Today in history

On April 18, 1775, Paul Revere began his famous ride from Charlestown to Lexington, Mass., warning American colonists that the British were coming.

In 1906 a devastating earthquake struck San Francisco, followed by raging fires; about 700 people died.

In 1942 an air squadron from the USS Hornet led by Lt. Col. James Doolittle raided Tokyo and other Japanese cities. In 1946 the League of Nations went out of business. In 1949 the Irish republic was proclaimed. In 1978 the U.S. Senate voted 68-32 to turn the Panama Canal over to Panamanian control on Dec. 31, 1999.

In 1980 Zimbabwe Rhodesia became the independent nation of Zimbabwe. In 1983 62 people, including 17 Americans, were killed at the U.S. Embassy in Beirut by a suicide bomber.

In 1988 an Israeli court convicted John Demjanjuk, a retired auto worker from Cleveland, of committing war crimes at the Treblinka death camp. In 1996 Israeli shells killed 91 Lebanese refugees in a U.N. camp; Israel called the attack an “unfortunate mistake.”

In 1998, despite fierce internal dissent, Northern Ireland's main Protestant party, the Ulster Unionists, approved a peace agreement.

In 2002 four Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan were killed when they were mistakenly bombed by an American F-16 pilot.

In 2003 Scott Peterson was arrested in San Diego in the death of his wife, Laci, who was eight months' pregnant when she vanished on Christmas Eve.

In 2014 an avalanche on Mount Everest killed 16 Nepalese guides, the single deadliest accident on the world’s highest peak.