TODAY IN HISTORY
Today is Monday, April 30, the 120th day of 2018. There are 245 days left in the year.
Today’s Highlight in History
On April 30, 1945, as Soviet troops approached his Berlin bunker, Adolf Hitler committed suicide along with his wife of one day, Eva Braun.
On this date
1789 — George Washington took the oath of office in New York as the first president of the United States. 1803 — The United States purchased the Louisiana Territory from France for 60 million francs, the equivalent of about $15 million. 1812 — Louisiana became the 18th state of the Union. 1900 — Engineer John Luther “Casey” Jones of the Illinois Central Railroad died in a train wreck near Vaughan, Mississippi, after staying at the controls in a successful effort to save the passengers. 1939 — The New York World’s Fair officially opened with a ceremony that included an address by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. 1948 — The Organization of American States was founded with the signing of its charter in Bogota, Colombia. 1958 — Britain’s Life Peerages Act 1958 allowed women to become members of the House of Lords. 1968 — New York City police forcibly removed student demonstrators occupying five buildings at Columbia University. 1973 — President Richard Nixon announced the resignations of top aides H.R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman, Attorney General Richard G. Kleindienst and White House counsel John Dean, who was actually fired. 1975 — The Vietnam War ended as the South Vietnamese capital of Saigon fell to Communist forces. 1988 — Gen. Manuel Noriega, brandishing a machete, vowed at a rally to keep fighting U.S. efforts to oust him as Panama’s military ruler. 1993 — Top-ranked women’s tennis player Monica Seles was stabbed in the back during a match in Hamburg, Germany, by a man who described himself as a fan of second-ranked German player Steffi Graf. (The man, convicted of causing grievous bodily harm, was given a suspended sentence.) 2012 — A real estate investment company purchased the old Mohawk facility on Burlington Road in Shannon for $5.6 million. Ball Corp., which has a warehouse and a plant off Ga. 53, leased 300,000 square feet to be used as an additional warehouse.