Today in history
1521 – Spanish rebels are defeated at Villalar, Spain, and leaders of the antihapsburg movement are executed.
1671 – Defeated Cossack rebel leader Stenka Razin is captured by loyalist Cossacks in Russia and turned over to the czar’s forces.
1704 – The first regularly issued American newspaper starts publication.
1877 – American Federal troops are ordered out of New Orleans, ending the North’s post-civil War rule in the South.
1898 – Spain declares war on United States after receiving US ultimatum to withdraw from Cuba.
1916 – Some 1600 Irish nationalists launch the Easter uprising by seizing several key sites in Dublin. The rising is put down by British forces several days later.
1922 – New Zealand holds its first Poppy Day to raise funds for veterans.
1951 – New Zealand suffers its first battlefield casualty of the Korean War with the death of Second Lieutenant Dennis Fielden.
1953 – British statesman Winston Churchill is knighted by Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace.
1971 – Soviet cosmonauts link up with unmanned satellite prior to attempt to build world’s first orbiting space laboratory.
1980 – The United States launches an abortive attempt to free American hostages in Iran, a mission that results in the deaths of eight US servicemen. President Jimmy Carter announces the failed mission to the American people.
1990 – The US space shuttle Discovery takes the Hubble Space Telescope into orbit.
1991 – South African government announces it will uphold agreement with African National Congress to free all political prisoners by April 30.
1993 – Commandos break into the cockpit of a commandeered Indian Airlines plane in Amritsar, India, shoot dead the lone hijacker and free all 141 people aboard.
2001 – A jury is chosen in the murder trial of a former Ku Klux Klansman charged 38 years after the church bombing that killed four black girls in Birmingham, Alabama.
2003 – Winnie Madikizelamandela, the former wife of Nelson Mandela, is convicted of fraud and theft by a regional court in Pretoria, South Africa, and sentenced to five years in prison. Madikizela-mandela was charged with running fraudulent schemes to obtain about $125,000 in bank loans and insurance payments. Today’s Birthdays Edmund Cartwright, English inventor of first power loom (1743-1823); Barbra Streisand, US actress-entertainer (1942– ); Eric Bogosian, US actor (1953– ); Cedric the Entertainer, US comedian (1964– ); Kelly Clarkson, US pop/rock singer (1982– ).