managerial jobs in major-league baseball.

1988 - Former U.S. President Reagan aid Lyn Nofzinger was sentenced to prison for illegal lobbying for Wedtech Corp.

1990 - In Nepal, King Birendra lifted the 30-year ban on political parties.

1992 - In Britain, the last issue of "Punch Magazine" was published.

1994 - Smoking was banned in the Pentagon and all U.S. military bases.

1998 - The widow of Martin Luther King Jr. presented new evidence in an appeal for new federal investigation of the assassination of her husband.

2000 - 19 U.S. troops were killed when a Marine V22 Osprey crashed during a training mission in Arizona.

2001 - Microsoft Corp. released Internet Explorer 6.0.

2002 - Ed McMahon filed a $20 million lawsuit against his insurance company, two insurance adjusters, and several environmental cleanup contractors. The suit alleged breach of contract, negligence and intentional infliction of emotional distress concerning a toxic mold that had spread through McMahon's Beverly Hills home.

2002 - Suzan-Lori Parks became the first African-American woman to win a Pulitzer Prize for drama for her play "Topdog/Underdog."

April 9, 2013

0193 - In the Balkans, the distinguished soldier Septimius Seversus was proclaimed emperor by the army in Illyricum.

0715 - Constantine ended his reign as Catholic Pope.

1241 - In the Battle of Liegnitz, Mongol armies defeated the Poles and the Germans.

1454 - The city states of Venice, Milan and Florence signed a peace agreement at Lodi, Italy.

1667 - In Paris, The first public art exhibition was held at the Palais-Royale.

1682 - Robert La Salle claimed the lower Mississippi River and all lands that touch it for France.

1770 - Captain James Cook discovered Botany Bay on the Australian continent.

1833 - Peterborough, NH, opened the first municipally supported public library in the United States.

1838 - The National Galley opened in London.

1865 - At Appomattox Court House, Virginia, General Robert E. Lee surrendered his Confederate Army to Union General Ulysses S. Grant in the parlor of Wilmer McClean's home. Grant allowed Rebel officers to keep their sidearms and permitted soldiers to keep their horses and mules. Though there were still Confederate armies in the field, the war was officially over. The four years of fighting had killed 360,000 Union troops and 260,000 Confederate troops.

1866 - The Civil Rights Bill passed over U.S. President Andrew Johnson's veto.

1867 - The U.S. Senate ratified the treaty with Russia that purchased the territory of Alaska by one vote.

1869 - The Hudson Bay Company ceded its territory to Canada.

1870 - The American Anti-Slavery Society was dissolved.

1872 - S.R. Percy received a patent for dried milk.

1900 - British forces routed the Boers at Kroonstadt, South Africa.

1905 - The first aerial ferry bridge went into operation in Duluth, MN.

1912 - The first exhibition baseball game was held at Fenway Park in Boston. The game was between Red Sox and Harvard.

1913 - The Brooklyn Dodgers' Ebbets Field opened.

1914 - In London, the first full-color film, "The World, The Flesh & the Devil," was shown.

1916 - The German army launched it’s third offensive during the Battle of Verdun.

1917 - The Battle of Arras began as Canadian troops began a massive assault on Vimy Ridge.

1918 - Latvia proclaimed its independence.

1921 - The Russo-Polish conflict ended with signing of Riga Treaty.

1928 - Mae West made her debut on Broadway in the production of "Diamond Lil."

1940 - Germany invaded Norway and Denmark.

1942 - In the Battle of Bataan, American and Filipino forces were overwhelmed by the Japanese Army.

1945 - National Football League officials decreed that it was mandatory for football players to wear socks in all league games.

1945 - At Bari, Italy, the Liberty exploded and killed 360 people. The ship was carrying aerial bombs.

1947 - 169 people were killed and 1,300 were injured by a series of tornadoes in Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas.

1950 - Bob Hope made his first television appearance on "Star-Spangled Review" on NBC-TV.

1957 - The Suez Canal was cleared for all shipping.

1959 - NASA announced the selection of America's first seven astronauts.

1963 - Winston Churchill became the first honorary U.S. citizen.

1965 - "TIME" magazine featured a cover with the entire "Peanuts" comic gang.

1965 - The Houston Astrodome held its first baseball game.

1967 - The first Boeing 737 was rolled out for use.

1968 - Murdered civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., was buried.

1976 - The U.S. and Russia agreed on the size of nuclear tests for peaceful use.

1981 - The U.S. Submarine George Washington struck and sunk a small Japanese freighter in the East China Sea. The Nissho Maru's captain and first mate died.

1983 - The space shuttle Challenger concluded it first flight.

1984 - Nicaragua asked the World Court to declare U.S. support for guerilla raids illegal.

1985 - Japanese Premier Nakasone urged Japanese people to buy foreign products.

1986 - It was announced that Patrick Duffy's character on the TV show Dallas would be returning after being killed off.

1987 - Dikye Baggett became the first person to undergo corrective surgery for Parkinson’s disease.

1988 - The U.S. imposed economic sanctions on Panama.

1989 - 16 civilians were killed during rioting in Soviet Georgia.

1989 - Hundreds of thousands marched past the White House in support of the right to abortion.

1991 - Georgia voted to secede from the U.S.S.R.

1992 - Former Panamanian ruler Manuel Noriega was convicted in Miami, FL, of eight drug and racketeering charges.

1998 - The National Prisoner of War Museum opened in Andersonville, GA, at the site of an infamous Civil War camp.

1998 - More than 150 Muslims died in stampede in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, on last day of the haj pilgrimage.

1999 - In Djibouti, Ismail Omar Guelleh of the ruling Popular Rally for Progress and the Front for the Restoration of Unity and Democracy was elected president.

1999 - In Niger, President Ibrahim Baré Maïnassara was assassinated. Daouda Malam Wanke was designated president two days later.

2000 - CBS-TV aired "Failsafe." It was the first live full-length show to by aired by CBS in 39 years.

April 10, 2013

1741 - Frederick II of Prussia defeated Maria Theresa's forces at Mollwitz and conquered Silesia.

1790 - The U.S. patent system was established.

1809 - Austria declared war on France and its forces entered Bavaria.

1814 - Napoleon was defeated at the Battle of Toulouse by the British and the Spanish. The defeat led to his abdication and exile to Elba.

1825 - The first hotel opened in Hawaii.

1849 - Walter Hunt patented the safety pin. He sold the rights for $100.

1854 - The constitution of the Orange Free State in south Africa was proclaimed.

1862 - Union forces began the bombardment of Fort Pulaski in Georgia along the Tybee River.

1865 - During the American Civil War, at Appomattox, General Robert E. Lee issued his last order.

1866 - The American Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) was incorporated.

1902 - South African Boers accepted British terms of surrender.

1912 - The Titanic set sail from Southampton, England.

1916 - The Professional Golfers Association (PGA) held its first championship tournament.

1919 - In Mexico, revolutionary leader Emiliano Zapata was killed by government troops.

1922 - The Genoa Conference opened. The meeting was used to discuss the reconstruction of Europe after World War I.

1925 - F. Scott Fitzgerald published "The Great Gatsby" for the first time.

1930 - The first synthetic rubber was produced.

1932 - Paul von Hindenburg was elected president of Germany with 19 million votes. Adolf Hitler came in second with 13 million votes.

1938 - Germany annexed Austria after Austrians had voted in a referundum to merge with Germany.

1941 - In World War II, U.S. troops occupied Greenland to prevent Nazi infiltration.

1941 - Ford Motor Co. became the last major automaker to recognize the United Auto Workers as the representative for its workers.

1944 - Russian troops recaptured Odessa from the Germans.

1945 - German Me 262 jet fighters shot down ten U.S. bombers near Berlin.

1953 - Warner Bros. released "House of Wax." It was the first 3-D movie to be released by a major Hollywood studio.

1953 - Actress Hedy Lamarr became a U.S. citizen.

1959 - Japan's Crown Prince Akihito married commoner Michiko Shoda.

1960 - The U.S. Senate passed the Civil Rights Bill.

1961 - Gary Player of South Africa became the first foreign golfer to win the Masters Golf Tournament in Augusta, Georgia.

1963 - 129 people died when the nuclear-powered submarine USS Thresher failed to surface off Cape Cod, MA.

1967 - The 13-day strike by the American Federation of Radio-TV Artists (AFTRA) came to an end less than two hours before the 39th Academy Awards presentation went on the air.

1968 - U.S. President Johnson replaced General Westmoreland with General Creighton Abrams in Vietnam.

1971 - The American table tennis team arrived in China. They were the first group of Americans officially allowed into China since the founding of the People Republic in 1949. The team had recieved the surprise invitation while in Japan for the 31st World Table Tennis Championship.

1972 - An earthquake in southern Iran killed more than 5,000 people.

1972 - The U.S. and the Soviet Union joined with 70 other nations in signing an agreement banning biological warfare.

1973 - In Switzerland, 108 people died when a plane crashed while attempting to land at Basel.

1974 - Yitzhak Rabin replaced resigning Israeli Prime Minister, Golda Meir. Meir resigned over differences within her Labor Party.

1980 - Spain and Britain agreed to reopen the border between Gibraltar and Spain. It had been closed since 1969.

1981 - Imprisoned IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands was elected to the British Parliament.

1981 - The maiden launch of the space shuttle Columbia was cancelled because of a computer malfunction.

1984 - The U.S. Senate condemned the CIA mining of Nicaraguan harbors.

1988 - On Wall Street, 48 million shares of Navistar International stock changed hands in a single-block trade. It was the largest transaction ever executed on the New York Stock Exchange.

1990 - Three European hostages kidnapped at sea in 1987 by Palestinian extremists were released in Beirut.

1992 - A bomb exploded in London's financial district. The bomb, set off by the Irish Republican Army, killed three people and injured 91.

1992 - Outside Needles, CA, comedian Sam Kinison was killed when a pickup truck slammed into his car on a desert road between Los Angeles and Las Vegas.

1992 - In Los Angeles, financier Charles Keating Jr. was sentenced to nine years in prison for swindling investors when his Lincoln Savings and Loan collapsed. The convictions were later overturned.

1993 - South African Communist Party leader Chris Hani was assassinated.

1994 - NATO warplanes launched air strikes for the first time on Serb forces that were advancing on the Bosnian Muslim town of Gordazde. The area had been declared a U.N. safe area.

1996 - U.S. President Clinton vetoed a bill that would have outlawed a technique used to end pregnancies in their late stages.

1997 - Rod Steiger received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

1998 - Negotiators reached a peace accord on governing British ruled Northern Ireland. Britain's direct rule was ended.

1999 - The www.June4.org web site was launched by Chinese dissidents and human rights activists to promote their campaign for democracy in China.

2000 - Monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) reported irregularities in the voting in Georgia's presidential election on April 9. President Eduard Shevardnadze was reelected to a new five-year term.

2000 - Ken Griffey Jr. became the youngest player in baseball history to reach 400 home runs. He was 30 years, 141 days old.

2001 - Jane Swift took office as the first female governor of Massachusetts. She succeeded Paul Cellucci, who had resigned to become the U.S. ambassador to Canada.

2001 - The Netherlands legalized mercy killings and assisted suicide for patients with unbearable, terminal illness.

2002 - Former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke before the U.S. Senate as a representative of the Israeli government. He warned that suicide bombers would spread to the U.S. if Israel was not allowed to finish its military offensive in the West Bank. Netanyaho also cited the goals of dismantling the terror regime and expelling Arafat from the region, ridding the Palestinian territories of terrorist weapons and establishing "physical barriers" to protect Israelis from future Palestinian attacks.

2009 - In Fiji, President Josefa Iloilo suspended the nation's Constitution, dismissed all judges and constitutional appointees and assumed all governance in the country.

April 11, 2013

1512 - The forces of the Holy League were heavily defeated by the French at the Battle of Ravenna.

1689 - William III and Mary II were crowned as joint sovereigns of Britain.

1713 - The Treaty of Utrecht was signed, ending the War of Spanish Succession.

1783 - After receiving a copy of the provisional treaty on March 13, the U.S. Congress proclaimed a formal end to hostilities with Great Britain.

1803 - A twin-screw propeller steamboat was patented by John Stevens.

1814 - Napoleon was forced to abdicate his throne. The allied European nations had marched into Paris on March 30, 1814. He was banished to the island of Elba.

1876 - The stenotype was patented by John C. Zachos.

1876 - The Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks was organized.

1895 - Anaheim, CA, completed its new electric light system.

1898 - U.S. President William McKinley asked Congress for a declaration of war with Spain.

1899 - The treaty ending the Spanish-American War was declared in effect.

1921 - Iowa became the first state to impose a cigarette tax.

1921 - The first live sports event on radio took place this day on KDKA Radio. The event was a boxing match between Johnny Ray and Johnny Dundee.

1940 - Andrew Ponzi set a world's record in a New York pocket billiards tournament when he ran 127 balls straight.

1941 - Germany bombers blitzed Conventry, England.

1945 - U.S. troops reached the Elbe River in Germany.

1945 - During World War II, American soldiers liberated the Nazi concentration camp of Buchenwald in Germany.

1947 - Jackie Robinson became the first black player in major-league history. He played in an exhibition game for the Brooklyn Dodgers.

1951 - U.S. President Truman fired General Douglas MacArthur as head of United Nations forces in Korea.{C}

1961 - Israel began the trial of Adolf Eichman, accused of World War II war crimes.

1968 - U.S. President Johnson signed the 1968 Civil Rights Act.

1970 - Apollo 13 blasted off on a mission to the moon that was disrupted when an explosion crippled the spacecraft. The astronauts did return safely.

1974 - The Judiciary committee subpoenas U.S. President Richard Nixon to produce tapes for impeachment inquiry.

1979 - Idi Amin was deposed as president of Uganda as rebels and exiles backed by Tanzanian forces seized control.

1980 - The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission issued regulations specifically prohibiting sexual harassment of workers by supervisors.

1981 - U.S. President Ronald Reagan returned to the White House from the hospital after recovering from an assassination attempt on March 30.{C}

1981 - In the Brixton area of London, a race riot erupted that resulted in the injury of more than 300 people.{C}

1984 - China invaded Vietnam.{C}

1984 - General Secretary Konstantin U. Cherenkov was named president of the Soviet Union.{C}

1985 - Scientists in Hawaii measured the distance between the earth and moon within one inch.

1985 - The White House announced that President Reagan would visit the Nazi cemetery at Bitburg.

1986 - Dodge Morgan sailed solo nonstop around the world in 150 days.

1986 - In Groton, CT, the submarine Nautilus exhibit opened to the public.{C}

1986 - Kellogg's stopped giving tours of its breakfast-food plant. The reason for the end of the 80-year tradition was said to be that company secrets were at risk due to spies from other cereal companies.

1991 - U.N. Security Council issued a formal cease-fire with Iraq.

1996 - Forty-three African nations signed the African Nuclear Weapons Free Zone Treaty.

1996 - Seven-year-old Jessica Dubroff was killed with her father and flight instructor when her plane crashed after takeoff from Cheyenne, Wyoming. Jessica had hoped to become the youngest person to fly cross-country.

1998 - Northern Ireland's biggest political party, the Ulster Unionists, announced its backing of the historic peace deal.

1999 - Daouda Malam Wanke was designated president of Niger. President Ibrahim Baré Maïnassara had been assassinated on April 9.

2001 - China agreed to release 24 crewmembers of a U.S. surveillance plane. The EP-3E Navy crew had been held since April 1 on Hainon, where the plane had made an emergency landing after an in-flight collision with a Chinese fighter jet. The Chinese pilot was missing and presumed dead.

April 12, 2013

1096 - Peter the Hermit gathered his army in Cologne.

1204 - The Fourth Crusade sacked Constantinople.

1606 - England adopted the original Union jack as its flag.

1770 - The British Parliament repealed the Townsend Acts.

1782 - The British navy won its only naval engagement against the colonists in the American Revolution at the Battle of Saints, off Dominica.

1799 - Phineas Pratt patented the comb cutting machine.

1811 - The first colonists arrived at Cape Disappointment, Washington.

1833 - Charles Gaylor patented the fireproof safe.

1861 - Fort Sumter was shelled by Confederacy, starting America's Civil War.

1864 - Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest captured Fort Pillow, in Tennessee and slaughters the black Union troops there.

1877 - A catcher's mask was used in a baseball game for the first time by James Alexander Tyng.

1892 - Voters in Lockport, New York, became the first in the U.S. to use voting machines.

1905 - The Hippodrome opened in New York City.

1911 - Pierre Prier completed the first non-stop London-Paris flight in three hours and 56 minutes.

1916 - American cavalrymen and Mexican bandit troops clashed at Parrel, Mexico.

1927 - The British Cabinet came out in favor of women voting rights.

1934 - F. Scott Fitzgerald novel "Tender Is the Night" was first published.

1938 - The first U.S. law requiring a medical test for a marriage license was enacted in New York.

1944 - The U.S. Twentieth Air Force was activated to begin the strategic bombing of Japan.

1945 - In New York, the organization of the first eye bank, the Eye Bank for Sight Restoration, was announced.

1945 - U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt died in Warm Spring, GA. He died of a cerebral hemorrhage at the age of 63. Harry S Truman became president.

1955 - The University of Michigan Polio Vaccine Evaluation Center announced that the polio vaccine of Dr. Jonas Salk was "safe, effective and potent."

1961 - Soviet Yuri Alexeyevich Gagarin became first man to orbit the Earth.

1963 - Police used dogs and cattle prods on peaceful civil rights demonstrators in Birmingham, AL.

1966 - Emmett Ashford became the first African-American major league umpire.

1967 - Jim Brown made his TV acting debut on the NBC show "I Spy."

1969 - Lucy and Snoopy of the comic strip "Peanuts" made the cover of "Saturday Review."

1981 - The space shuttle Columbia blasted off from Cape Canaveral, FL, on its first test flight.

1982 - The British Navy began enforcing a blockade around the Falkland Islands.

1982 - Three CBS employees were shot to death in a New York City parking lot.

1983 - Harold Washington was elected the first black mayor of Chicago.

1984 - Astronauts aboard the space shuttle Challenger made the first satellite repair in orbit by returning the Solar Max satellite to space.

1984 - Israeli troops stormed a bus that had been hijacked the previous evening by four Arab terrorists. All the passengers were rescued and 2 of the hijackers were killed.

1985 - U.S. Senator Jake Garn of Utah became the first senator to fly in space as the shuttle Discovery lifted off from Cape Canaveral, FL.

1985 - In Spain, an explosion in a restaurant near a U.S. base killed 17 people.

1985 - Federal inspectors declared that four animals of the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus were not unicorns. They were goats with horns that had been surgically implanted.

1987 - Texaco filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy after it failed to settle a legal dispute with Pennzoil Co.

1988 - Harvard University won a patent for a genetically altered mouse. It was the first patent for a life form.

1988 - The Chinese government named a new array of younger leaders to ensure economic reform.

1989 - In the U.S.S.R, ration cards were issued for the first time since World War II. The ration was prompted by a sugar shortage.

1992 - Disneyland Paris opened in Marne-La-Vallee, France.

1993 - NATO began enforcing a no-fly zone over Bosnia and Herzegovina.

2000 - More than 1,500 anti-drug agents raided four cities in Colombia and arrested 46 members of the "most powerful" heroin ring.

2000 - Robert Cleaves, 71, was convicted of second degree murder and was sentenced to 16 years in prison. Cleaves had repeatedly run over Arnold Guerreiro on September 30, 1998 with his car after the two had an argument.

2000 - Israel's High Court ordered the release of eight Lebanese detainees that had been held for years without a trial.

2002 - A first edition version of Beatrix Potter's "Peter Rabbit" sold for $64,780 at Sotheby's. A signed first edition of J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Hobbit" sold for $66,630. A copy of "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone," signed by J.K. Rowling sold for $16,660. A 250-piece collection of rare works by Charles Dickens sold for $512,650.

2002 - It was announced that the South African version of "Sesame Street" would be introducing a character that was HIV-positive.

2002 - JCPenney Chairman Allen Questrom rang the opening bell to start the business day at the New York Stock Exchange as part of the company's centennial celebrations. James Cash (J.C.) Penney opened his first retail store on April 14, 1902.

April 14, 2013

1775 - The first abolitionist society in U.S. was organized in Philadelphia with Ben Franklin as president.

1793 - A royalist rebellion in Santo Domingo was crushed by French republican troops.

1828 - The first edition of Noah Webster's dictionary was published under the name "American Dictionary of the English Language."

1860 - The first Pony Express rider arrived in San Francisco with mail originating in St. Joseph, MO.

1865 - U.S. President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in Ford's Theater by John Wilkes Booth. He actually died early the next morning.

1894 - First public showing of Thomas Edison's kinetoscope took place.

1902 - James Cash (J.C.) Penney opened his first retail store in Kemmerer, WY. It was called the Golden Rule Store.

1910 - U.S. President William Howard Taft threw out the first ball for the Washington Senators and the Philadelphia Athletics.

1912 - The Atlantic passenger liner Titanic, on its maiden voyage hit an iceberg and began to sink. 1,517 people lost their lives and more than 700 survived.

1918 - The U.S. First Aero Squadron engaged in America's first aerial dogfight with enemy aircraft over Toul, France.

1925 - WGN became the first radio station to broadcast a regular season major league baseball game. The Cubs beat the Pirates 8-2.

1931 - King Alfonso XIII of Spain went into exile and the Spanish Republic was proclaimed.

1939 - The John Steinbeck novel "The Grapes of Wrath" was first published.

1946 - The civil war between Communists and nationalist resumed in China.

1953 - Viet Minh invaded Laos with 40,00 troops.

1956 - Ampex Corporation of Redwood City, CA, demonstrated the first commercial magnetic tape recorder for sound and picture.

1959 - The Taft Memorial Bell Tower was dedicated in Washington, DC.

1969 - For the first time, a major league baseball game was played in Montreal, Canada.

1981 - America's first space shuttle, Columbia, returned to Earth after a three-day test flight. The shuttle orbited the Earth 36 times during the mission.

1984 - The Texas Board of Education began requiring that the state's public school textbooks describe the evolution of human beings as "theory rather than fact".

1985 - The Russian paper "Pravda" called U.S. President Reagan's planned visit to Bitburg to visit the Nazi cemetery an "act of blasphemy".

1986 - U.S. President Reagan announced the U.S. air raid on military and terrorist related targets in Libya.

1987 - Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev proposed banning all missiles from Europe.

1988 - Representatives from the U.S.S.R., Pakistan, Afghanistan and the U.S. signed an agreement that called for the withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan starting on May 15. The last Soviet troop left Afghanistan on February 15, 1989.

1988 - In New York, real estate tycoons Harry and Leona Helmsley were indicted for income tax evasion.

1990 - Cal Ripken of the Baltimore Orioles began a streak of 95 errorless games and 431 total chances by a shortstop.

1994 - Two American F-15 warplanes inadvertently shot down two U.S. helicopters over northern Iraq. 26 people were killed including 15 Americans.

1998 - The state of Virginia ignored the requests from the World Court and executed a Paraguayan for the murder of a U.S. woman.

1999 - Pakistan test-fired a ballistic missile that was capable of carrying a nuclear warhead and reaching its rival neighbor India.

2000 - After five years of deadlock, Russia approved the START II treaty that calls for the scrapping of U.S. and Russian nuclear warheads. The Russian government warned it would abandon all arms-control pacts if Washington continued with an anti-missile system.

2002 - U.S. President George W. Bush sent a letter of congratulations to JCPenny's associates for being in business for 100 years. James Cash (J.C.) Penney had opened his first retail store on April 14, 1902.

2002 - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez returned to office two days after being arrested by his country's military.

2008 - Delta Air Lines and Northwest Airlines announced they were combining.

April 15, 2013

1784 - The first balloon was flown in Ireland.

1794 - "Courrier Francais" became the first French daily newspaper to be published in the U.S.

1813 - U.S. troops under James Wilkinson attacked the Spanish-held city of Mobile that would be in the future state of Alabama.

1817 - The first American school for the deaf was opened in Hartford, CT.

1850 - The city of San Francisco was incorporated.

1858 - At the Battle of Azimghur, the Mexicans defeated Spanish loyalists.

1861 - U.S. President Lincoln mobilized the Federal army.

1865 - U.S. President Abraham Lincoln died from injuries inflicted by John Wilkes Booth.

1871 - "Wild Bill" Hickok became the marshal of Abilene, Kansas.

1880 - William Gladstone became Prime Minister of England.

1892 - The General Electric Company was organized.

1899 - Thomas Edison organized the Edison Portland Cement Company.

1912 - The ocean liner Titanic sank in the North Atlantic after hitting an iceberg the evening before. 1,517 people died and more than 700 people survived.

1917 - The British defeated the Germans at the battle of Arras.

1919 - British troops killed 400 Indians at Amritsar, India.

1923 - Insulin became generally available for people suffering with diabetes.

1934 - In the comic strip "Blondie," Dagwood and Blondie Bumstead welcomed a baby boy, Alexander. The child would be nicknamed, Baby Dumpling.

1940 - French and British troops landed at Narvik, Norway.

1945 - During World War II, British and Canadian troops liberated the Nazi concentration camp Bergen-Belsen.

1947 - Jackie Robinson played his first major league baseball game for the Brooklyn Dodgers. Previously he had only appeared in exhibition games.

1948 - The Arabs were defeated in the first Jewish-Arab battle.

1951 - The first episode of the "Adventures of Wild Bill Hickok" radio show aired.

1952 - U.S. President Harry Truman signed the official Japanese peace treaty.

1952 - The first B-52 prototype was tested in the air.

1953 - In Buenos Aires, six people were killed by a bomb at a rally addressed by President Peron.

1953 - Pope Pius XII gave his approval of psychoanalysis but warned of possible abuses.

1953 - Charlie Chaplin surrendered his U.S. re-entry permit rather than face proceedings by the U.S. Justice Department. Chaplin was accused of sympathizing with Communist groups.

1956 - The worlds’ first, all-color TV station was dedicated. It was WNBQ-TV in Chicago and is now WMAQ-TV.

1956 - General Motors announced that the first free piston automobile had been developed.

1959 - Cuban leader Fidel Castro began a U.S. goodwill tour.

1960 - The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was organized at Shaw University.

1967 - Richard Speck was found guilty of murdering eight student nurses.

1983 - Tokyo Disneyland opened.

1984 - Ten members of a family were found murdered in their home in New York City. An infant was found crawling among the corpses.

1986 - U.S. F-111 warplanes attacked Libya in response to the bombing of a discotheque in Berlin on April 5, 1986.

1987 - In Northhampton, MA, Amy Carter, Abbie Hoffman and 13 others were acquitted on civil disobedience charges related with a CIA protest.

1987 - In New York City, Mbongeni Ngema's "Asinamali!" opened as the first South African play on Broadway.

1989 - Students in Beijing launched a series of pro democracy protests upon the death of former Communist Party leader Hu Yaobang. The protests led to the Tienanmen Square massacre.

1989 - In Sheffield, England, 96 people were killed and hundreds were injured at a soccer game at Hillsborough Stadium when a crowd surged into an overcrowded standing area. Ninety-four died on the day of the incident and two more later died from their injuries.

1994 - The World Trade Organization was established.

1997 - Christopher Reeve received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

1998 - Pol Pot died at the age of 73. The leader of the Khmer Rouge regime thereby evaded prosecution for the deaths of 2 million Cambodians.

1999 - In Algeria, former Foreign Minister Abdelaziz Bouteflika was elected president. All of the opposition candidates claimed that the vote was fraudulent and withdrew from the election.

1999 - In Rawalpindi, Pakistan, a panel of two Lahore High Court judges convicted former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and her husband, Asif Ali Zardari, of corruption.

2000 - 600 anti-IMF (International Monetary Fund) protesters were arrested in Washington, DC, for demonstrating without a permit.

April 16, 2013

0069 - Otho committed suicide after being defeated by Vitellius' troops at Bedriacum.

0556 - Pelagius I began his reign as Catholic Pope.

1065 - The Norman Robert Guiscard took Bari. Five centuries of Byzantine rule in southern Italy ended.

1175 - Frederick I, Holy Roman Emperor, signed the Treaty of Montebello with the Lombard League.

1705 - Queen Anne of England knighted Isaac Newton.

1746 - The Duke of Cumberland defeated Bonnie Prince Charlie (and his Jacobites) at the battle of Culloden.

1818 - The U.S. Senate ratified Rush-Bagot amendment to form an unarmed U.S.-Canada border.

1851 - A lighthouse was swept away in a gale at Minot’s Ledge, MA.

1854 - San Salvador was destroyed by an earthquake.

1862 - Confederate President Jefferson Davis approved conscription act for white males between 18 and 35.

1862 - In the U.S., slavery was abolished by law in the District of Columbia.

1883 - Paul Kruger became president of the South African Republic.

1900 - The first book of postage stamps was issued. The two-cent stamps were available in books of 12, 24 and 48 stamps.

1905 - Andrew Carnegie donated $10,000,000 of personal money to set up the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

1912 - Harriet Quimby became the first woman to fly across the English Channel.

1917 - Vladimir Ilyich Lenin returned to Russia to start Bolshevik Revolution after years of exile.

1922 - Annie Oakley shot 100 clay targets in a row, to set a women's record.

1922 - The Soviet Union and Germany signed the Treaty of Rapallo under which Germany recognized the Soviet Union and diplomatic and trade relations were restored.

1935 - "Fibber McGee and Molly" premiered.

1940 - The first no-hit, no-run game to be thrown on an opening day of the major league baseball season was earned by Bob Feller. The Cleveland Indians beat the Chicago White Sox 1-0.

1942 - The Island of Malta was awarded the George Cross in recognition for heroism under constant German air attack.

1943 - In Basel, Switzerland, chemist Albert Hoffman accidently discovered the the hallucinogenic effects of LSD-25 while working on the medicinal value of lysergic acid.

1944 - The destroyer USS Laffey survived immense damage from attacks by 22 Japanese aircraft off Okinawa.

1945 - American troops entered Nuremberg, Germany.

1947 - The Zoomar lens, invented by Dr. Frank Back, was demonstrated in New York City. It was the first lens to exhibit zooming effects.

1947 - In Texas City, TX, the French ship Grandcamp, carrying ammonium nitrate fertilizer, caught fire and blew up. The explosions and resulting fires killed 576 people.

1948 - In Paris, the Organization for European Economic Co-operation was set up.

1951 - 75 people were killed when the British submarine Affray sank in the English Channel.

1953 - The British royal yacht Britannia was launched.

1962 - Walter Cronkite began anchoring "The CBS Evening News".

1968 - The Pentagon announced that troops would begin coming home from Vietnam.

1968 - Major league baseball's longest night game was played when the Houston Astros defeated the New York Mets 1-0. The 24 innings took six hours, six minutes to play.

1972 - Apollo 16 blasted off on a voyage to the moon. It was the fifth manned moon landing.

1972 - Two giants pandas arrived in the U.S. from China.

1975 - The Khmer Rouge Rebels won control of Cambodia after a five years of civil war. They renamed the country Kampuchea and began a reign of terror.

1978 - In Orissa, India, 180 people died when a tornado hit.

1982 - Queen Elizabeth proclaimed Canada's new constitution in effect. The act severed the last colonial links with Britain.

1983 - China shelled the Vietnam border in retaliation for raids.

1983 - Brazil detained four Libyan planes en route to Nicaragua after finding weapons, explosives and ammunition on the planes.

1985 - Mickey Mantle was reinstated after being banned from baseball for several years.

1987 - The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) sternly warned U.S. radio stations to watch the use of indecent language on the airwaves.

1987 - The U.S. Patent Office began allowing the patenting of new animals created by genetic engineering.

1992 - Italian financier Carlo de Benedetti and 32 others were convicted of fraud in connection with the 1982 collapse of Banco Ambrosiano.

1992 - The House ethics committee listed 303 current and former lawmakers who had overdrawn their House bank accounts.

1995 - The European Union and Canada agreed to protect threatened fish stocks in the north Atlantic.

1996 - Britain's Prince Andrew and his wife, Sarah, the Duchess of York, announced that they were in the process of getting a divorce.

1996 - An Italian court found former Prime Minister Bettino Craxi guilty on charges of corruption. He was sentenced to eight years and three months in prison.

1999 - Wayne Gretzky announced his retirement from the National Hockey League (NHL).

2002 - The U.S. Supreme Court overturned major parts of a 1996 child pornography law based on rights to free speech.

2007 - In Blacksburg, VA, a student killed 33 people at Virginia Tech before killing himself.

April 17, 2013

1492 - Christopher Columbus signed a contract with Spain to find a passage to Asia and the Indies.

1521 - Martin Luther was excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church.

1524 - New York Harbor was discovered by Giovanni Verrazano.

1535 - Antonio Mendoza was appointed first viceroy of New Spain.

1629 - Horses were first imported into the colonies by the American Massachusetts Bay Colony.

1704 - John Campbell published what would eventually become the first successful American newspaper. It was known as the Boston "News-Letter."

1758 - Frances Williams published a collection of Latin poems. He was the first African-American to graduate from a college in the western hemisphere.

1808 - Bayonne Decree by Napoleon I of France ordered the seizure of U.S. ships.

1810 - Pineapple cheese was patented by Lewis M. Norton.

1824 - Russia abandoned all North American claims south of 54' 40'.

1860 - New Yorkers learned of a new law that required fire escapes to be provided for tenement houses.

1861 - Virginia became the eighth state to secede from the Union.

1864 - U.S. Civil War General Grant banned the trading of prisoners.

1865 - Mary Surratt was arrested as a conspirator in the Lincoln assassination.

1875 - The game "snooker" was invented by Sir Neville Chamberlain.

1895 - China and Japan signed the Treaty of Shimonoseki. It was the end of the first Sino-Japanese War. In the treaty China ceded Taiwan to Japan.

1916 - The American Academy of Arts and Letters obtained a charter from the U.S. Congress.

1917 - A bill in Congress to establish Daylight Saving Time was defeated. It was passed a couple of months later.

1935 - "Lights Out" debuted on NBC Radio. It ran until 1952.

1941 - Igor Sikorsky accomplished the first successful helicopter lift-off from water near Stratford, CT.

1941 - The office of Price Administration was established in the U.S. to handle rationing.

1946 - The last French troops left Syria.

1947 - Jackie Robinson (Brooklyn Dodgers) performed a bunt for his first major league hit.

1961 - About 1,400 U.S.-supported Cuban exiles invaded Cuba at the Bay of Pigs in an attempt to overthrow Fidel Castro. It was an unsuccessful attack.

1964 - Jerrie Mock became first woman to fly an airplane solo around the world.

1964 - The Ford Motor Company unveiled its new Mustang model.

1967 - "The Joey Bishop Show" debuted on ABC-TV.

1967 - The U.S. Supreme Court barred Muhammad Ali's request to be blocked from induction into the U.S. Army.

1969 - In Los Angeles, Sirhan Sirhan was convicted of assassinating U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy.

1969 - Czechoslovak Communist Party chairman Alexander Dubcek was deposed.

1970 - Apollo 13 returned to Earth safely after an on-board accident with an oxygen tank.

1975 - Khmer Rouge forces capture the capital of Cambodia, Phnom Penh. It was the end of the five-year war.

1983 - In Warsaw, police routed 1,000 Solidarity supporters.

1983 - In New York, a transit strike that began on March 7 ended.

19840 - In London, demonstrators outside the Libyan Embassy were fired upon from someone inside. Eleven people were injured and an English Police woman was killed.

1985 - The U.S. Postal Service unveiled its new 22-cent, "LOVE" stamp.

1985 - In Lebanon, the cabinet resigned as Shiites took W. Beirut.

1987 - In Sri Lanka, Tamil guerrillas killed 122 people in a road ambush.

1989 - In Poland, courts gave Solidarity legal status.

1993 - A federal jury in Los Angeles convicted two former police officers of violating the civil rights of beaten motorist Rodney King. Two other officers were acquitted.

1996 - Erik and Lyle Menendez were sentenced to life in prison without parole for killing their parents.

1999 - In India, the government of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee collapsed after losing a vote of confidence.

2002 - At the National Maritime Museum in London, the exhibit "Skin Deep - A History of Tattooing" opened.

April 18, 2013

1521 - Martin Luther confronted the emperor Charles V in the Diet of Worms and refused to retract his views that led to his excommunication.

1676 - Sudbury, Massachusetts, was attacked by Indians.

1775 - American revolutionaries Paul Revere, William Dawes and Samuel Prescott rode though the towns of Massachusetts giving the warning that "the Regulars are coming out." Later, the phrase "the British are coming" was attributed to Revere.

1791 - National Guardsmen prevented Louis XVI and his family from leaving Paris.

1818 - A regiment of Indians and blacks were defeated at the Battle of Suwann, in Florida, ending the first Seminole War.

1834 - William Lamb became prime minister of England.

1838 - The Wilkes' expedition to the South Pole set sail.

1846 - The telegraph ticker was patented by R.E. House

1847 - U.S. troops defeated almost 17,000 Mexican soldiers commanded by Santa Anna at Cerro Gordo. (Mexican-American War)

1853 - The first train in Asia began running from Bombay to Tanna.

1861 - Colonel Robert E. Lee turned down an offer to command the Union armies during the U.S. Civil War.

1877 - Charles Cros wrote a paper that described the process of recording and reproducing sound. In France, Cros is regarded as the inventor of the phonograph. In the U.S., Thomas Edison gets the credit.

1895 - New York State passed an act that established free public baths.

1906 - San Francisco, CA, was hit with an earthquake. The original death toll was cited at about 700. Later information indicated that the death toll may have been 3 to 4 times the original estimate.

1910 - Walter R. Brookins made the first airplane flight at night.

1923 - Yankee Stadium opened in the Bronx, NY. The Yankees beat the Boston Red Sox 4-1. John Phillip Sousa's band played the National Anthem.

1924 - Simon and Schuster, Inc. published the first "Crossword Puzzle Book."

1934 - The first Laundromat opened in Fort Worth, TX.

1937 - Leon Trotsky called for the overthrow of Soviet leader Josef Stalin.

1938 - U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt threw out the first ball preceding the season opener between the Washington Senators and the Philadelphia Athletics.

1942 - James H. Doolittle and his squadron, from the USS Hornet, raided Tokyo and other Japanese cities.

1942 - The Vichy government capitulated to Adolf Hitler and invited Pierre Laval to form a new government in France.

1943 - Traveling in a bomber, Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, was shot down by American P-38 fighters.

1945 - American war correspondent Ernie Pyle was killed by Japanese gunfire on the Pacific island of Ie Shima, off Okinawa. He was 44 years old.

1946 - The League of Nations was dissolved.

1949 - The Republic of Ireland was established.

1950 - The first transatlantic jet passenger trip was completed.

1954 - Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser seized power in Egypt.

1955 - Albert Einstein died.

1956 - Actress Grace Kelly and Prince Rainier of Monaco were married. The religious ceremony took place April 19.

1960 - The Mutual Broadcasting System was sold to the 3M Company of Minnesota for $1.25 million.

1978 - The U.S. Senate approved the transfer of the Panama Canal to Panama on December 31, 1999.

1979 - The TV show "Real People" premiered.

1980 - Rhodesia became in independent nation of Zimbabwe.

1983 - The U.S. Embassy in Beirut was blown up by a suicide car-bomber. 63 people were killed including 17 Americans.

1984 - Daredevils Mike MacCarthy and Amanda Tucker made a sky dive from the Eiffel Tower. The jump ended safely.

1985 - Ted Turner filed for a hostile takeover of CBS.

1985 - Tulane University abolished its 72-year-old basketball program. The reason was charges of fixed games, drug abuse, and payments to players.

1989 - Thousands of Chinese students demanding democracy tried to storm Communist Party headquarters in Beijing.

1999 - Wayne Gretzky (New York Rangers) played his final game in the NHL. He retired as the NHL's all-time leading scorer and holder of 61 individual records.{C}

2000 - The Nasdaq had the biggest one-day point gain in its history.

2000 - Joan Lunden and Jeff Konigsberg were married.

2002 - Actor Robert Blake and his bodyguard were arrested in connection with the shooting death of Blake's wife about a year before.

2002 - The Amtrack Auto Train derailed in a remote area of north Florida. Four people were killed and 133 were injured.

2002 - The city legislature of Berlin decided to make Marlene Dietrich an honorary citizen. Dietrich had gone to the United States in 1930. She refused to return to Germany after Adolf Hitler came to power.

April 19, 2013

1012 - Aelfheah was murdered by Danes who had been ravaging the south of England. Aelfhear became the 29th Archbishop of Canterbury in 1005.

1539 - Emperor Charles V reached a truce with German Protestants at Frankfurt, Germany.

1587 - English admiral Sir Francis Drake entered Cadiz harbor and sank the Spanish fleet.

1689 - Residents of Boston ousted their governor, Edmond Andros.

1713 - Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI issued the Pragmatic Sanction, which gave women the rights of succession to Hapsburg possessions.

1764 - The English Parliament banned the American colonies from printing paper money.

1770 - Captain James Cook discovered New South Wales, Australia. Cook originally named the land Point Hicks.

1775 - The American Revolution began as fighting broke out at Lexington, MA.

1782 - The Netherlands recognized the new United States.

1794 - Tadeusz Kosciuszko forced the Russians out of Warsaw.

1802 - The Spanish reopened the New Orleans port to American merchants.

1839 - The Kingdom of Belgium was recognized by all the states of Europe when the Treaty of London was signed.

1852 - The California Historical Society was founded.

1861 - Thaddeus S. C. Lowe sailed 900 miles in nine hours in a hot air balloon from Cincinnati, OH, to Unionville, SC.

1861 - The Baltimore riots resulted in four Union soldiers and nine civilians killed.

1861 - U.S. President Lincoln ordered a blockade of Confederate ports.

1892 - The Duryea gasoline buggy was introduced in the U.S. by Charles and Frank Duryea.

1897 - The first annual Boston Marathon was held. It was the first of its type in the U.S.

1927 - In China, Hankow communists declared war on Chaing Kai-shek.

1933 - U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued a proclamation that removed the U.S. from the gold standard.

1938 - General Francisco Franco declared victory in the Spanish Civil War.

1939 - Connecticut approved the Bill of Rights for the U.S. Constitution after 148 years.

1943 - The Warsaw Ghetto uprising against Nazi rule began. The Jews were able to fight off the Germans for 28 days.

1951 - General Douglas MacArthur gave his "Old Soldiers" speech before the U.S. Congress. In the address General MacArthur said that "Old soldiers never die, they just fade away."

1951 - Shigeki Tanaka won the Boston Marathon. Tanaka had survived the atomic blast at Hiroshima, Japan during World War II.

1956 - Actress Grace Kelly became Princess Grace of Monaco when she married Prince Rainier III of Monaco. The civil ceremony took place on April 18.

1958 - The San Francisco Giants and the Los Angeles Dodgers played the first major league baseball game on the West Coast.

1960 - Baseball uniforms began displaying player's names on their backs.

1967 - Surveyor 3 landed on the moon and began sending photos back to the U.S.

1971 - Russia launched the Salyut into orbit around Earth. It was the first space station.

1975 - India launched its first satellite with aid from the USSR.

1977 - Alex Haley received a special Pulitzer Prize for his book "Roots."

1981 - In Davao, Philippines, thirteen people were killed when members of the New People's Army threw hand grenades into the Roman Catholic cathedral during Easter services.

1982 - NASA named Sally Ride to be first woman astronaut.

1982 - NASA named Guion S. Bluford Jr. as the first African-American astronaut.

1982 - The U.S. announced a ban on U.S. tourist and business traval to Cuba. The U.S. charged the Cuban government with subversion in Central America.

1987 - In Phoenix, AZ, skydiver Gregory Robertson went into a 200-mph free-fall to save an unconscious colleague 3,500 feet from the ground.

1987 - The last California condor known to be in the wild was captured and placed in a breeding program at the San Diego Wild Animal Park.

1989 - A gun turret exploded aboard the USS Iowa. 47 sailors were killed.

1989 - A giant asteroid passed within 500,000 miles of Earth.

1989 - In El Salvador, Attorney General Alvadora was killed by a car bomb.

1993 - The Branch-Davidian’s compound in Waco, TX, burned to the ground. It was the end of a 51-day standoff between the cult and U.S. federal agents. 86 people were killed including 17 children. Nine of the Branch Davidians escaped the fire.

1994 - A Los Angeles jury awarded $3.8 million to Rodney King for violation of his civil rights.

1995 - The Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, OK, was destroyed by a bomb. It was the worst bombing on U.S. territory. 168 people were killed including 19 children, and 500 were injured. Timothy McVeigh was found guilty of the bombing on June 2, 1997.

1998 - Wang Dan, a leader of 1989 Tienanmen Square pro democracy protests, was freed by the Chinese government.

2000 - The Oklahoma City National Memorial was dedicated on the fifth anniversary of the bombing in Oklahoma that killed 168 people.

2000 - Letters written by Greta Garbo were put on exhibit. The letters were made public ten years after Garbo's death.

2000 - In the Philippines, Air Philippines GAP 541 crashed while preparing to land. 131 people were killed.

2002 - The USS Cole was relaunched. In Yemen, 17 sailors were killed when the ship was attacked by terrorists on October 12, 2000. The attack was blamed on Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network.

April 20, 2013

753 BC - Today is the traditional date of the foundation of Rome.

43 BC - Marcus Antonius was defeated by Octavian near Modena, Italy.

1526 - Mongol Emperor Babur annihilated the Indian Army of Ibrahim Lodi.

1649 - The Maryland Toleration Act was passed, allowing all freedom of worship.

1689 - William III and Mary II were crowned joint king and queen of England, Scotland and Ireland.

1789 - John Adams was sworn in as the first U.S. Vice President.

1836 - General Sam Houston defeated Santa Anna at the Battle of San Jacinto. This battle decided the independence of Texas.

1856 - The Mississippi River was crossed by a rail train for the first time (between Davenport, IA, and Rock Island, IL).

1862 - The U.S. Congress established the U.S. Mint in Denver, CO.

1865 - U.S. President Abraham Lincoln's funeral train left Washington.

1892 - The first Buffalo was born in Golden Gate Park.

1898 - The Spanish-American War began.

1914 - U.S. Marines occupied Vera Cruz, Mexico. The troops stayed for six months.

1916 - Bill Carlisle, the infamous ‘last train robber,’ robbed a train in Hanna, WY.

1918 - German fighter ace Manfred von Richthofen, "The Red Baron," was shot down and killed during World War I.

1940 - "Take It or Leave It" premiered on CBS Radio.

1943 - U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt announced that several Doolittle pilots had been executed by the Japanese.

1953 - In New York, the Sidney Janis Gallery held the Dada exhibition.

1956 - Leonard Ross, age 10, became the youngest prizewinner on the "The Big Surprise". He won $100,000.

1959 - The largest fish ever hooked by a rod and reel was caught by Alf Dean. It was a 16-foot, 10-inch white shark that weighed 2,664 pounds.

1960 - Brasilia became the capital of Brazil.

1961 - The French army revolted in Algeria.

1967 - Svetlana Alliluyeva (Svetlana Stalina) defected in New York City. She was the daughter of Joseph Stalin.

1967 - In Athens, Army colonels took over the government and installed Constantine Kollias as premier.

1972 - Apollo 16 astronauts John Young and Charles Duke explored the surface of the moon.

1975 - South Vietnam president, Nguyen Van Thieu, resigned, condemning the United States.

1977 - "Annie" opened on Broadway.

1984 - In France, it was announced that doctors had found virus believed to cause AIDS.

1985 - Manuel Ortega proposed a cease-fire for Nicaragua.

1986 - Geraldo Rivera opened a vault that belonged to Al Capone at the Lexington Hotel in Chicago. Nothing of interest was found inside.

1987 - Special occasion stamps were offered for the first time by the U.S. Postal Service. "Happy Birthday" and "Get Well" were among the first to be offered.

1992 - Robert Alton Harris became the first person executed by the state of California in 25 years. He was put to death for the 1978 murder of two teen-age boys.

1994 - Jackie Parker became the first woman to qualify to fly an F-16 combat plane.

1998 - Astronomers announced in Washington that they had discovered possible signs of a new family of planets orbiting a star 220 light-years away.

2000 - In Sinking Spring, PA, a man chased his estranged girlfriend through town and then forced her car into the path of an oncoming train. The woman and her 3 passengers were killed.

2000 - North Carolina researchers announced that the heart of a 66 million-year-old dinosaur was more like a mammal or bird than that of a reptile.

2000 - The 1998 Children's Online Privacy Protection Act went into effect.

2002 - In the city of General Santos, 14 people were killed and 69 were injured in a bomb attack on a department store. The attack was blamed on Muslim extremists.

2003 - North and South Korea agreed to hold Cabinet-level talks the following week.

2009 - UNESCO launched The World Digital Library. The World Digital Library (WDL) is an international digital library operated by UNESCO and the United States Library of Congress.

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