Today is Tuesday, April 24, the 115th day of 2012. There are 251 days left in the year.
Today’s highlight:
On April 24, 1962, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology achieved the first satellite relay of a television signal, using NASA’s Echo 1 balloon satellite to bounce a video image of the letters “M.I.T.” transmitted from Camp Parks, Calif., to Westford, Mass.
On this date:
In 1792, the national anthem of France, “La Marseillaise,” was composed by Captain Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle.
In 1800, Congress approved a bill establishing the Library of Congress.
In 1898, Spain declared war on the United States. (The United States responded in kind the next day.)
In 1915, what’s regarded as the start of the Armenian genocide began as the Ottoman Empire rounded up Armenian political and cultural leaders in Constantinople.
In 1916, some 1,600 Irish nationalists launched the Easter Rising by seizing several key sites in Dublin. (The rising was put down by British forces almost a week later.)
In 1932, in the Free State of Prussia, the Nazi Party gained a plurality of seats in parliamentary elections.
In 1953, British statesman Winston Churchill was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II.
In 1960, rioting erupted in Biloxi, Miss., after black protesters staging a “wade-in” at a whites-only beach were attacked by a crowd of hostile whites.
In 1970, the People’s Republic of China launched its first satellite, which kept transmitting a song, “The East is Red.”
In 1980, the United States launched an unsuccessful attempt to free the American hostages in Iran, a mission that resulted in the deaths of eight U.S. servicemen.
In 1986, Wallis, Duchess of Windsor, for whom King Edward VIII had given up the British throne, died in Paris at age 89.
In 1997, comedian Pat Paulsen died in Tijuana, Mexico, at age 69.
Ten years ago: After an extraordinary meeting at the Vatican sparked by a sex abuse scandal, American Roman Catholic leaders agreed to make it easier to remove priests who were guilty of sexually abusing minors. Michael McDermott, a software engineer who’d claimed he was insane when he shot to death seven co-workers, was convicted of murder in Cambridge, Mass., and automatically sentenced to life in prison without parole.
Five years ago: In a harsh exchange, Vice President Dick Cheney accused Democratic leader Harry Reid of personally pursuing a defeatist strategy in Iraq to win votes at home — a charge dismissed by Reid as President George W. Bush’s “attack dog” lashing out. Seven people were killed by a tornado in Maverick County on the Texas-Mexico border. European astronomers announced they had found a potentially habitable planet outside the solar system. Warren Avis, the founder of Avis Rent A Car, died in Ann Arbor, Mich., at age 92.
One year ago: Pope Benedict XVI offered an Easter Sunday prayer for diplomacy to prevail over warfare in Libya and for citizens of the Middle East to build a new society. Taliban militants staged a massive jailbreak in Kandahar, Afghanistan, as some 480 inmates escaped through a tunnel that had been dug over a matter of months. Madame Ngo Dinh Nhu, 86, who’d served as South Vietnam’s unofficial first lady early in the Vietnam War, died in Rome.
Associated Press
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