ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY
International Herald Tribune
April 17 2008
France
Today is Thursday, April 24, the 115th day of 2008. There are 251
days left in the year.
Highlights in history on this date:
1915 – The Ottoman Turkish Empire begins the brutal mass deportation
of Armenians during World War I.
1521 – Spanish rebels are defeated at Villalar, Spain, and leaders
of anti-Hapsburg movement are executed.
1617 – Concino Concini, Marquis d’Angre, is assassinated by order
of France’s King Louis XIII, and Charles d’Albert, Duke of Luynes,
takes charge of government of France.
1671 – Defeated Cossack rebel leader Stenka Razin is captured by
loyalist Cossacks in Russia and turned over to the czar’s forces.
1792 – Claude-Joseph Rouget de Lisle composes France’s national anthem,
La Marseillaise.
1877 – American Federal troops are ordered out of New Orleans, ending
the North’s post-Civil War rule in the South.
1898 – Spain declares war on United States after receiving U.S.
ultimatum to withdraw from Cuba.
1915 – The Ottoman Turkish Empire begins the brutal mass deportation
of Armenians during World War I.
1916 – Some 1,600 Irish nationalists launch the Easter uprising by
seizing several key sites in Dublin. The rising is put down by British
forces several days later.
1953 – British statesman Winston Churchill is knighted by Queen
Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace.
1967 – Soviet Cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov is killed when parachute
straps of his spacecraft get entangled, and he plunges to earth.
1969 – Lebanon’s Premier Rashid Karami resigns amid dispute over
government’s restrictions on Palestinian guerrillas.
1970 – China launches its first satellite.
1971 – Soviet cosmonauts link up with unmanned satellite prior to
attempt to build world’s first orbiting space laboratory.
1975 – Terrorists from the German Red Army faction occupy the West
German Embassy in Stockholm, taking 12 people hostage and killing
two of them.
1975 – Thousands of Vietnamese refugees are flown to U.S. island of
Guam as communists move rapidly in their takeover of South Vietnam.
1980 – The United States launches an abortive attempt to free
American hostages in Iran, a mission that results in the deaths of
eight U.S. servicemen. President Jimmy Carter announces the failed
mission to the American people.
1989 – Rebels shell eastern Afghanistan city of Jalalabad, killing
at least 54 people.
1990 – The U.S. space shuttle Discovery takes the Hubble Space
Telescope into orbit.
1991 – South African government announces it will uphold agreement with
African National Congress to free all political prisoners by April 30.
1992 – OPEC nations reject a demand by Iran for increased production.
1993 – Commandos break into a cockpit of a commandeered Indian Airlines
plane in Amritsar, India, shoot dead the lone hijacker and free all
141 people aboard.
1994 – Cuban exiles are received by President Fidel Castro, the man
some have long wanted to overthrow.
1997 – Islamist militants armed with sabers and axes strike two
villages in Algeria, butchering 47 people in a pre-election terror
wave that leaves an estimated 420 dead in a few weeks.
1998 – In front of a cheering crowd, 22 Rwandans convicted of genocide
are executed by firing squad in Kigali.
1999 – A car bomb explodes in one of London’s biggest Bangladeshi
communities, injuring seven people. A racist group claims
responsibility.
2000 – Iranian hard-liners close down 14 pro-democracy publications
in a strike against a major pillar of the reform movement.
2001 – A jury is chosen in the murder trial of a former Ku Klux
Klansman charged 38 years after the church bombing that killed four
black girls in Birmingham, Alabama.
2003 – Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, the former wife of Nelson Mandela,
is convicted of fraud and theft by a regional court in Pretoria, South
Africa, and sentenced to five years in prison. Madikizela-Mandela was
charged with running fraudulent schemes to obtain about $125,000 in
bank loans and insurance payments.
2005 – Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators collect in Mexico City’s
central square and surrounding streets to protest the prosecution by
federal authorities of Lopez Obrador, the capital city’s mayor and
a leading contender for president in 2006.
2006 – Three bombings hit an Egyptian beach resort popular with
foreigners, killing at least 21 people and wounding more than 60 a
day after Osama bin Laden issues a taped warning against Westerners.
2007 – Mexico City lawmakers vote to legalize abortion in the first
12 weeks of pregnancy.
Today’s Birthdays: Edmund Cartwright, English inventor of first power
loom (1743-1823); Anthony Trollope, English novelist (1814-1882);
Shirley MacLaine, U.S. actress-dancer-author (1934–); Sue Grafton,
U.S. mystery/crime novelist (1940–); Barbra Streisand, U.S.
actress-entertainer (1942–); Eric Bogosian, U.S. actor (1953–);
Cedric the Entertainer, U.S. comedian (1964–).