Today in history

1521 – Spanish rebels are defeated at Villalar, Spain, and leaders of the antiHapsburgmovement 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 Koreanwar with the death of Second Lieutenant Dennis Fielden.

1953 – British statesmanwinston 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, amission that results in the deaths of eight US servicemen. President Jimmy Carter announces the failed mission.

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 Madikizela- Mandela, 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 actressentertainer (1942- );

Eric Bogosian, US actor

(1953- ); Cedric the Entertainer, US comedian (1964- ); Kelly Clarkson, US pop/rock singer (1982- ).