Today is Monday, April 25, the 115th day of 2011. There are 250 days left in the year.
Today’s highlight:
On April 25, 1507, German cartographer Martin Waldseemueller produced a world map containing the first recorded use of the term “America,” in honor of Italian navigator Amerigo Ves
pucci.
On this date:
In 1792, highwayman Nicolas Jacques Pelletier became the first person under French law to be executed by the guillotine.
In 1859, ground was broken for the Suez Canal.
In 1898, the United States formally declared war on Spain.
In 1901, New York Gov. Benjamin Barker Odell Jr. signed an automobile registration bill which imposed a 15 mph speed limit on highways.
In 1915, during World War I, Allied soldiers invaded the Gallipoli Peninsula in an unsuccessful attempt to take the Ottoman Empire out of the war.
In 1944, the United Negro College Fund was founded.
In 1945, during World War II, U.S. and Soviet forces linked up on the Elbe River, a meeting that dramatized the collapse of Nazi Germany’s defenses. Delegates from some 50 countries met in San Francisco to organize the United Nations.
In 1959, the St. Lawrence Seaway opened to shipping.
In 1983, Soviet leader Yuri V. Andropov invited Samantha Smith to visit his country after receiving a letter from the Manchester, Maine, schoolgirl.
In 1990, the Hubble Space Telescope was deployed in orbit from the space shuttle Discovery. (Although Hubble was hailed as a scientific triumph, it was discovered that the telescope’s primary mirror was flawed, requiring the installation of corrective components to achieve optimal focus.)
Associated Press
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