ON APRIL 11 ...

In 1689, William III and Mary II were crowned as joint sovereigns of England.

In 1814 Napoleon Bonaparte abdicated as emperor of France and was banished to the island of Elba.

In 1899 the treaty ending the Spanish-American War was declared in effect.

In 1921 Iowa became the first state to impose a cigarette tax.

In 1945, during World War II, American soldiers liberated the notorious Nazi concentration camp Buchenwald in Germany.

In 1951 President Harry Truman relieved Gen. Douglas MacArthur of his commands in the Far East.

In 1968 President Lyndon Johnson signed into law the Civil Rights Act of 1968, a week after the assassination of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

In 1970 Apollo 13 blasted off on its ill-fated mission to the moon. (The astronauts managed to return safely).

In 1979 Idi Amin was deposed as president of

Uganda as rebels and exiles backed by Tanzanian forces seized control.

In 1981 President Ronald Reagan returned to the White House from the hospital, 12 days after he was wounded in an assassination attempt.

In 1991 the U.N. Security Council announced a formal end to the Persian Gulf War.

In 1996 7-year-old Jessica Dubroff, who had hoped to become the youngest person to fly cross-country, was killed along with her father and flight instructor when her plane crashed after takeoff from Cheyenne, Wyo.

In 1998 the executive committee of the Ulster Union Party voted 55-23 to support the Northern Ireland peace accord and its leader, David Trimble, who had outmaneuvered rebels in his ranks.

In 2000 a British judge branded historian David Irving an anti-Semite racist and an apologist for Adolf Hitler, ruling that an American scholar was justified in calling him a Holocaust denier.

In 2001 ending a tense 11-day standoff, China agreed to 02ee the 24 crew members of an American spy plane after President George W. Bush said he was “very sorry” for the death of a Chinese fighter pilot whose plane had collided with the American aircraft.

In 2002 U.S. Rep. James Traficant Jr., D-Ohio, was convicted of taking bribes and kickbacks from businessmen and his own staff. (Traficant was later expelled from Congress and sentenced to eight years in prison.)

In 2003 ten of the main suspects in the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole escaped from prison in Yemen. Also in 2003 American troops took the northern Iraqi city of Mosul without a fight.

In 2004 President George W. Bush defended his response to a briefing memo from August 2001 about possible terrorist plots against the United States, saying he was “satisfied that some of the matters were being looked into” and that there were no specific threats against New York and Washington.

In 2006 Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced that his country had succeeded in enriching uranium on a small scale for the first time.

In 2008 Group of Seven financial officials meeting in Washington pledged to strengthen their regulation of banks and other financial institutions while anxiously hoping the credit crisis in the United States would be a short one.

In 2013 comedian Jonathan Winters, who starred in TV specials and films, died in California; he was 87. Also in 2013 Maria Tallchief, one of the 20 century’s greatest ballerinas, died in Chicago; she was 88.

In 2014 Pope Francis asked for forgiveness for the “evil” committed by priests who molested children in his first public plea about the Roman Catholic Church’s sexual abuse scandal.