TUESDAY IN HISTORY

Today is Tuesday, April 18, the 108th day of 2017. There are 257 days left in the year.

Highlight in History:

On April 18, 1942, during World War II, an air squadron fromthe USS Hornet led by Lt. Col. James H. Doolittle raided Tokyo and other Japanese cities.

On this date:

In 1775, Paul Revere began his famous ride from Charlestown to Lexington, Massachusetts, warning colonists that British Regular troops were approaching.

In 1865, Confederate Gen. Joseph E. Johnston surrendered to Union Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman near Durham Station in North Carolina.

In 1906, a devastating earthquake struck San Francisco, followed by raging fires; estimates of the final death toll range between 3,000 and 6,000.

In 1946, the League of Nations met for the last time. The International Court of Justice, the judicial arm of the United Nations, held its first sitting in The Hague, Netherlands.

In 1978, the Senate approved the Panama Canal Treaty, providing for the complete turnover of control of the waterway to Panama on the last day of 1999.

In 1983, 63 people, including 17 Americans, were killed at the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, by a suicide bomber.

In 1996, Israeli shells killed 107 Lebanese refugees in a United Nations camp; Israel called the attack an “unfortunate mistake.”

Tenyearsago: The Supreme Court, in a 5-4 ruling, upheld the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act, saying it did not violate a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion.

Five years ago: Defense Secretary Leon Panetta apologized for gruesome photographs published in the Los Angeles Times that purported to show U.S. soldiers posing with the bloodied remains of dead insurgents in Afghanistan two years earlier.

One year ago: The U.S. agreed to deploy more than200 additional troops to Iraq and to send eight Apache helicopters for the first time into the fight against the Islamic State group in Iraq, the first major increase in U.S. forces in nearly a year.

Today’s Birthdays: Actor James Woods is 70. Actor Rick Moranis is 64. Actor Eric Roberts is 61. Ventriloquist/ comedian Jeff Dunham is 55. Talk show host Con an O’ Brien is 54. TV chef Ludovic Lefebvre is 46. Actor David Tennant is 46. Actress Melissa Joan Hart is 41. Reality TV star Kourtney Kardashian is 38. Actress Chloe Bennet is 25.

Thought for Today: “Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.” — Albert Einstein, German-American physicist (born 1879, died this date in 1955).