Today is Thursday, April 7, the 97th day of 2011. There are 268 days left in the year.
Today’s highlight:
On April 7, 1862, Union forces led by General Ulysses S. Grant defeated the Confederates at the Battle of Shiloh in Tennessee.
On this date:
In 1788, an expedition led by Gen. Rufus Putnam established a settlement at present-day Marietta, Ohio.
In 1798, the Mississippi Territory was created by an act of Congress, with Natchez as the capital.
In 1927, the image and voice of Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover were transmitted live from Washington to New York in the first successful long-distance demonstration of television.
In 1939, Italy invaded Albania, which was annexed less than a week later.
In 1948, the World Health Organization was founded in Geneva.
In 1949, the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical “South Pacific” opened on Broadway.
In 1953, the U.N. General Assembly elected Dag Hammarskjold (dahg HAWM’-ahr-shoold) of Sweden to be secretary-general.
In 1969, the Supreme Court, in Stanley v. Georgia, unanimously struck down laws prohibiting private possession of obscene material.
In 1978, President Jimmy Carter announced he was deferring development of the neutron bomb, a high-radiation weapon.
In 1983, space shuttle astronauts Story Musgrave and Don Peterson took the first U.S. space walk in almost a decade as they worked in the open cargo bay of Challenger for nearly four hours.
Ten years ago: NASA’s Mars Odyssey spacecraft took off on a six-month, 286 million-mile journey to the Red Planet.
Associated Press
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