TODAY IN HISTORY

TODAY IS SATURDAY, APRIL 28, 2018

On this day in history:

1789 - A mutiny on the British ship Bounty took place when a rebel crew took the ship and set sail to Pitcairn Island. The mutineers left Captain W. Bligh and 18 sailors adrift.

1916 - The British declared martial law throughout Ireland.

1919 - The League of Nations was founded.

1920 - Azerbaijan joined the USSR.

1923 - The British Empire Exhibition Stadium (or Empire Stadium) opened to the public.

1945 - Benito Mussolini and his mistress Clara Petacci were executed by Italian partisans as they attempted to flee the country.

1946 - The Allies indicted Tojo with 55 counts of war crimes.

1947 - Norwegian anthropologist Thor Heyerdahl and five others set out in a balsa wood craft known as Kon Tiki to prove that Peruvian Indians could have settled in Polynesia. The trip began in Peru and took 101 days to complete the crossing of the Pacific Ocean.

1949 - Melbourne is announced as the host city for the Games of the XVI Olympiad.

1953 - French troops evacuated northern Laos.

1962 - In the Sahara Desert of Algeria, a team led by Red Adair used explosives to put out the well fire known as the Devil’s Cigarette Lighter. The fire was caused by a pipe rupture on November 6, 1961.

1969 - Charles de Gaulle resigned as president of France.

1996 - Port Arthur, Australia, becomes the scene of an horrific massacre of innocent men, women and children.

1997 - A worldwide treaty to ban chemical weapons took effect. Russia and other countries such as Iraq and North Korea did not sign.

2001 - A Russian rocket launched from Central Asia with the first space tourist aboard. The crew consisted of California businessman Dennis Tito and two cosmonauts. The destination was the international space station.

2008 - India set a world record when it sent 10 satellites into orbit from a single launch.